Tuesday’s ad is entitled Vacationers’ Reunion, and the illustration was done in 1953 by Douglass Crockwell. It’s #87 in a series entitled “Home Life in America,” also known as the Beer Belongs series of ads that the United States Brewers Foundation ran from 1945 to 1956. In this ad, apparently three couples who took a vacation together are watching a film of their trip. But the title of the ad is “Vacationers’ Reunion,” suggesting that they haven’t seen each other since their holiday. And that seems odd to me. If you’re close enough friends to go on vacation with another family, wouldn’t you think they’d continue to be in close contact after the trip, too? But maybe they needed time apart after spending so much time together. We never took any vacations when I was growing up with anyone else, though my real father and his new family did; they went caravaning with a number of the same families for two weeks every year and chose a new campground each time. Still, I tend to think of a vacation as a family affair.
