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calendar   Saturday - September 12, 2009

Like camping, only bigger

We’re sort of half unpacked here. Half, and we decided that was okay, since we’re still out there house hunting. Why unpack it all, only to repack it in a month or two? At this point most of the boxes are “stored”. Which means we have a full wall of them stacked up in the den, and another wall of them in my bedroom closet, and a moderate stack right outside the kitchen doorway.

This morning we decided to make a full weekend breakfast; bacon, eggs, and pancakes. The syrup was in a box in my closet. The pancake mix was in a box in the den. The mixing bowl was in one of the boxes outside the kitchen (hey, I am a little organized, and I put labels on all the boxes and then located them strategically), and the griddle was ... somewhere. Somewhere that made me open about a dozen boxes and search for over half an hour.

When I was a kid, we used to go camping. Real camping in a tent, deep in the forest. None of this RV stuff for us. Nor any of that pop up camping trailer nonsense, or even a camper unit in the back of a pickup. And we did it in a little car. We had a 1967 VW fastback, because a) it got great gas mileage, and b) we couldn’t afford anything bigger. I think reason B is why we went camping. It was a cheap vacation, which in theory is better than no vacation at all.


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The amazingly cool thing about this little car - it was the “big” VW of it’s day too - was that it had 2 trunks. One in the front, over the gas tank. One in the back, over the engine. It also had seatbelts, and the flexible glass (!!!) rear windows opened with a lever by bending out in the back. Awesome. Inside we fit all 4 of us, our fussy Welsh Terrier dog, a Coleman cooler, and a raffia picnic basket. Food and cooking equipment went in the front trunk. Clothing went in the back trunk, along with fishing gear, all in specially fit boxes. On top was a gigantic car top carrier to hold everything else, a varnished plywood box 5 feet on a side with 10” high walls. We made it ourselves. That was mounted to those heavy duty steel rack mounts that clipped onto the rain gutters on the roof. That box was packed to the gills, and on top, holding everything down, was the enormous Coleman tent we had. Maybe today tents are bigger, but this one, at 9x16 with an 8 foot high ridge line, was gigantic in it’s day. It weighed over 100lbs. It’s bag of aluminum poles was nearly a foot in diameter, and was lashed to the rack mounts alongside the car top box. And in case that wasn’t enough, on top of all of this, we had an 18 foot Grumman aluminum canoe. Don’t ask me how my dad ever managed to get this overload up to 65mph from that potent 1.6 liter, 65hp engine. Or how he managed to stop it either. Or how we managed not to kill each other, driving for days at a time, usually with an overflowing bladder, while the cranky dog got under your feet or stepped on your balls.

Needless to say, crowds gathered when the Pearces went camping. Small boys stared in wonder, because the circus had come to town. “Where’s the engine?” nobody could figure it out. And we had it down to a science too. Arrive at a campground, slather yourself with bug repellent, get out of the car, get to work. First off comes the canoe, then the pole bag, then the tent. Dad lays out the ground cloth after my brother and I have swept the larger rocks and pine cones away. It took 2 people to move the tent, which had to be laid out and unfolded just so, and only lightly staked to the ground. Then it was time to raise the Big Top; first the big center section, then the front, then the back. It was huge! Now tighten the stakes, rig the front fly and it’s poles, work the rain tarp over the top and tie it down. Now tie open the windows, and set the rear window poles. Done. Now we could unload and unload and unload and unload the car. Waterproof tablecloth over the campground table. Aluminum foil on the seats. Coleman stove at one end of the table, gallon of fuel underneath. Fireblackened galvinized bucket goes there. Now go find some water. Lots. Amazing how much stuff we fit into that powder blue sardine can of a car.  “Where’s the engine?” And we did the whole job in about an hour, even when it was pouring rain. Which it often was.

And that’s rather what my life is like right now, living out of boxes. Most of the furniture is still out in the garage too, other then the beds, dressers, and dining table. But this situation is better than camping by far, because we are not constantly being eaten alive by mosquitoes, black flies, deer flies, ticks, chiggers, bees, wasps or ants. And we haven’t had a family of marauding bears in our kitchen here, not ever. Nor any wolves. And we don’t have to walk half a mile in the pitch dark to use an outhouse, or lug buckets of water hundreds of yards from the one and only faucet.

But I do miss that canoe. I sold it to a friend years ago, and it lives in a shed in his back yard. I hope he uses it once in a while. That canoe was tougher than nails. It was the heavy duty white water model, and it went through hell with never a complaint, crack, or leak. Too bad Grumman stopped making them, they were the best. Oh, sorry, they still do! But not the model we had. Ours had the heavy weight skin, the extra ribs, and the bulb keel, in the 18’ size. Toughest SOB little boat ever made.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 09/12/2009 at 10:57 AM   
Filed Under: • Daily Life •  
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