Lost Summers

My grandparents used to take the family away for the summer to escape the sweltering heat of the Sacramento Valley.  They rented every summer a house in Stinson Beach right across the road from the house where my Grandmother’s Father had always and continued to have a summer rental.   I can remember listening to stories of these summers.  The supposedly haunted house that was my Great-grandfather’s; where my Grandmother and her twin sister were assigned the attic room which scared them to death.  The house probably wasn’t haunted, it was full of bats she said as a grown-up, but they had fun hiding under the sheets and listening for scrapings and creeks and groans. 

My mother and her brothers too had fond memories of summers spent at the beach with cousins, outside eating, the fog that hung about for most of the day, swimming in the very cold ocean. 

My Grandparents were never well off, but they were well enough.  My Grandfather and his brothers had inherited a Ranch that produced mostly dried pink beans, corn and some tomatoes, which my grandmother asked for when she married my grandpa, and the other brother’s wives supported.  There weren’t a lot of hands on the Ranch and every one of the six brothers worked hard to make a living for the families they supported who all lived on the ranch.  And yet even still they could afford a beach rental for the women and the children to escape the heat in a time before air conditioning.  The men of course had to stay and work and took shifts taking time off to go join the families. 

Things have changed a lot.  Although nowadays we probably make more than my Grandparents did during that time, there is no way we can afford a summer rental and very little anymore can we even afford to do “cheap travelling” like camping out, with a family.

With more and more families out of work and more businesses feeling the crunch of customers and clients not making payments it is not shocking to find that travel is down this summer.  People very simply cannot afford the cost of food, travel and lodging away from home.  And camping out is not much cheaper either with many popular state and national parks costing up to $40 a night to set up a tent. 

As usually happens, the federal government found some reason during the summer to open up the national oil reserves and bring gas prices down 10-20 cents.  However this year the lower gas incentives aren’t adding up to more people going away.  As I look around I see more people staying in town over the summer and when I ask they say they just can’t afford it.  The cost of keeping a family is eating up everything that would have been left over for a vacation.

So what are people doing instead? 

A great push has been made by publications catering to mums, both thrifty or not for something they call the Staycation.  The idea behind which is you stay at home and spend the money you may have spent on a trip on doing things in and around your area.  The idea sounds exciting when you read about it and see pictures.  Big puppy piles of family sleeping in one room, not doing dishes, going out to eat, going to local nearby parks…

On second thought that sounds pretty much like what we do on a regular day minus the cleanliness which I’m guessing would just stress a lot of moms out and drive them to the other room and their computer; back to business as usual.

Real people I’ve talked to say they are spending a lot of time doing the work around their places that they would normally be able to pay someone to do.  Things like exterior painting and repairs, plumbing projects and replacing and maintaining appliances.  Peppered with a couple of BBQs and that pretty much eats up their short summers. 

Which is another reason why families are able to get away less.  Summers are shorter.  This is because of the new-ish thinking that downtime is bad for kids’ brains.  TIME magazine did a piece on this recently; (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2005863,00.html#ixzz1RWU9tdzg) and many teachers and administrators are behind this idea, calling summer vacation antiquated and stating that up to 30% of the academic gains are lost.  Increasingly summer time itself has been shortened, in many areas kids will head back to school at the beginning of August this year.  A large teacher lobby has been behind this because teachers have been losing their raises due to budget cuts in many states.  More time to them means more money. 

I don’t agree with the fight against downtime.  In fact kids need time to be industrious, imaginative.  The problem has become television and electronics as a babysitter.  This is simple to fix, turn it off and kids will find something to fill their time.  Sure your toaster oven may be in bits on the counter by the end of the day, but $30-$50 for a toaster oven is cheaper than summer camp anyway. 

Another thing families are beginning to notice is they are no longer “middle class”  I see their toys for sale all over the place, the boats, the 4 wheelers…I spoke to a neighbor recently who lamented both and seemed genuinely confused as to how things got this way and what to do with the summer.  I now see their kids spending a lot of time playing in the front sprinklers.

Which in and of itself is getting to be an expensive pastime out of reach.  With drought conditions across a lot of the states and water service hikes a simple pleasure of playing in the sprinklers can cost you as much as a $30 increase in your water bill.  This adds up when you take into account everything else people are paying for as cuts across the board are happening. 

No it’s not an easy way to have a fun summer.  It’s shorter, hotter, dryer and more expensive.  The days of taking off on road trips to cooler places and even educational excursions are sadly behind us I fear and I mourn a bit for those lost summers I will never have on Stinson Beach.