I found my bliss. Ollie Hofnoodle’s Haven of Bliss that is.  If you have seen A Christmas Story by Jean Shepard this is another film written by him that is very funny. What I love about it is that is epitomizes an era in American life of the middle class family. This is about Ralphie and his family when he is a teenager looking for his first job. His father still has his nose to the grindstone and wants nothing more than to get away for his annual 2 week summer vacation at a resort on Clear Lake. There are hilarious parts about Ralph’s first job, how the family dog “Fuzzhead” runs away, and the “epic car trip” on the way to the lake. Their family car is loaded up to the roof with all the comforts of home they want to bring to the vacation cabin. This was when a family typically had one family car. Shepard describes the mother’s lot in life, quite accurately I thought, when he says she never got to taste her food warm because she was constantly waiting on the rest of the family during mealtime.

There is one scene where the family is on the road and they recall how when then got to a certain place there was this bee that would come into the car and harass them. They wonder if the bee could still be there. The father says that’s ridiculous. Well, you guessed it, the bee shows up and the next scene is the whole family running down the road.