This is the June 4, 2026, edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday.
JOE’S NOTE
During my days in Congress, a pollster presented a study on what made some students more successful in school than others. There were several common denominators for most national honor society members.
Many findings were predictable.
Students whose families had dinner together several nights a week had a better chance of excelling in school, as did those whose families regularly attended worship services together.
But one finding in the research that surprised me was how important family vacations were to a child’s development, especially when it brought a family together on a trip for at least a week every year. I never asked why that was, but intuitively, the research tracked.
Many of my earliest memories come from the backseat of my parents’ station wagon, jammed between my older sister and brother, while our family made its way out of our suburban neighborhood in Doraville, Georgia, all the way to my grandparents’ house in San Diego.
Dad’s family moved out West following the Second World War, and it always provided an excuse for Mom and Dad to show us the country every few years.
We made that journey in a few days because Dad would pack the car with suitcases and kids well before the sun came up, and would then drive 14 hours before unloading us all at a Holiday Inn somewhere in the middle of America.
Along the way, we would pass the Mississippi River, drive endlessly across the flatlands that spanned the Plains states, go through the Painted Desert, visit the Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon, the old Las Vegas Strip, and finally the beaches of Southern California.
We made that journey west many times, starting first from Doraville, then Mississippi, and finally from our home in upstate New York.
Being my father’s son, I spent college summers making that same drive to San Diego before winding up the California coastline to Washington state, and then turning south with my Pensacola friends on an endless odyssey to Northwest Florida.
All those years traveling across America allowed me to visit every state. My 50th finally came when I took my own children to Vermont and crossed into the Green Mountain State on a beautiful snow-lit night.
But of all the sights and scenery I’ve experienced through the years, the most magical moments came when my sister, brother, and I escaped our old station wagon at the end of another long day on the road, and raced alongside each other to jump into the Holiday Inn pool that was always waiting for us — wherever we went.
The Grand Canyon was awe-inspiring, Disneyland was great fun, and the Las Vegas Strip was unlike anything we kids had ever seen. But if I had to pile all of my chips on any one memory, it would be when I was swimming with my family in the Holiday Inn swimming pools that dotted the American landscape from the Deep South through Oklahoma all the way to the glorious West Coast.
Those are the memories that will remain. The magical moments that bonded our family through good times and bad.
STEVE RATTNER’S CHARTS
AMERICANS’ SAVINGS UNDER PRESSURE
