Clark Griswold

Holiday movies come in many shapes and sizes. It’s a Wonderful Life, a story that might as well have been written about my life and my struggles with my very own green, currently wilting, deciduous Old Man Potter, is a true classic and a unrivaled favorite of many. Another timeless classic, Santa Claus III: The Escape Clause, combines two of the three things that I hate the most, Tim Allen and Canada. The Grinch Who Stole Christmas is a favorite of many, and I too wouldn’t touch Michigan with a 39 and a half foot pole. A Christmas Story is a favorite of mine, and of my fathers. Heck, who can dislike a movie that features a leg lamp in any capacity? For all these holiday films, I can only call one my favorite. Thanks to the late Lake Geneva lover John Hughes and AMC, I have been able to partially watch National Lampoons Christmas Vacation at least twice this year. Yes, I lean towards the immature in my movie selections, don’t judge me.

I do love this movie, in part because Hughes must have unknowingly modeled his Clark Griswold character after my own father (right down to the glasses), but largely because it’s just plain funny, in a 1989 sort of way. I had a cinematic epiphany the other night while watching Clark watch Nicolette Scorsese dive off of his imaginary diving board. I realized what was wrong with Clark Griswold.

Clark and his family live in a fictional suburb of Chicago, even though the movie was filmed in Colorado, which would explain all those mountains that Clark encounters when driving in search of his Christmas tree. Clark works at a cereal company, and is married to the hot Beverly D’Angelo, not the Entourage one. For all of Clark’s classic suburban existence, he’s missing something, and he knows it. He thinks that something is a pool. He thinks this pool will elevate his suburban homestead into a summertime retreat. While I like swimming pools, I prefer them in Lake Geneva, not in boring suburban backyards. While I watched Clark dream about that girl on the diving board, I knew then that Clark didn’t need a swimming pool. He just needed a Lake Geneva vacation home.

Clark was a typical example of a misguided Illinoisan. He knew that something was missing from his life, and he assumed a pool would fill the void. From my enlightened Lake Geneva point of view, it was obvious that all of the problems he encountered during the filming of Christmas Vacation resulted from his lack of vacation home focus. Proof you say? Consider Juliette Lewis, complaining about sleeping in her brothers room once the throng of visiting relatives forced her from her own. If Clark had opted for a Lake Geneva vacation home, she probably could have bunked on her own bed in the sort of attic bunk room that is common in older lakefront homes here. Problem solved.

Consider Cousin Eddy, who showed up uninvited and unannounced, and proceeded to do his best to ruin Christmas,at least until he redeemed himself by kidnapping Clark’s boss. Had Clark retreated to his Lake Geneva vacation home a few days before Christmas, Cousin Eddy would have showed up at the empty suburban home. It was 1989, so Eddy didn’t wouldn’t have had a cell phone, which means Clark and family would have been safe at the lake, far from the reaches of Eddy and his sewage filled RV. Had cousin Eddy never found the lakefront home where Clark would have been resting with his family, Eddy’s dog could have never drank all the water from the Christmas tree stand. If the Eddy hadn’t found the lake house, and the dog hadn’t lapped up the water, then when the cat chewed through the tree light wire the tree wouldn’t have burned up. See what I mean? I’m solving age old problems here and no one seems to care.

Clark, for all of his John Hughes gifted comedic genius, wasn’t really a screw up, he was just a classic suburban Chicagoan looking for a way to improve the life of his family. His goal, at its root, was a noble one. Any man (or woman) with the means to do so is always looking to improve the quality of life for his or her family. To not pursue perfection is complacency exemplified, and complacency is not welcome here. Clark was no exception, yet for all the honorable intentions, he went about it in the wrong way. An 800 square foot chlorinated swimming pool cannot compete with a 5200 acre spring fed lake when it comes to pure vacationing bliss, and for all of Clark’s fortunate geographic proximity to Lake Geneva, he didn’t see it. Maybe you’re just like Clark. Maybe you’re contemplating having a swimming pool put in the backyard of your Illinois home. Maybe you’re thinking that will help bring the family together, sans Cousin Eddy, and maybe you think that will be the chlorinated glue that binds your summers together. If you’re thinking that, perhaps you should take a clue from one of my best customers of 2009, and embrace the best of both worlds. Just Install a swimming pool at your new Lake Geneva vacation home. Clark would be proud.

I’m on vacation this week, so you get Holiday reruns… Back next week and still reachable via email should you wish to discuss Lake Geneva things.