“Let’s go camping,” I’d plead. “No,” Jack replied.
A friend finally persuaded Jack that camping would be fun, so we bought a small tent. Arriving at Galveston Island State Park on the day in 1975 that it first opened to the public, we had the place almost to ourselves. Shortly after we pitched our tent, Jack split his toe on a metal tent stake, resulting in profuse bleeding. Heading home, we stayed at Lake Livingston, where the mosquitoes were so vicious that we were literally prisoners inside the tent. “This is why I don’t like camping,” Jack grumbled, and that was the end of our camping life.
For years our friends Hill and Leslie asked us to go camping, but Jack was inflexible. Finally, about 10 years after our first disastrous camping experience, Hill convinced Jack that Turner Falls in Oklahoma was the perfect destination: drive up Friday afternoon, stay that night and the next, come home after breakfast Sunday. Jack reluctantly agreed.
Hill headed to the store for a new tent. On his return, Leslie wanted to take the tent out of the box and set it up to make sure they could handle it. Hill declined, scoffing “I’ve sent up plenty of tents.”
Between the two families, we had two vans, four adults, six kids, two tents, two Coleman stoves, and other paraphernalia. At Turner Falls, we paid for two nights, then drove to the campgrounds seeking adjacent sites. With the campground nearly full, the only sites we could find that were next to each other were on a pretty pronounced slope. We flipped a coin and our family wound up with the lower site.
As we were setting up, we heard Leslie exclaim “I TOLD you to take it out of the box before we left!!” Apparently the box Hill purchased had been a return that was put back on the shelf by mistake. No tent inside: the box contained only a canopy. Hill moved their van closer to a tree and rigged the canopy between the van and the tree to make a shelter, and they laid their sleeping bags out on the ground. Hill assured his kids “Lots of fresh air this way! It’ll be fun!”
We had a great time at the swimming hole, and were starving when we headed back to the campsites. Unfortunately, Hill’s stove wouldn’t light no matter what he tried. In complete frustration, he slammed it down into a trash can. That left our two-burner stove to cook dinner for the ten of us, so we ate in shifts.
After dinner, the girls headed to the community bathroom to shower, and discovered that there were two shower stalls: one with a long curtain, and one with a short curtain. Naturally there was a line for the long-curtain stall. Unfortunately, those waiting for showers had to line up directly in front of the two toilet stalls – neither of which had a door OR a curtain. The girls decided that they’d wait until after midnight to use the bathroom.
Seeing our friends stretched out in their sleeping bags on the ground under their canopy, we felt guilty at having a tent. Novices that we were, we didn’t realize until later that we should have put our sleeping bags perpendicular to the slope, rather than along it with Jack at the top. Every time he turned over in his sleeping bag, he rolled a little bit more down the slope and squashed the rest of us.
During the night a wind came up and blew dirt from under the Copelands’ van into their faces. The large group at the next campsite played mariachi music – loudly – for much of the night. The kids were the only ones who got a good night’s sleep.
When we woke the next morning, the adults came to a quick agreement: forfeit our second night’s fees and head home immediately. I was a little sad, because I’d seen the whole experience as an adventure. Jack saw it as proof positive that he’d been right all along about camping.
When we got home, he gave our tent to our neighbors.
(Dallas Morning News Neighbors 3-22-08)
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