As a post war baby boomer, I grew up in the northeast suburbs of Philadelphia. My mother was an artist who graduated from the Philadelphia College of Art as did her father, my grandfather. My father was a chemist. He was studying at college when Pearl Harbor happened, and he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and went through officer training. He was a pilot but was grounded because of motion sickness. However, his hobby was photography and there are many pictures and movies of him in planes.
When he was at night school at Temple University prior to the war, a classmate, my uncle, was dating my aunt, my mother’s sister. That is how he met my mother.
I was born as they had just moved into a cape cod house. They built it in Trevose, PA. They saved the money from when my father was overseas and spent nothing. As a side note, that must have been an influence on me. I saved a ton of money when I was driving for Sears and being paid mileage. I used that for a 30% down payment on my first house.
Given my parents interests in chemistry and art many of our day trips were to art museums or science centers like the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
Why do I have wanderlust? My family never wanted to go to the same vacation place twice. In our area many people would go down the shore every summer. Not our family. We would get into the car and go on long trips with my sister and me and later my brother in the back seat. “When are we going to be there?” That was something I kept saying.
Every few years we would go to see my grandparents in St. Petersburg, FL. That was an experience; 3 days in the hot summer on mostly 2 lane highways. My grandparents always lived on the water and had a boat. That made it nice. Water and swimming were always big interest for me and now, finally, I have the opportunity to have a boat when I want it.
People didn’t do expensive travel like today but since our family loved to travel, we got involved in camping. We started with one tent going to state parks in Pennsylvania. The sleeping bags soon had air mattresses and then army type cots. We went to more parks in New York and New England. Then my brother was born and we got a bigger tent. We started going to national parks as well as Canada.
Fast forward to Phyllis and me and our daughters. Well, we love the water and my daughters were swimmers. And both my sister and my brother both ended up moving to Florida.
How nice life is now. We see my sister and brother now more than ever. But I will say that people become like their parents which suits me fine since they were role models. Just recently my sister said to me, “You sound just like Dad.”
We have a great relationship with our daughters who are making their own lives but have been influenced by us.
This is my first post in the challenge by Carol Williams and Anna Banana Kruchten CRS, Phoenix Broker .
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