Dear Bank of Prairie Village Community~
Let’s call July the Month of Memories.
The Memory is a funny thing. Sometimes when I try to focus on “Making a Memory,” I take my mental picture and immediately file it away somewhere in the brain – only to have it never recovered.
It may have been a picture-perfect moment – and I know it’s mentally stored in my gray matter somewhere – but for the life of me I can’t pull it out.
Initially, I thought my mental misfiling system was either the result of my advancing age – or a very late-developing and previously undiagnosed Attention Deficit Disorder Syndrome. However, the more I visit with friends the more I realize my haphazard memory filing system is more the norm than the exception.
Let me explain – or at least self-rationalize – in the context of family vacation memories. For many my age, July was “Vacation Month.”
In a world when airplane tickets were exorbitant, and flying considered highly unusual, families went on vacation every July packed in station wagons. Back then, families did not take elaborate Spring Breaks, few took extended winter vacations, and there were no Fall break excursions.
Moreover, parents generally had two weeks of vacation, with one of those weeks devoted to visiting grandparents around the winter holidays, and all sick days being used for the annual flu season.
This generally meant everyone took a one-week family vacation – usually in the third or fourth weekend of July. This in turn, meant loading up the station wagon and hitting the highway with kids crammed in the back – usually in a variety of contorted positions pushed around the luggage.
Because of the summer heat, the station wagon’s bumpy motion, and the questionable (if any) air conditioning making it to the back seat – inevitably at least one, if not several, of the kids would suddenly become “car sick.”
Every family had a well-oiled, standard operating procedure for handling their kids’ inevitable car sickness. The result being family station wagon vacations were truly adventures – with most of the chaos and memories being made on the ride to and from the destination.
In visiting with contemporaries, everyone has their own “station wagon vacation story” – complete with family traditions, songs, road games, pre-ordained slap fights, spitballs, hair pulling, pinching and constant seat maneuvering for the best air quality.
Just writing this scenario, I can only imagine the young families of today cringing at the vision of a five-to-six-hour road trip with but one AM radio station for everyone’s sole entertainment, and no car seats to tie the kids down.
Here is the catch I find fascinating. In visiting with friends, they could all recall in vivid detail their family station wagon vacation experiences. For example, they can all recall where they sat, (or for the very little ones – where they stood in the car), the most grotesque car sickness episode, and even what everyone ordered at each break stop. Some could recall exactly what magazines their mom read during the ride and how many and what kind of cigars their dad puffed.
However, when asked about the actual destination of their family’s road trip, what they did and whether they had fun – all their memories suddenly became dim and fuzzy. Several could not remember where they actually went.
It was an almost a perfect across the board consensus. Everyone remembered their interminable station wagon rides but almost no one could remember where they went or what they did when they arrived.
I initially categorized this anomaly to the fading and faulty upper middle age memories of my contemporaries – me included.
However, I was recently listening to a group of young professionals. When one asked about a vacation the other professional responded with all the issues they encountered with the family in traveling to their European destination – including getting through airport security, the missed flights, weird connections, drunk plane passengers, and their Uber challenges on arriving.
However, very little was said about the vacation itself (I could only assume they enjoyed a family viewing of the Matterhorn from the Swiss side, but I noticed no comment was made).
Having made this observation, I realized the more I ask about vacations to all different kinds of age groups, most of the commentary is about getting to the destination, and little is said about the destination itself.
Perhaps in forty years, young families and the kids of today will reminisce about their Airport Crisis of the Summer of ’22 on their way to their family’s European Swiss vacation – the same way my age group reminisces about station wagon rides across Kansas.
The benchmark of every memorable vacation are the memories made – and which of those memories are retained over the coming decades. My only cautionary warning is that the most common memories, and best retained, may not be of the destination – but of the adventures in getting there.
Perhaps our brains are wired not to take mental memories of perfect Kodak picturesque moments with mountains and beaches in the background. Rather, maybe our brains are better wired to retain the more important visons of the entire family pulling together to overcome some joint crisis on the way to getting to the picturesque moment.
After all, what good is a joint family viewing of the Matterhorn – from the Swiss side, when compared to some hysterical “airport catastrophe” through which the family persevered to get on the plane.
One can only imagine which of the two vacation memories will be the one brought up time and time again, and laughingly told for decades around the Thanksgiving Dinner table.
This July let’s make some memories, not for a family picture book, Instagram, or Facebook post – but ones that will last the ages!
To enjoying the Journey – Upward and onward for 2022!
Dan Bolen ~ Chairman
Bank of Prairie Village
913~707~3369 Cell
Dan.Bolen@BankofPrairieVillage.com
“The Bank of Prairie Village ~ Home of Blue Lion Banking”~ cited March 2020 and~ again in April 2021 & April 2022 by the Kansas City Business Journal as one of the “Safest Banks in Kansas City for Your Money.”
