While I'm on vacation this week, I'm borrowing some writing I've done of my memories for our son. He gifted me with the book Questions You'll Wish You Asked: A Time Capsule for Mothers and Sons,* by Melissa Pennel, for Mother's Day a few years ago. It's filled with prompts to encourage the recipient to write about their own life experiences. I have been chipping away at the various topics little by little, and think of it as "future family history." Rather than write my responses in the book itself, I've begun a separate, private blog just for him, and I share the post links with him whenever I complete a new post. He also wants a printed version, so at some point I will copy them over into a Publisher document to print.
Here's this week's prompt: Was there a vacation you took that stood out to you as a child? Why?
As
a family, there is only one real vacation I can recall taking with all
my siblings and both my parents. We didn't have a lot of money for any
kind of big trips back then. Any outing we took usually was just a day
trip here or there.
Our destination this time? Niagara
Falls! I was probably about eight or nine years old, as I do recall my
sister Sharon was with us, and I was 6 years older than her.
I
remember it was during the summer, but by the falls it was still cool.
The falls were immense, especially to my child's eyes. Their sound and
the spray all made an impression for sure. And it was really beautiful
to see, of course. I also remember being pretty cautious by the
guardrail overlook. I didn't want to fall over! I know someone has
photos of us there, because I remember seeing them.
We were able
to see the Maid of the Mist tour boats which go right up to the falls.
Everyone was outfitted with raincoats and rain hats, because everyone gets wet from the spray. We didn't do that excursion but it was fun to watch others do it.
In
addition to seeing the falls we also went to two other attractions
that also were memorable. One was the Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, where
they had lifelike wax figures of various historical people like kings,
queens, celebrities, presidents, etc. I wish I remembered more about who
exactly was represented, but it was over 50 years ago!
We
also went to the Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum. That was cool! In
particular I remember a life-size sculpture of an Asian man, and the
story was that he sculpted it himself by looking in a mirror. It doesn't
sound quite as impressive now as it did then!
 |
| Postcard of the sculpture! |
But wait,
I just went online to look him up. It is ever cooler and weirder than I
remembered! The sculpture is made of 20,000 pieces of wood, and the
artist even used his own hair, nails, and teeth in it! He wanted to look
as lifelike as possible as a remembrance for his girlfriend after he
passed away. Yikes!
Here's a video on the piece: https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/hananuma-masakichi-sculpture/
I
know we only stayed in Niagara Falls for the day, driving to and from
Cleveland the same day. It's only about a three hour drive give or take
from where we lived. Though only a day, it was the closest thing we had
to a "vacation" - we may have even crossed over to the Canadian side!
Until next time...
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© Nancy Gilbride Casey, 2024. All rights reserved.
* I am not endorsing purchasing the book on Amazon; it was just the first link that came up.
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