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Chapter 5 - Our Seashore Paradise.Sylvia was fully recovered in two months. At the end of this time the idea emerged to ask for a four-week holiday, unpaid if need be, to go for a camping at our own private beach. Fred owed us the time. He owed both of us. He didn't even hesitate to agree with my request. In fact he suggested that a proper celebration was needed to celebrate Sylvia's recovery. "Take a month or two," he had said, and began to laugh as if I hadn't asked for much. Fred never referred to Steve's suggestion again that the President must resign. Nor did I ask if the President actually read even a part of my report. But I did notice that Fred seemed happier after the incidence. Maybe the President, or somebody else, had seen the truth behind what Steve had suggested and had managed to bring in more competent advisors. In such a case the report would have earned Fred some valuable points of recognition according to the way the games are played in politics. In my own case, I got double of what I had asked for. I go two full months off. That's how our vacation began. It was to be a vacation for getting away from it all. I took the few dollars that I had collected from the bank and bought food, as much as I could get for it, or more precisely, as much as the truck would hold. We stashed everything away, neatly, into every last corner of the truck and set out to go camping for two months without turning back. Those were the plans. The thought of being at our beach, far away from all the scary tumults of the world, seemed to make the tumults less real. Steve would have laughed at the silly notion. Of course the undisturbed camping trip at our very own beach was also a perfect celebration of Sylvia's recovery as Fred had suggested. Tony, who had stayed with Sylvia during her long ordeal in hospital, was of course invited to join us. He had become a part of the family by then. Sylvia told him that this was going to be our first long camping trip in years. Tony answered that he felt honored to be a part of it and immediately began making jokes. "Wow, who would have believed that just a few months ago?" he added. "Can't you see us already, all living together at our own private beach? Who can ask for anything more?" One couldn't have asked for more. No one could have been more proud and exited than we were at our first evening there. We had pitched our tent on a rocky platform high above the beach. It was early September. The weather was still hot. The sky outside Pittsburgh had been a deep turquoise the morning we left. The weather report had predicted "clear sunny days without end," not that anyone believed it. Nevertheless, everything seemed perfect. Even the world seemed to be recovering. We had brought our small radio along to assure ourselves that the financial crisis hadn't flared up again, though Steve had assured me that it wouldn't. Just as Steve had predicted the financial shock didn't amount to a big deal by the time it was over. It had simply dissipated, quietly. Many people had lost everything, a few had became wealthier, but by and large the old game survived and was carried forward as if nothing had happened. The indexes had recovered. No wars had been started. No atomic bombs had been unleashed. The crisis had come and passed. Only the conditions that had caused the crisis had not improved. The huge and growing debt load had remained. Also, the mad rush into financial derivatives gambling hadn't abated. If anything, it had grown more intense. Nevertheless, everybody seemed glad that the 'instability' as they called it, was over. It meant that the world survived another storm. The realization that we survived another storm stirred a queasy feeling in me. But I was alone in my reservation. Both Tony and Sylvia had their fun ridiculing my fears. Their joking wasn't in bad taste, of course, or anything like that. Still it hurt. It hurt, because they couldn't see that nothing had basically changed, or they didn't want to see it. Tony laughed. He suggested dryly that it was high time for us all to take a few weeks of vacation from the "collapsing world" as he put it and just enjoy the seashore. He laughed more and more. Eventually he laughed at his own silly remarks as though they were the funniest joke going. || - page index - || - chapter index - || - Exit - ||
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