How to have a great vacation

1. Only go on Vacation with people you know really well. Bern and I've known John Anderson since 1973 or so, at WVU, when Bern was completing her degree and John was in his Ph.D. program in psychology. We've known Sherrie Ellis since 1980. And both Sherrie and John have known Mimi from when she was three and Tim for 14 years.

2. Only go on vacation with people who read. I read 9 books on Oak Island and part of another. I'm not sure I was the biggest reader since we didn't share how many books we'd read. But when you see a person on vacation reading, you leave them be. And when you're reading, they leave you be. Reading is what it's about, vacation, I mean. Someone who didn't read would make vacation crazy.

3. Only go on vacation with people who love to eat. Besides reading, eating is the main thing about vacation. We had a country dinner Sherrie cooked--tomatoes, corn, beans, cucumbers--one night and Bern cooked two roast chickens with the trimmings one night, and I cooked shrimp, scallops, cod one night, and Sherry did a Greek shrimp salad and tuna one night, and Tim and Mimi cooked burgers and salad one night, and John, who doesn't cook--at least nothing you'd want to eat--bought take out pork barbecue and all the accoutrement's one night, and Bern made fish cakes and crab cakes one night. You have to love to eat and sit at the dinner table for over an hour and do you're own breakfast and lunch to be on vacation with us.

4. Everyone has to let everyone else do what they do. Bern goes for a walk on the beach every morning. Sherrie and Tim and Mimi sometimes go in the water. I walk on the beach from time to time. John never walks the beach or goes in the water. Somebody goes for food for dinner every day. People use their devises except for me, who doesn't have one. John takes a daily nap. No one cares what anyone else does. They just do it. No one wants or pursues any 'group' activity. Everyone is on their own, except for dinner.

From time to time all six of us would be reading--on screens or with books--and time would pass without words.

That's what a vacation should be.