Regional
(2009-08-31)
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GREELEY, CO
(KUNC) -
The family vacation is annual rite of summer. And while it's been said many times before that there's no place like home - it especially rings true for KUNC commentator Laura Bridgwater.
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Traveling to Alabama in August is like taking a Sunday afternoon drive on I-70 in Colorado. In both cases, people ask, "What were you thinking?"
Most summers we travel to Mobile, a port city with a population of 400,000 and a heat index of the same number. Why? Because, like many vacationing Americans, we visit family.
Our two Colorado-born children love to go see their grandmother, or Bama Gramma as they call her, but they wilt in the heat and humidity as soon as the airplane door opens. So we deal with the sea level environment by going from Bama Gramma's pool to the air conditioning and back to the pool again.
Always before swimming in the South we check the pool skimmer for snakes. Next, we use a dip net to fish out the leaves, frogs, and June bugs. This year we gaped in awe as a big, hairy spider walked across the bottom of the pool. That gave us shivers a third way to cool down.
The kids won't venture off the pool deck into the backyard because they still remember the photo Bama Gramma emailed them. In the picture, the banana spider's web was wider than Bama Gramma is tall.
Another deterrent are the large, waxy leaves that fall off the magnolia trees. The leaves make a dense, shiny, wet, brown mat that pulses with movement. Anything could be in there. Besides, if you were to venture beyond the safety of the chlorine, no one could hear you scream over the deafening buzz of the cicadas.
The backyard is dark and shadowy. The bamboo is taller in places than the water oaks and ivy creeps over it all. There is no horizon.
The kids think it is a jungle. They might be right.
The food is wild in their eyes, too. On our last trip, we grilled bulldozers, a local lobster. It looks like you would expect food to look that is named after heavy equipment. On this trip, we bought pounds of seafood to make gumbo.
My step father, who grew up in the oyster business, showed the girls how to pop the heads off the shrimp and crawfish, and then peel them. He also showed the girls how to pick crabs. Picking crabs takes time. It used to be a social activity for his mother, like a quilting bee.
But no trip to the South would be complete without going to Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, where we order two dozen, from glazed to lemon-filled. When we drove thru Krispy Kreme, after driving thru Starbucks, Bama Gramma, who talks to everyone, said to the employee behind the window, "It must be hard working around all these doughnuts."
"No, ma'am," the Krispy Kreme employee said, "I hate doughnuts. But I love sticky buns."
In Mobile, you drive everywhere. It's a car culture kind of place. Probably because that's where the back-up AC is.
I love the pool, the seafood, and my Southern relatives, and I can even cope with the humidity that's what sweet tea was invented for. So when my mother asks, "Why don't y'all move here?" I pause and think about it.
But then I come to my senses.
This is the town that dropped a giant, mechanical, lighted Moon Pie last year on New Year's Eve.
Mobile is also considered the wettest city in the United States. I don't doubt it. Bama Grama spends more time power washing mildew off her front door, sidewalk, and pool deck than we do shoveling snow. Mildew doesn't have a season.
And if she's not cleaning mildew, she's storing the patio furniture before a hurricane. I'll take a blizzard any day. Besides, our kids weren't born into that kind of humidity, and if you're not born into it, you can't adapt.
We invite Bama Gramma to move here, but she says she can't breathe at our elevation. So like many families in our highly mobile culture, we continue our long-distance relationship.
We're happy to come home to Fort Collins where towels dry and rain evaporates before it hits the ground. Granola, instead of doughnuts, comes in 39 flavors and even grey-haired people ride bikes regularly. And until next summer, we'll keep singing "Sweet Home Colorado."
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