Did you say Camping?

  Recently the church we attend announced they were going to have a family campout weekend on the church property. Everyone was invited to bring their camper, motor home, or tent and spend the weekend in happy outdoors fellowship. Camping, fun and fellowship and the great outdoors, my idea of camping would be the Marriott without a swimming pool. Nice clean sheets and a room with warm running water, a refrigerator with snacks and a coffee maker. Many years ago, when our daughter was an infant, my wife and I tried the camping scene and it was a miserable failure. Her parents were avid campers complete with a membership to The Good Sam’s Club and stickers on the back of the trailer denoting the states they had camped in. They pulled a large Holiday Rambler and it had all the luxuries of home and then some. They would return from trips and tell us about all the fun and new friends they met as they sat around the camp fires at night in the RV parks. As I said, we tried camping one weekend when our family was quite small. My in-laws pulled that massive camper to a nearby lake and told us to use it for the weekend. That was probably the longest weekend of my life. The rooms in a camper are quite small but not to the point of being cramped and the shower, well let’s say one foot in one foot out describes the space. You can whisper and be heard throughout the entire enclosed space and being cooped in tight quarters with an infant, well you get the picture. It seemed that it was one long argument the entire weekend. I know what you are thinking, a hotel room has tight quarters and small compared to a normal home so what’s the difference? We will get back to that later.

   When I was a young whipper snapper about the age of 10 years old, I was my brother’s shadow. Like all kids who want to be like his big brother, I wanted to be like him. I thought I could anything he did and his friends were my friends.  He had a couple of guys that he hung around with and if possible I was right there with them doing everything they did. One particular Friday, Mickey convinced our Mother to allow us to camp out along with a couple of other guys; in an area across from our grammar school we called the pines. It got its name because it was nothing but a huge area of pine trees that were all the same size and really close together. We were going to sleep in our sleeping bags under the stars and be real men out in the elements.  A camp fire, big steaks, and I do mean steaks, were on the agenda for dinner, everything was set for our night under the stars. What Mom didn’t know was that Mickey’s agenda included us riding our bicycles several miles in the dark to Tom’s Food Mart for snacks and CIGARS. Corruption of a young mind was in order that night. We got to our coveted spot in the pines, made camp and built our fire for dinner. Being men, we had to eat our meat the way real men do, so it was red, blood red and runny, rare. Of course trying to act and be the same age as the older guys, I ate mine and didn’t complain. After dinner we set out on our bicycles for our late night rendezvous with the convience store. Upon arrival, we began our shopping for chocolate milk, powdered donuts, and of course cigars, big fat ones.

  Winters in middle Georgia can be quite difficult to determine. We may have days that range in temperature from 55-65 degrees, we could have freezing temperatures, and then some snow or ice. The weather was always unpredictable due to living so far south in the state. This particular night it was going to be cold, but being a kid cold weather doesn’t affect you, we stayed out in it all day anyway. On the way home it began to snow, slowly at first, but as the wind began to blow it became harder. It should go without saying that we could not sleep without shelter and going home was out of the question, signaling defeat so we searched for the next best thing. In the sub-division on the next street over, new homes were being built, so we found one that was dried in, but no windows and began homesteading. Again we set up camp, opening our donuts, chocolate milk, and fired up our cigars. Sitting around telling stories, eating and puffing on those big old cigars, we passed the time. Slowly we began to get quite and I noticed Mickey wasn’t feeling well, whether it was the donuts and chocolate milk or the cigar he started feeling queasy and got in his sleeping bag and drifted off to sleep. Ricky, probably the smartest one of the bunch, decided he would go home and sleep in a warm bed, leaving Mickey, myself, and Douglas to brave the night. About 10 minutes after Mickey fell asleep; Douglas began acting weird and howling at the moon, telling me on cold winter nights werewolves come out. Now I had always liked Douglas and knew he was a little weird, but not a werewolf. Needless to say sleep was not in the picture for anyone but Mickey, so about 2 am. Douglas decided to go home where it was warm. I woke Mickey and we both agreed it was too cold to stay out in an open environment so we moved up the street to a finished house that we discovered was unlocked. We entered finding rooms with carpet, windows and a much warmer climate to finish off the night. Other than a few camping trips with Boy Scouts, I decided camping was not my cup of tea.

  Now back to why the Marriott even with a small room is better than a camper, well for starters, you have a full service restaurant, a workout room, a bar usually with sports on and other people who evidently feel the same as you about camping or they would not be there over the weekend. If the room becomes cramped there are other things to do like riding the elevators up and down the floors or listening to the kids run up and down the hall. Recently my daughter, who was the infant on the inaugural camping trip and her husband, bought a nice camper to make memories with their three girls. When we visit them back in Macon, Brenda and I stay in their camper that is parked in the driveway. It’s not the Marriott, but then again I don’t consider it camping either.  It is only a little home away from home. As Roy Rogers would say as he signed off his weekly TV program, “Happy trails to you.”

 

“Life Happens”