By
Father George W. Rutler

(
Crisis Magazine) It is not my practice to take vacations. They strike me as a form of
surrender, like Evacuation Day in New York City, which marked the end of
the British presence in Manhattan on November 25, 1783. In fact, the
last shot of the Revolutionary War was fired that day on jeering crowds
from one of the departing royal ships. It is still commemorated annually
here by decreasing numbers of people who for some reason celebrate the
cultural suicide of New York. It can’t go on forever, though, since our
schools teach nothing about our past: this year on Independence Day,
most people on Jones Beach were unable to answer a television reporter’s
questions about what happened on July 4 and who was the first president
of the United States. But every vacation strikes me as a form of
evacuation with results not quite as dire as the disappearance in 1783
from our shores of the last ethnic group with a command of the English
language.
Against my better judgment, and at the urging of numerous people with
mixed motives, I took a vacation in July. A retired bishop had told me
I should take one. I objected that I had no need to go away, since I
love what I do and do not need a vacation from it. He replied that I
may not need a vacation but perhaps my parish does. So off I went,
accepting a kind invitation to the Gulf of Mexico for three days. My
first mistake was to fly, since everyone who knows me well knows that
there is some inexplicable jinx on me when I take an airplane. If there
are a hundred flights scheduled and one is canceled, it will be mine.
The last time I defied this curse was earlier this year, to attend a
wedding in Australia for one full day and two nights. It is hard for me
to get substitutes in my parish, so I rarely spend an overnight away,
but going to the other side of the planet for just a day did prove
somewhat of a strain, especially as on the way over, there was a power
failure, and then a bogus terrorist scare, after which, two hundred
miles over the Pacific, a man behind me had a heart attack. The jumbo
jet turned around and we flew to Pearl Harbor under circumstances more
benign than in 1941. We were greeted by an ambulance and a group of
grass-skirted senior citizens from the Honolulu Chamber of Commerce
singing Aloha songs. After waiting almost a whole day, we were bundled
back on the airplane. There was a further delay because of a tardy
catering service. Everyone agreed that we did not need food, since it
was hard to tell by that time what the meal should be. It seemed to be
the consensus that all we needed was a capable bartender. Fortunately,
the ill man was saved, although most us felt that we were on a
trajectory to the grave. So I arrived in Sydney with only a few hours
before the wedding.

Now back to my mandated holiday. Out of three days at the Gulf of Mexico,
which I could tell, just by looking, was much larger than New York
harbor, there were constant tropical storms with fierce lightning, and
only one window of opportunity for swimming. As I do not take the sun
well, and prefer the beach at night, I had little chance to test the
waters for sharks. My family has inbred judiciously and injudiciously
since the Norman Conquest to attain the sickly pallor, which provokes
remarks from hardier outdoorsmen. I did not betray my ancestors. For
the rest of those few days, there was nothing to do but watch informally
dressed people waiting on long lines to eat a wide assortment of fish
in restaurants, most of which had gift shops featuring the same sort of
costume jewelry that can be had on lower Lexington Avenue at discount.
The fish were similar to kinds indigenous to the Hudson River except for
unattractive creatures with suction cups. I have no appetite for
anything that can cling to a ceiling.
My return flight from Pensacola was delayed more than five hours
because of a mechanical problem. This required changing my connecting
flight twice. Because I had a funeral scheduled for the next day, I
tried to place a telephone call to my parish saying that I might be
spending the night in Atlanta, whose modernist airport could benefit
from a visit by General Sherman. I do not have a mobile telephone and
when I asked for the location of the nearest telephone booth, it was as
if I had requested an astrolabe. There was one “public telephone”
requiring an expensive “Phone Card” with operating instructions that
only an engineer from Cal Tech could understand. Everyone including
children now have “cell phones” that are said to damage the brain. I saw
evidence of that medical caution all around me. A kindly woman in the
airport souvenir shop selling taxidermied heads of small alligators as
paperweights, lent me her mobile telephone which I gratefully used
though it was bright pink and decorated with floral stencils. I was able
to arrive at LaGuardia around midnight, shortly before closing time.
Upon my return, taking an expensive taxi driven by a Zoroastrian who
shared my critical opinions of Al Qaeda, I was moved to kiss the ground
of Park Avenue. Then I lost my wallet, which contains everything
necessary for survival except oxygen, which so far is still free in our
country. It was proper punishment for not traveling with just a walking
stick and sandals, which advice indicates that our Lord himself did not
think in terms of long trips. At least I made the funeral as
scheduled. It has been my long experience that the beloved departed,
though dead, always are punctual for their funerals while brides, though
alive, usually are late for their weddings.
G.K. Chesterton said that “travel narrows the mind.” By this he meant
that we appreciate things foreign when they are far away, but when we
travel and encounter them, we focus on how different we are from them. I
pray that I may keep my anxious vow, frequently broken, never to fly
again. As a theologian, I know that if God had wanted man to fly, he
would not have given us Amtrak. So that is all I have to say about the
strange custom of going on vacations. For my part, I spent the rest of
the summer happily in my parish, taking advantage of the general
evacuation of the locals, to study German, do some boxing, paint a
landscape, and practice my violin—which has the benefit of driving the
flocks of pigeons from my roof. Curiously, my own neighborhood was
filled with vacationers from other places, including a young couple with
three children taking a break from the Gulf of Mexico. I am persuaded
more than ever before, of the wisdom in Noel Coward’s song: “Why do the
wrong people travel, travel, travel, When the right people stay back
home?” A higher authority is St. Paul who traveled only of necessity
and was beaten, shipwrecked and stung my scorpions in the process. He
said, “When you live in New York you don’t have to travel because you
are already there.” Or perhaps it was another one of those saints. But
it is true.
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