The Coral Gables Times

II. HOW YOU CAN BE A SMOOTH, IN-THE-KNOW TRAVELER

children are knock-kneed or bowlegged this may start an anxiety sequence in the parents, who will stop showing films of their children. Perhaps the best method of treating the returning traveler is this gambit of total indifference. My club, the Brook Street, has a final way of polishing off the man who has just come back from being much photographed on a cruise in an o.k. yacht in the Aeolian Sea or has spent nine months discovering a new source of the Wagga Wagga in darkest Australia or has sailed the Pacific singlehanded. When with relaxed blue eyes and sculptured mahogany face still looking at the distance he returns to the club, he will find that not only will nobody take the slightest notice of him, he will, in a smooth yet definite way, be sent to Coventry. THE TIME comes when you too will take a holiday. As a World Lifeman, you must prepare for this by establishing yourself as something deeper, as a traveler, than mere holiday—the Holiday Traveler as distinct from the Seasoned Travelman is a type forever one down. The Holiday Traveler overdoes excitement and preparation to such an extent that 24 hours before the thing begins he is talking to his family in an unnaturally quiet, controlled, and definite voice. Everybody knows that this is going to lead up to some remark on the morning of departure like "Whether it's right or wrong, let's go by this timetable I've worked out, shall we?" This organizer will be full of mistakes from start to finish. He will make such basic errors as cramming his luggage with clothes and items suitable for a holiday, whereas, of course, if one should include anything out of the way, it should be a general defense against exceptionally cold or wet weather. Never, incidentally, be caught out by this. And do not, if it rains, look miserable and personally hurt. On the contrary your face should light up. "The vines are longing for this," you should say. The specialist knows that it is right to have either very little or very much luggage: but if very much, it should not be seen—above all, it must never be allowed to explode into tiresome and untidy et ceteras crammed into an inadequate handgrip. Remember the ideal. If you can't be Diplomatic Service, you should nevertheless be taking aircraft from Le Bourget to Warsaw and step on and off the plane hatless, carrying nothing whatever, as if you were going one stop on a subway. Do not, in other words, completely alter your life because you are going on holiday. Do not ever carry a guidebook and a phrase book. So far as the guidebook is concerned, possess a dozen, but they must be mugged up beforehand. (Continued on page 18)

The returning traveler is bubbling with desire to lord it over you. ILLUSTRATION BY BLAKE HAMPTON

Suburbia Today, November 1962 11