Barracuda

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barracuda

Me and my "Irish Twin" couldn't wait for our big Mexican vacation in Cozumel, because we love the ocean. We'd spend every summer swimming in as many pools, ponds, lakes, rivers and oceans as we could possibly convince adults to do with us. We love the sea; the pounding surf, the oceans' salt spray, the sandy beaches, so much so that my bro is a Jersey resident. Me and my bro spent hours in the water growing up, and it didn't go unnoticed by the adults around us. We swam expertly like fish; first as toddlers, and then as kids earning Scouting swim badges. We loved it, even when it was rainy and cold during summer trips to Maine and Nova Scotia.

Like any Acadian, our father dared us to go into the cold oceans of his youth. No problem! We couldn't wait to cool off from the summer sun, wading into the frigid waters like we were born to it, and we are. We giggled and shivered as we splashed each other into goosebumps, egging each other on to go all the way in, which we did. It was a contest that proved our sea-worthiness to ourselves; a necessary rite of passage that any self-respecting Acadian should be able to do, like fishing and canoeing. We'd learned swamping out a canoe to breath the air trapped beneath well enough to earn colorful Scout badges that we sewed on ourselves to earn that badge, too.

Bernie and I avidly checked out snorkeling gear from the hotel our first day at the beach, running back and forth quickly, keen in our desire to hit the waves. So blue! Cozumel's water is some of the most gorgeous we have here on Earth: a crystal clear, bright turquoise blue that took our breath away. With those first tentative mask views done treading water near the shore, we were instantly hooked. We dove for angelfish and coral and anything else our pre-teen brains could soak up with the clarity of our deep abiding passion for life and the sea. We "pruned" our fingers every single day, just like our baby bath-times together, taking gradually deeper and deeper dives, like we did with all those public pool trips that astonished our parents with our steadfastly devout longevity in the water. So much fun!

We pool-hopped occasionally, but it was filled with ugly pale American tourists sitting on pool stools under a giant beach cabana. Blech! They're just the people we wanted to ditch! So boring, sitting around doing nothing but drink stupid fruity drinks and babbling on and on and on, just like they did at home. Yuck! Who cares? There's so much else to do! The last day we hit the beach hard was indeed memorable to us. We'd be going further and further into the ocean, and that day was no different. We wet our masks like we'd been taught, to create a seal around our eyes that was airtight. So far so good. 

Then, Bernie made his first mask check under the water to beat me to it (of course: boys!), with disastrously different results. He came up gasping and panicked: "I just saw something!" I took my mask to look, and one quick peek at two rows of razor sharp teeth inches from me was more than enough to send me packing, running for the sand quickly. Ahh! What the...?! What was that? We'd just seen our very first barracuda, and it is one scary looking fish. There'd been a whole school of them, too. We ran to our parents sitting on beach chairs under the palm trees, scared and shaken up. For the rest of the trip, we stuck to the pool. That ocean isn't just for us. It's for the predators who live there with every other life form in the sea. Understood, and very clearly so. We have our home, and they have theirs. It's nature.

Vacation (Only If You Want To)

Me and my Grandma kickin' back at my goddaughter's Baptismal luncheon, after a LBI beach vacay with other family. I lived in Denver at the time.

My grandparents famously told all of their children and heirs apparent that they would get no money from them after they died, because they were going to spend it all, and I (for one) laughed the loudest at that. Shit, man, they gave their childhoods to work in the city, so that their dependent immigrant families wouldn't starve during The Great Depression, forestalling their own dreams about education and travel to send their four children to college. Of course, I had serious doubts about the logic behind funding four spoiled kids who were (and still are) almost completely inept at times, but I admired their effort.

My Grandpa humped underground for ConEd for more friggin' years than he cared to count, so when he and my Grandma told everyone at family get-togethers they inherited a condo out in Cali that they wanted to sell to spend on trips, I loved the idea behind it. I can't think of two more self-sacrificing people in the world who deserved a really good party away from the crazy kids and grandkids than my two maternal grandparents. They were the glue that kept their dysfunctional brood together, having almost no respite from birth to elder status, except for their senior escapes with the local Senior Citizens Club that my Grandpa was so avid about.

So they sold some condo that they'd never seen to go on some real trips. It was fun getting swept up in their excitement. They got awesome AARP discounts that my Grandpa liked to brag about, which was well-earned several times over, for their more than 60+ years of paying into the system. And they want everywhere: Morocco, Alaska, Hawaii, South America...if they could cruise to it or fly to it, they'd go. They both had iron seaworthy constitutions, never getting seasick even under threat of capsizing in the middle of some great ocean. 

Then, they'd come back to show us their fun photos, like dining at the Captain's table, or ballroom dancing the night away, and the huge buffet that was there whenever they wanted. I loved it all; the excitement in my grandmother's eyes when she shopped for her glamorous evening dress, so deserved for a woman who had worked at a factory as a very young woman so that her family could eat. I couldn't think of a better reward for all their years of loyal familial service than dancing the night away and eating whatever they wanted to, whenever they wanted, without having hungry mouths to feed, or someone whining about that evening's meal.

Compared to all the hard times and heartache they had had in their long lives together, the right to live out loud and without prejudice seemed like justice had finally come into my grandparent's lives for the first time in their lives, and at just the right time, when they had the time, health, and money to do it. They taught me how to not be some typical ugly American tourist, but to learn something about the country I was visiting beforehand, like those cultures shown in the bright glossy brochures we would pour over happily with them, along with the audio tape or language book my Grandpa bought, so he could at least order dinner at the table for them both in the lingua franca, and do native people the courtesy of saying "hello", "goodbye" and "thank you" to them in their own language.

They taught me how to live, and how to live well. I'm so grateful that I saw them make themselves happy for once, instead of it always being the other way around. We so rarely had those times together on our own. Happy travels this summer, and don't just "go away" someplace to spend time and money because of your own personal boredom, but have a ball. I know my grandparent's did. Live well.

Going to Graceland

We were much more Beatles fans than Elvis fans growing up in my household, a distinction in tastes sharply noted in "Pulp Fiction", in an infamous scene between John Travolta and Uma Thurman. My college boyfriend was an Elvis fan from Brooklyn, which is sort of like being an urban cowboy. It didn't fit, but he liked to cop tastes contrary to the norm to appear different, like sporting a beret or wearing an ascot.

And so I found myself going to Graceland one summer, on an epic road trip that spanned the South to my Dad's place in West Texas. I love road trips, finding them much more preferable to horribly bumpy and terribly turbulent flights that go against the Gulf Stream, a fact that was confirmed for me when my Colorado boyfriend began private pilot lessons. It's gotten worse, too, from compulsive over-travelling brought on by a runner's type of fast pace neurosis that's as addictive as their high sugar and highly caffeinated lifestyles. Chemtrails are the sign that you've polluted the sky, you ugly American.

My exes would fight me on my American preference for the open road, but given my quickness of mind, I usually won out, as I did in this case, because my Brooklyn boyfriend didn't have a driver's license or a car. He was captive to me and my advanced skill sets, a state of affairs that never abated during our acquaintance, much to his chagrin. I made the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia my first day driving, to a smog-filled summer's day that took the wind out of my sails for the rest of the trip. Going to some tourist trap to see the housed remnants of a overdosed singer I never really liked? Great. What a way to spend my summer.

Two days later, I brought us to the state of Tennessee, for a tour of Elvis Presley's house. My very stoned boyfriend was so out of it from getting high in the parking lot, he blurted out that he wanted to see "EVERYTHING!", when the ticket agent asked him which tour he wanted. We'd been flagged by the golf cart security duo as outsiders, for walking towards the house from the graffitied walls outside the grounds, when you were supposed to know to go across the street to buy a ticket, even though no signs were posted with instructions to do so. When he found out that it would cost us over $150 (in 1988, on a working class college kid's budget), he blanched white, and in an embarrassed whispered aside, I told him to just do the house tour.

It was horrible. Priscella still lived in the top floors when she was in town, so we went past his recording studio and racketball court to an impromptu grave site in their backyard, which gave me a blessed moment of silence among the weird hick crowd, who worshipped him like he was some sort of demigod. They also toured his tour buses, his car collection, his costumes, his airplane collection (one of which was named the "Lisa Marie"), and a movie theater that showed his films exclusively. I half-heartedly bought a couple of tepid souvenirs in the gift shop, and then we got back on the road.

My naive New York City boyfriend didn't know how much trouble I steered him out of, until we stopped at a gas station in Mississippi, with a visibly pregnant (and cigarette smoking) woman talking with the clerk behind the counter. They both narrowed their eyes at us when we walked in, eyeballing his dopey "CULTURE" t-shirt, with the word emblazoned over a picture of 70s rhinestone jumpsuit Elvis visiting the White House, posing with Nixon in the Oval Office and shaking hands. He wanted to make an ironic hipster statement that was cutesy "tongue in cheek", and definitely not appreciated by them, which was backed up by our brief exchange with the rural couple at the counter.

The large beer-bellied clerk said to him: "What does that t-shirt mean, boy?" My young boyfriend nervously deferred to him with two palms up, in a conciliatory gesture: "Oh, we've just been to Graceland. It was awesome!." I paid for the gas and asked for smokes, while the two hicks pondered his statement. After a very long pause with continued staring, the large man finally said to us: "Well, we worship him around these here parts." And with that, we were back on the road, albeit with a much more sober and quiet white kid from the city sitting next to me.

Happy trails to you America, on all of your summer road trips. For most of the masses, this is prime vacation season. Just be sure to steer clear of rural areas that worship dead, drug-addicted rock stars. See you 'round the way, mes amis.

CULTURE

Small Town America: Cow Towns

http://www.deephollowranch.com/

I came across an article in a travel magazine the other day that I wanted to share with you, the reader, because I found it so interesting. It's contrast lies in direct proportion to the typical American myth that cowboys only live somewhere Out West, where the desert is dry and tumbleweeds blow, and men ride on horseback wearing big ten-gallon hats, squinting through the dust à la John Wayne. Not so.

The first cattle ranch was established in 1658, and it lies on the eastern tip of....wait for it... LAWNGUYLAND! That's Long Island, for those of you outside of the tri-state area. It's called Deep Hollow Ranch, and it still functions as a ranch, though mostly in horses, way out in Montauk. 

For those of you who want to grove to the beat of a horses' hooves, 
it really can be as easy as a drive on the L.I.E., or as we fondly call it, The Long Island ExSTRESSway, because the traffic is so bad, that if you weren't in sore need of a vacation before you set out, you sure as hell need a cocktail (or two, or three, or four) and some beach time at the end of your ride to get out there.

Hmm. On second thought, maybe you are better off taking your chances on a dude ranch somewhere in the middle of nowhere. The accents will be just as hard to understand, anyway. Write me if you go horseback riding at Deep Hollow, or even better, send me pics.  
Enjoy, New York!