Did you know that the new movie Vacation is based on a true story? Well, okay, technically it's a continuation of a series of movies that started off with a 1983 feature adapted from a short story that was based on real events. John Hughes wrote the source tale, titled Vacation '58, for National Lampoon magazine back in the late '70s, while he was primarily employed at a Chicago ad agency. The story was based on a cross-country road trip he took with his own family as a kid. 

It's not quite a memoir because he changed the names and surely exaggerated a lot of the funnier bits, but it reads as real as something by humorist Jean Shepherd, who worked with similarly autobiographical material (and coincidentally also saw his stories turned into a hit 1983 movie, A Christmas Story). And it involved the actual destination of his youth: Disneyland.

For the movie version, fully titled National Lampoon's Vacation, Hughes had to fictionalize even the theme park in his screenplay, calling it Walley World instead. 

Vacation '58 has been available online before, but with the combination sequel/reboot out this week, the Hollywood Reporter managed official reprint rights, so you can read it there. The trade also shares the cover of the September 1979 issue that the story first appeared in as well as a look at the illustration that accompanied the feature. Before even reading the text, you'll notice in that image that there's an extra Griswold character right off the bat. The studio or maybe director Harold Ramis must not have liked the idea of a baby going along on the wild ride.

So, yeah, basically the Rusty Griswold of the 1983 adaptation is a young Hughes. There was a short time where we could have imagined that the kid, originally played by Anthony Michael Hall, would grow up to be an advertising copywriter turned short story writer turned screenwriter turned famous filmmaker, best known for teen movies (a few of which would also star Hall). In the new movie, an adult Rusty is now the paternal focus of the story and, well, he's not involved in film production. He's an airline pilot.