In this installment, Mama J describes our Volkswagen “clown car.” NOTE: I have included minor edits (punctuation, mainly), but the text mostly remains as it appears in Mom’s original. The boldfaced subheadings/intros are mine. Click through the photo gallery to see individual captions.
A VW Clown Car, and the End of the Story?
We spent a lazy afternoon watching the silly ground squirrel raid our peanut supply, while the children enjoyed playing on the lakeshore just behind our campsite. That evening we joined the family of Gail’s friend for beer and popcorn and pleasant companionship. It was fun to compare their Canadian life with ours. The next morning was beautiful again, and we didn’t even make a fire. We hated to leave Sibley but badly needed to wash bodies and clothes. Our packing was done very leisurely. A private campground near Thunder Bay had been recommended, and the drizzle began as we set up camp. It was our first experience with a coin-operated shower, and I was so naïve that I’d gone off to the shower house without any money. We didn’t make that mistake at the laundromat, though, and once again we were all clean and sparkly. That evening, we roasted marshmallows in the rain.
We hated every minute at that campground, whether it was because we were assigned a site rather than choosing one or because we knew it was purely a stopgap. I don’t know, but we hated it nonetheless. We were just barely packed and in the car the next morning when it poured, and although we discovered we’d left the clothesline behind, we didn’t go back for it. We made a drenching stop in Thunder Bay for a gift and pointed the car toward Customs.
This time, we waited in a long line to go through Customs and saw some cars being searched. The VW has to be packed super-carefully, with every inch utilized properly. The very first items to go in the car, snug up against the back seat and under everything else, are the tent and fly poles. The tent poles, however, are almost the first things needed when setting up camp, which necessitates unloading the whole rear end to pitch the tent—the first priority when making camp. Along with the poles goes the axe. We carry a mean, double-bladed on, kept super-sharp. Then, the rake. We use a fairly wide leaf rake with a sawed-off handle that detaches from the rake for storage. The remainder of the space gets filled with the kitchen, big cooler, small Styrofoam beer cooler, lantern box, and suitcases. Somewhere along the line we’d acquired a second lantern, and Al built a plywood box to transport the two carefully. We found we really only needed to carry one, so the other half of the box is filled with a gallon jug of fuel for the stove and lantern, a funnel for filling the same, the whisk broom, all tent stakes, and guy ropes for the flies. Sometimes it even has a book or two tucked in.
The carrier gets packed until it looks rather like a squirrel on his way to winter storage. It gets two cots, five sleeping bags and blankets, two pillows, both tents, all the heavy coats, the tent fly and ground cloths, the coffee pot, the stove, and recently, the catalytic heater. The heater displaced a sleeping bag, which had to move to the back end. The front end of the car gets the lounge chairs, the griddle, the dishpan, the big flashlight, the fishing gear (tackle box, net, waders), another can of fuel tucked inside the spare tire, and any last-minute additions such as extra canned goods and more books.
The interior of the car gets people, umpteen rolls of Lifesavers, the trash bag, first aid kit, box of nose-blowers, maps, campground guide, and the kid bag. The kid bag is a small canvas drawstring bag crammed with surprises for the trip and essential to preserving parental sanity. Some are games for at the site, such as a ring toss, but most are new books, paper and pencil games, auto bingo, gum, and anything else I can think of to keep three children amused in the back seat. Packing and unpacking the car can best be compared to the tiny, tiny car seen at the circus disgorging clowns, one after another. You can understand why the prospect of doing this at Customs was appalling. Fortunately, we were only asked questions similar to the previous year and requested to open the glovebox. The Customs agent wished us a good trip and sent us on our way.
Our way included a revisit to Chequamegon National Forest. It was like coming home. This time we had a long, skinny site that was fairly open. We found out we’d pitched the tent directly under a robin’s nest and caught the very devil from mama. We also watched a rose-breasted grosbeak and her baby. She was evidently teaching him to fly, and she was scolding the whole neighborhood in the process. We had a mole visit the site. We were a little afraid of him but couldn’t stop watching him. Across the road from us was an elderly couple from out of state with a sleek long camper trailer. They spent the whole first evening and following day doing absolutely nothing but washing and polishing that behemoth. Another man tried to interest the camper man in going fishing, but he would not leave his polishing job!
I freely admit to a prejudice against recreational vehicles. Maybe it’s jealousy on my part, but I think that tent campers tend to be a different breed than RV campers. Tenters have access to places RVs cannot go. We don’t have to worry about losing a site because we want to make a side trip. We don’t have the inconvenience of hauling a trailer. I think we tend to be quieter and more considerate of other campers without our lights to bother them or our radio or TV going. Why bother going camping if you can’t leave your air conditioning and television behind?
Back off my soap box. The only time the man left his RV polishing was to join several other older men watching a group of bike hikers set up camp. These three young men pulled into the campground late in the afternoon. They’d originated in Chicago …
Here the narrative ends. I don’t know if Mama J ever finished this manuscript and the subsequent pages were lost, or if this is as far as she got in her story of our family camping adventures. I’d love to know more about the “bike hikers” from Chicago or what we else we did on that trip.
Subsequently, when Mike and I were in the middle of second grade—Robert had been born by then and must have been less than a year old—we moved to Searcy, Arkansas. I have photos of some of our Arkansas camping trips and adventures, although, sadly, there is no narrative to accompany them. I have loved revisiting these places through my mom’s eyes and words, and I’ll write more soon about my memories and the lasting impact of these trips.
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