The Big Green Beast
on 07/23/2015 at 09:35 PM
Wow, that takes me back… we used to camp with the folks back when we were kids. We had our “big green beast” too. It was more like a standard army tent… There were 6 outside poles complete with stakes and guy ropes, plus two or maybe 3 inside poles that supported a ridgepole. The thing had a “room divider” wall splitting the tent into a front and back room. Back for the adults, front for us kids. Even after my dad bought a travel trailer, we still took the tent along. My brother & I would set it up and use it, leaving the trailer for the folks and sister. Good times.
I haven’t used it in years, but I still have the JC Penny dome tent I bought when I started going camping on my own. Got a nice rain fly, a zipper in the floor for ice fishing, even a chimney… and if you don’t like where you’ve set it up, you can pick it up and move it without taking it down.
I still have my stove and lantern… the lantern is new in the box. I’d probably dispense with nostalgia and take an LED lantern now.
Oh yeah, good memories man. Is that the kind where if it was raining and
you touched the roof it would start slow dripping and never stop?
Fun stuff. Good stuff.Grayjohn - oh God, that’s right! And we had these clear little wax crayons and some kind of fabric waterproofing spring in a mud brown spray can. It took about 5 cans of the toxic spray to do the whole inside every couple of years, when we set the tent up “early” in the Spring in the backyard to air it out and see how it fared over the winter.
Jim - the gas lantern. Greatest bug killer ever made. A zillion lumens of light and a prodigious heat source as well. One radioactive thorium coated woven mantle for our bargain unit, and 2 of them for the all-powerful Colemans. Burning in a new mantle was a nearly magical event and required great skill ... they had to be tied on just so, and then lit carefully from the very bottom with a wooden match that was half burned up. They’d flame up, and in a few seconds you’d have a tiny sack made of ashes hanging there. Let it cool!! Then, ever so gently, you had to ease the gas on, and light it again. Too much gas and they’d blow out, but get it just right ... zzwwhoosh ... and the sudden million candlepower temporarily blinded you. After the first burning I swear the ash bags got stronger; we often got a season or two out of a single mantle. But hey, we used actual, honest to goodness Coleman white gas fuel in the red can.
We knew a guy who misused his Coleman stove. He’d take the red tank off, pump it up, and spray the damp wood in his fire pit. Throw on a Strike Anywhere match, and FOOM, a pillar of fire would shoot up between the pines, startling everyone in the campground. Not one of the Approved Methods in my scout manual, but he could make wet logs burn in the rain. Using teh thing as a flamethrower later on when the fire wasn’t burning fast enough was even more dangerous, but he never did actually burn the place down.
HIGH SCHOOL SPRING BREAK 1974 . I and 3 buds had a monster tent like that along with my go kart strapped to the roof of buds 64 ford econoline van, and went down to Detroit lake state park for some smokin and token and anything else we could think to do.
Drove the go kart till the Park ranger almost shot us for what he thought was 4 guys cutting down his park( go kart used a chain saw Tecumsah motor,Heh). After that we packed up, buzzed across the lake, found a secret hidden path we discovered off the highway and spent next 2 days there safe sound and stoned . We all had to use my asthma medicine to keep breathing it got so intense.Found a nice little crick to frolic in ( water was ice cold but stoned knows no temperature). All in all best camping trip Ever.
Oh, and just to prove we could we sacrificed a small sapling,maybe 50ft, just because.
A different kind of camping altogether Rich, but time in the woods is still time in the woods.
Sorry, but daddy was raised in Idaho in the woods and the Last thing he wanted to do was do that shit for fun.I did go with a few friends families growing up but it was always in a camper.Which I agree is Not Camping.
07/24/2015 at 10:41 AM
