AMERICANS NEED OUTINGS 25 



to get out of his daily routine; he will break speed laws and jump red lights 

 to recapture the chance to relax. And in city and country alike people have 

 need of variety, of mixing work and play, of seeing and doing new things, 

 of gratifying curiosity, of personal adventure. 



Rest and Change . . . Physicians, psychiatrists, and others dealing with 

 human ills generally recognize this. "Rest and change" was perhaps the 

 most frequent prescription of wise family doctors, general practitioners, 

 years before they or their patients learned to speak in terms of psychiatry. 

 And even now when we have a whole new set of words to describe physical 

 and mental fatigue and spiritual exhaustion, the cure in many cases is just 

 as simple. And each year the cure becomes more nearly impossible for many 

 poor and driven people. 



When body and mind are run-down to the verge of prostration, when 

 nothing as yet is organically wrong with that mind or body, the most skilled 

 and candid of physicians recognize that they can do little for the patient 

 beyond inducing a slackening of tension and activity, then aiding or allowing 

 Nature to heal the hurt. "Rest and change" is still a standing prescription, 

 and "Try and get it!" remains a common American response. 



It is generally true that Americans, rich and poor, are learning to be 

 their own doctors in this particular, so far as they may. As naturally as 

 ailing or wounded animals crawl off from the pack to recover, we are learn- 

 ing to quit wounding environments for the time and to seek such relaxation 

 and change as our means allow. To a considerable number of Americans 

 not very rich, a summer vacation on farms taking boarders, or at "camps" 

 with names like Kare-Free 1 in the Catskills, allow for a while a slowed- 

 down tempo, a chance to rest and recover. 



Ocean or lake beaches nearer to great cities and the job receive enor- 

 mous crowds of young and old. This is emphatically true of New York's 



1 The imagined but factually accurate scene of Arthur Kober's beautiful and tender 

 comedy, "Having Wonderful Time." Kare-Free has a high-powered recreational director 

 and frequent dances and vaudeville as an extra added attraction; but that is not its main 

 attraction for the shop girls and garment workers of New York City who come to the 

 North Woods for a breath of woodland air, rest and romance, year after year. 



