Mahoning Valley – Family Vacation End-Cap
This is one of those entries that I feel like I have to write. Don’t get me wrong; it’s not that I don’t want to write about spending the last leg of the week of family fun with my family. I do. It’s just that we didn’t go anywhere exciting. It was just a trip home. Sure I could write about a trip down memory lane, but I just did that. Or maybe I could just detail out the weekend. But that’s not the direction I want this blog to go in. It’s not a life journal but a focus on my passions of food, drink, and travel.
There was food, but I failed to take notes or pictures to chronicle the many wonderful tastes of the Mahoning Valley, where you can find some of the best Italian food in this country. From the brick sandwich at Jimmy’s Italian Food Specialties (hot peppers layered between two slices of pepperoni roll, and placed in a press) to the Brier Hill style pizza served up at Sunrise Inn to the penne with vodka sauce catered from Aulizio’s for Dad’s party. I could and will write an entry just on the tastes of home. But that will have to be a different blog for a different day when I am a better blogger and learn to take better notes and actually bring my camera.
This is where I will allow for flexibility in this blog. After all, I am in charge here. Nobody is paying me to write this junk. Let’s focus on my other passion – Family. The last leg of the week of family vacations. We started in Tennessee for a family reunion and 80th birthday celebration for Grandma Gene with the in-laws and wrapped up at home in Niles for my father’s surprise 70th birthday. Please, don’t do the math. Fifteen hundred miles and over 24 hours of driving to spend some quality time with family. The sarcasm in me is begging to spew onto this blog about how a family vacation really isn’t a vacation, that it’s more like work. That earned time off should be spent away from everyday life (family included). That it’s my time, not their time. Insert selfish comment here. But I was raised differently. As much as I enjoy travelling the world, and trying new things, family comes first, so I was happy to spend the week catching up with those I love.
Dad had no idea we were coming into town for his birthday. Through a series of well
thought out white lies, he thought I was travelling for work that week when instead I was driving to Ohio to help celebrate his 70th. We arrived into Niles Thursday evening after Dad had left for work. He ushers at the local minor league baseball stadium in his retirement – the perfect place to break the first surprise. My wife approached him with her ticket in hand explaining how she was lost and couldn’t find her seat. He looked at the ticket, then at her, then at the ticket again, and then back at her before seeing me in the background. Two nights later was the surprise party. Of course, pulling it off proved a little difficult when my Dad loves to guess things. As he walked up the front porch steps at Uncle Mike and Aunt Alice’s, he started to point out all the cars he saw along the street and name who they belonged to. We tried to tell him it was for a neighbors party, but as my uncle explained, he knew most of his clients by what they drove, not their names.
Sure, I could have spent my hard-earned vacation days on a beach somewhere sipping tequila, or adventuring in Southeast Asia, or maybe finally making that lifelong dream come true to visit Italy. But instead, I could find no better way to spend it than wrapping the week up with a toast to my father, my hero, and his 70th birthday. Time off from work, as much as we want it to be, is not all about us. They’re about the ones we love, too. That could sometimes be a hard pill to swallow in today’s self-centered society, but I swallowed it and enjoyed my time. It was some well needed medication.
