[thebigjewel] Lake Delavan Days - December 25, 2002
- From: "The Big Jewel" <list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: thebigjewel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 25 Dec 2002 10:59:21 -0700 (MST)
* Rather than bringing you Christmas in July, we bring you July at
Christmas -- a harrowing tale of a family vacation gone awry, from the
tattered boyhood diaries of Kurt Luchs. Happy holidays!
Lake Delavan Days
By Kurt Luchs
For others, the word "vacation" evokes idyllic childhood memories of
family togetherness and carefree summer days spent at some garden spot by
a seashore or lake. For me, "vacation" has always meant a special family
time, too -- a time where families retreat far from civilization for the
express purpose of torturing one another in an enclosed space without
distractions. It doesn't take a $90-an-hour Freudian to trace this feeling
directly back to that fateful Luchs family trip to Lake Delavan,
Wisconsin.
The year was 1964. Kennedy was freshly planted in Arlington National
Cemetery, having been killed (as Oliver Stone has since informed us) by a
conspiracy involving 93 percent of the American people and at least two of
Donald Duck's nephews, Huey and Dewey (although there is no direct
evidence that Louie helped Oswald pull the trigger, he is now known to
have been on a first-name basis with both Jack Ruby and Sirhan Sirhan).
The Beatles were continuing their full frontal assault on America's youth.
Viet Nam was becoming the number one vacation spot for draft-age U.S.
males.
The Luchses had just purchased a peculiar little foreign car, the Citroen
2CV. This vehicle is several sizes larger than a Tonka Toy and almost as
powerful. It's basically a Volkswagen Bug with an inferiority complex and
only two cylinders. The man who sold it to us -- a family friend later
convicted of extortion and threatening to set off a bomb in the San
Francisco Hilton, but that's another story -- fondly described the 2CV
as "the perfect desert fighting machine." He claimed that if you ran out
of motor oil, you could always keep a Citroen going by filling the
crankcase with ripe bananas. More than once our father caught us
attempting to put this intriguing theory to the test.
For the full article please visit: http://www.thebigjewel.com
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