Andy Rooney_ 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit - Andy Rooney [86]
Little by little, we are taking up material from the ground in large amounts in one place, making something of it, shipping it across the country to other places, using the things, turning them into trash or garbage and burying them in ten thousand separate little piles called dumps in other places. In the process, we often ruin both places, of course, but that’s another story.
If being in on this cosmic kind of cosmetics doesn’t interest you to think about the dump, there are other pleasures. There is a cathartic pleasure to be enjoyed from getting rid of stuff at the dump and there is a camaraderie among neighbors there that doesn’t exist at the supermarket. Everyone at the dump feels he is doing a good and honest thing and it gives him a warm sense of fellow feeling to know that others, many with more expensive cars, are doing the same grubby, down-to-earth job.
Nowhere is morality higher in America than at the dump Saturday morning and I recommend a trip there as a possible cure for what so many people think ails America, morally.
Vacation
May and June are the months I enjoy my vacation the most. My vacation doesn’t begin until July but looking forward to it is the
best part.
Once a vacation begins, I can’t keep myself from counting the days
until it ends and that diminishes the pleasure of it. It always goes so fast.
I can remember thinking that when I was eight. In July the sun starts
coming up later and going down earlier. There’s a depressing dwindling
sense about the afternoon shadows in late July. It’s no longer Spring.
The longest day of the year should be in August, not June. The end of my vacation hangs over my head in July like the income
tax deadline in April or a dental appointment in January. As the days
dwindle down (to a precious few), it’s depressing to realize that what
I’ve been looking forward to for so long is almost over.
There are some things you can do to lengthen your vacation. Or, at
least, give it a sense of length. For instance, it’s best if you don’t have
dates when you have to do something or go somewhere. Dates that interrupt a month make a vacation shorter. If it’s interrupted by someone’s
wedding in another city or by a dental appointment, it divides your days
off into little compartments. A good vacation is one during which nothing happens so eventful that you can remember it when you get back to
work and people ask, “What did you do on your vacation?” We start going to our summer house on weekends in May and keep
on going weekends right through September but for all of July and for
Vacation 187
With twin daughters, Emily and Martha
three or four days I steal on each end of the month, we’re there seven days a week. No commuting. We have an extra bedroom so we can accommodate guests but I don’t like having guests during my vacation. If we have friends come to visit us, it’s usually on weekends before or after my July vacation. That way, they don’t interrupt my vacation. I like having them, mind you, but not during my vacation.
There’s a big difference in guests. I like the ones who get up when they feel like it without worrying about “what time do you have breakfast?”
I like guests who don’t want to do what I want to do but feel free to wander off on their own. When people are visiting, I don’t want to be a tour director. The best guests do what they feel like doing. After breakfast, they may volunteer to drive over and get the newspapers twelve miles away and not show up until several hours later for lunch. I am very fond of guests who enjoy a nap after lunch. If they want to play tennis towards mid-afternoon, that’s fine. If it isn’t too hot, I’ll join them unless they’re really good—in which case I’ll get someone else to play with them.
Book-readers make good guests. They don’t want you to bother them with suggestions like, “Would you like to walk down to the lake?” or, “There are some good antiques shops in Schuylerville.