Bee Travel
Memories of Dad
CHRISTINE HICKS- USTA Travel
When I was three, my parents took us on the first family vacation I can remember. We drove up to Lake of Bays in Canada. Friends had loaned us the use of their cabin. The memory is vague, jaded by time and the retelling so many times. My older sisters, Susie and Sally, were as scared as I to enter the main living room where a huge animal head cowered over the mantle - and specifically us - surely intending to have us for a snack while we slept. So we stayed awake, as best as children can, and when we awoke, still alive, we would run through the main room just quick enough so the animal couldn't catch us. We were so successful in evading the beast, we lasted the entire week. And in-between we played on the dock in the lake just a few feet from the lodge. At night, mom and dad fed us, cleaned us, and tucked us safely in to bunk beds under Hudson's Bay blankets (I think) and undoubtedly sat up chatting about the days' events in front of a fire, sipping Canadian lagers.

I slipped and cut my upper right lip on the shards of a broken Coca-Cola bottle that week. If you look really hard, you can make out the scar. I was three. That was 52 years ago. The imprint of all of this is still with me.

The cross-border return is the stuff of family legend. Car sickness or flu overtook one or all of us, and the resulting mess was relegated to the trunk for cleanup at home. At the border, the guard (regrettably) insisted upon checking the trunk's contents. My father, his face the warning by rolling of eyes that most assuredly said, "Okay, you asked for it," opened the trunk. It's a look I saw on my father's face often, and it spoke eloquently every time. The hot summer air made for an assault of fetid vapors on the guard, and we were subsequently rushed through customs.

When I was four or maybe five, my father and mother piled three of us (there were four at the time, a fifth to follow later) kids into a fin-tailed, white and blue whale of an Oldsmobile. We drove down the Governor Thomas E. Dewey Thruway to visit friends. My dad (and mom) exhibited the patience of a saint in an un-air-conditioned car where three little girls could wreak havoc. We played the license plate game with windows wide open. Susie tossed her blankie out the window. I believe we lost one shoe. With each incident, my father's face would assume the calm of one thoroughly outwitted by his little darlings, all the while bemused. Underneath was his giggle aching to come out, borne of the absurdity of such moments. I learned that face and how to use the deadpan almost as well as dad. It spoke volumes, no words necessary.

These vacation memories were brought to you - and me - by my dad. He died today. He's golfing with the angels, now. And winning.

(Christine Hicks-Usta has enjoyed more than 30 years of globe-trotting as a member of the travel industry in various capacities. Direct questions to her at Bee Group Newspapers, P.O. Box 150, Buffalo, N.Y. 14231-0150.)