A 1956 Vacation Adventure
To us, Route 7 was the only road in America
Travel builds memories, beginning with childhood family trips. In this From Our Readers story, Roger Pierangelo recalls his family’s vacation adventures and the start of an annual pilgrimage to a small Vermont town.
My vacation adventures began in 1956, when my primary sources of outside reading were my father’s favorite magazines: National Geographic and Vermont Life. Thanks to these, I became an accidental expert on Zulu warriors and the tiny town of Bennington, Vermont. I might have lacked worldly travel experiences, but I could recite facts about Africa and Pownal like a pro. With only two choices for vacation destinations, my dreams of global exploration were as limited as my dad’s magazine subscriptions.
By the time I was nearing 10, I had observed that Italians are a breed of travelers who find comfort in predictability. They’re born, live, and die in the same house, eat their meals at the same time every day, wear clothes from the same department store, and go to the same vacation spot each year. My parents embodied this spirit with their annual pilgrimage to Pownal, Vermont – a place they’d found in Vermont Life and that just happened to be owned by an Italian named Marcello Pervadi. To my parents, this was the pinnacle of exotic travel: Italian, low-risk, and accessible via one straightforward route, U.S. Route 7.
The grand vacation adventures begin
Every year, we would embark on this “grand adventure” with the same precision as a military operation. My father meticulously studied maps, even though Route 7 was the only road leading to Pownal. I had Route 7 down to a science: 2.5 hours to Schmedley’s Diner in Connecticut, 2 hours from the Red Barn antique store (after the broken tractor farm), and exactly 26 minutes from the cheese factory next to the racetrack. If I had a dollar for every time I heard the “Oh, are we there yet?” from my sister after crossing the 200-mile mark, I’d be rich. It was boring as heck, except for the epic backseat battles with my sister, who loved to cross my meticulously laid masking tape boundary line.
When we finally arrived at the Pownal Motel, I was convinced we’d reached the Tower of Babel. To my 10-year-old self, it was paradise with its quaint, POD-sized cottages, expansive grounds for baseball, and a pool that felt like a luxury lagoon. As an adult, I realized it bore a striking resemblance to the motel in Psycho, but at the time, it was the ultimate getaway. My dad would play baseball with me while my mom lounged on the concrete porch of cottage 75B, which always struck me as odd since there were only eight cottages – maybe the high number was just for show?
Bringing luggage into the cottage was an event. We had multiple suitcases: clothes, cooking dishes, and a suitcase packed with pre-prepared meals that my mother managed to whip up in the tiny kitchenette. The kitchen was so small, you had to go sideways to enter it. The beds and “couch” were so compact, we practically slept in a human jigsaw puzzle. But it was our yearly adventure, so it was perfect.
Over the years, we noticed a pattern. Other Italians, if they stayed more than three summers, were clearly part of the club. It was as if predictability was a badge of honor. But every now and then, we’d encounter “strangers,” people from other walks of life who ventured to Pownal, broadening our notion of what “normal” looked like.
The big event was always dinner at the Blue Spruce Diner, 10 miles north over the most treacherous mountain road known to man. My dad, ever the cautious driver, made sure we got there safely. The diner was tiny, with 10 blue booths, juke boxes, and counters that defied cleanliness. But to a 10-year-old, the food was worth any risk. Marge, the waitress who’d been there forever (despite not having an Italian-sounding name), knew us by heart. My dad was practically a local celebrity, chatting up everyone and learning all about Vermont life.
My parents, ever the enthusiasts, were thrilled to discover Grandma Moses’s house nearby. They loved her paintings, but I always suspected they were more excited about moving away from the extended Italian family. The thought of being 800 feet from anyone remotely related was just too far.
As the years went by, our reading list expanded. We added The Grandma Moses Gazette to our collection alongside National Geographic, Vermont Life, and The Sears Catalog. These vacations became cherished memories, keeping us warm through the winter, with the promise that Route 7 would be our highway to adventure … again and again.
Dr. Roger Pierangelo has been a clinical and forensic psychologist for 45 years and has also been a graduate professor and executive director of a national special education association. He has written numerous books and articles and taken numerous vacation adventures. His stories come from his working memoir about growing up as a Boomer, called The Baby Boomer Diaries.
Read more like Roger Pierangelo’s vacation adventures and other contributions from Boomer readers in our
Do you have your own stories you’d like to share with our baby boomer audience? View our writers’ guidelines and e-mail our editor at Annie@BoomerMagazine.com with the subject line “‘From Our Readers’ inquiry.”
