COLUMN: Remembering those summers ‘before the mouse’

It was the summer of 1965, and we were on the road to a Holiday Inn… somewhere.

Our suitcases were stacked on top of our Buick sport wagon. My father had a Texaco road map unfolded across the front seat. My mother was most likely changing a diaper. (She had five children in nine years, so she always had a diaper pin pressed between her fingers.)

The rest of our crew was rolling around — unrestrained — in the back seat. We entertained ourselves by keeping score of different license plates on the way to the beach. When we vacationed in the mountains, we counted the number of Coca-Cola signs on storefronts and gas stations.

Those were among the greatest adventures of our lives, even when we got car sick. Every few miles, one of us would repeat the first four words every child learns to say: “Are we there yet?”

We rode past “See Rock City” barns and the teal-colored cathedral roofs of Stuckey’s, where they sold those iconic pecan rolls and “Eat Here & Get Gas’’ T-shirts. Yes, the highways had Stuckey’s long before Buc-ees.

We even saw the infamous “Goat Man” a time or two, passing through a small town in South Georgia.

Most third-grade boys don’t bother keeping diaries, so I can’t always be sure of the sequence of those trips. I have had to rely on old photographs and vintage 8mm home movies to help thoughtfully organize those summer vacations of my youth.

Most importantly, my family was making memories… together. And my generation can appreciate those precious summers “before the mouse.’’ The year was 1965, B.D. … Before Disney.

I once read a book called “Dixie Before Disney.” I recently went back and reread it. It’s a tribute by author Tim Hollis to the tourist attractions, pit stops and natural wonders that defined the South before Walt Disney World opened in 1971.

The book took me down some happy trails. Life marched to a different rhythm back then. You didn’t have to go to a Magic Kingdom to find magic. You could buy a rubber alligator at a souvenir stand or plop 25 cents into one of those “magic fingers” vibrating beds at the motel. 

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the opening of Disneyland in California, the granddaddy of theme parks. Growing up, we knew about Disney. We watched Disney cartoons and movies at the “picture show.’’ We tuned in our rabbit ears every Sunday night for the “Wonderful World of Disney.” 

But when Walt Disney rounded up some swampland in central Florida to build Disney World, and SeaWorld and Universal Studios arrived in lockstep behind him, the tourism landscape changed forever.

Raise your hand if you remember planning entire trips around going to Marineland, home of the world’s first trained porpoise show. Or rode the incline to the top of Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga, where you could see seven states. Our ears also popped on the way up to Ghost Town in the Sky in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, where we got to see a couple of cowboys get into a gunfight outside a saloon.

One summer, we caught the gulf breezes down at the “Miracle Strip Amusement Park” in Panama City Beach, which boasted the fastest roller coaster in the country. My sister and I went into the haunted house on the last night of our vacation. She screamed and squeezed my arm the whole time, and we both came out of there with eyes as big as saucers.

My aunt and uncle took us on our first trip to Six Flags Over Georgia, not long after it opened in June 1967. An all-day adult pass cost $3.95. We marveled at the water ski shows at Cypress Gardens. We ate Smoky Mountain taffy logs in North Carolina and sat on a blanket under the stars to watch “Unto These Hills,’’ the Cherokee Native American drama. (This July marks the 75th anniversary of its debut in 1950.)

We looked for Pogo — and kept an eye out for alligators — in the Okefenokee Swamp. On a trip to Luray Caverns in Virginia, I learned  the difference between a stalagmite and a stalactite. Yes, summer holds its very own classroom.

My memories of Silver Springs are as clear as the water under those glass-bottom boats. It always made a huge impression on me that the old “Tarzan” movies and the television series “Sea Hunt” were filmed there.

Macon’s Sidney Lanier was one of the 19th century’s most beloved poets. He was also a well-known travel writer. His essays from the exotic state of Florida provided Americans with some of their first glimpses of that vacation state. 

But he visited there long before the Weeki Wachee mermaids, who inspired their own poetry.

In early 1965, a magazine called Travel USA listed the top 12 tourist attractions in the country. Seven of them were in the South.   I consider myself lucky to have been to all of them — Colonial Williamsburg, Rock City, Marineland, Luray Caverns, Cypress Gardens, Mount Vernon and Silver Springs.

Old times are not forgotten.

I got to see many of those places through the lens of a child. And then they were gone.

Ed Grisamore has been a newspaper columnist in Macon for more than 45 years and is the author of nine books.