When Camping, Disaster Is Always Near...
Using the philosophy of "Lord, you keep him humble, and we'll keep him poor," the small churches we served kept us as poverty-stricken as the proverbial church mouse. So Linda and I began to think about alternative ways to vacation. Somewhere along the line we met an older couple who approached Mother Nature with a small car and a tent. A tent. Whenever I saw a tent, I always conjured up the Boy Scouts and the many days that a perfect camporee went bad with rain and mud. I can remember laying in a WWII bivouac at age 11 that my Mom's chimpanzee boyfriend gave me with no floor, patches, and a skin that was as holey as the Vatican in a joint called Camp Powder Horn on Gunpowder Creek near Union, Kentucky, back in the 50's. We got to this outpost in a valley on a Friday night, and the skies opened up. When I trounced out of that hell-hole on a Sunday morning in knee-deep mud, lifting my sleeping bag was similar to the old adage about throwing a wet mattress up a circular staircase. As a neophyte Boy Sprout, I trenched around the edges of the tent during the downpour that weekend with a WWII shovel to channel the river that poured off the tent into the lake that surrounded me and was getting it deeper. Then I jumped under the cold, dark chamber where my teeth clacked like a wind-up set of those plastic choppers. The roof of that heavy woven cloth sweated beads of moisture like tiny stalactites in the light of my flickering flashlight. They looked like little, silver, round bats dangling from the roof of my cave. I reached to touch one of them, and the drop ran down the canopy to the soaking wet grass inside. It was at that exact spot that a small stream began to leak down upon me. It is a Boy Scout axiom that you never touch the inside of a tent when it is raining precisely for that reason. I awoke during the night lying in Lake Powder Horn and nearly in hypothermia.
But to Linda the whole tent scene struck a memory chord of warmth and coziness. Her father had been a California State Park ranger, and she had never seen rain. She had selective remembrance as a little girl of a better time when life was supreme within the confines of a fabric wall. So as the old couple with the Pinto and the teepee sang a Siren song about how the pup tent of old had gone the way of the dodo bird and had been replaced by a technological invention of miracle cloth that was virtually impervious to the elements of weather, she saw a waterproof shed that breathed like a lung.
The next thing you know, I was headed off to some cheap camping store to find a canvas house that would enable us to stay out in the wild woods with incomparable joy, bringing the same sweet memories to our kids that Linda had caramelized in her own mind. When it was all said and done and I dragged the thing out of the box, I stood next to what looked like a heavy punching bag that swung from a chain in a UFC boxing gym. It was nearly 5.5 feet high and encased in a light green canvas sack with a draw string. On the outside were the words Eureka with an exclamation point. As I look back on it, that should have tipped me off right there. Then there was the NAME of the house itself stamped on the side of the box. The model was called "The RIVER Lodge." Another dead ringer as we were about to find out. It took all the manly strength I could wield to hoist it to and from the car. I would cart that thing to the camp sight from the car in the boiling sun, drop it like it was a Ponderosa pine, and then stand there gasping for breath while Linda was screaming, "Get over here and help me with all this crap."
And crap is what it was. Out of the car came every tool that a young couple needed to confront the welter weight champion of torment called early childhood. We dragged out play pens, diapers, cots, packs, strollers, suit cases, Hibachis, Coleman lanterns and stoves, books, tricycles, dogs on wheels, sleeping bags, trucks, charcoal, and even a clock radio and television set. Yes, a television set. In the woods, mind you. So I ran a 100 foot extension cord from somewhere right into a multi-socket so we could have power just like downtown because Linda was not going to walk the mile to the bathrooms to plug in the hair dryer. I had so many wires and extension cords strung high for services that the site looked like a technical call center somewhere in India. I didn't want anybody to get electrocuted.
As an aside, on another trip we made to California from St. Petersburg, Florida, in a pickup truck that I had carpeted from the trash bins of a linoleum store on midnight runs with my grade school sons, I carried into it a microwave/convection oven from Montgomery Wards that weighed about 100 pounds. Jacking that thing up was like getting my arms around a window air conditioner. The plan was to avoid the problem of trying to fire up a Coleman stove without burning my eyebrows off my head. I was lighting that stove one day when the gas finally exploded. As I was bending over low with a lit match trying to find the hole where the gas fumes were coming out, there was a flash of light like I used to see in the World War II movies when they dropped the bomb in the Nevada desert. My face felt like it was on fire. I looked into a mirror and literally saw my normally-black-now-beige-singed eyebrows fall off my face. Throwing that thing aside, I got hold of this microwave with a mile long industrial extension cord . When we got to the Smoky Mountains on the first night, I had made the mistake of burying the microwave - since it was heavy - beneath everything in the front of the truck bed. By the time I carted that thing out just to heat up some spaghetti and then reloaded it all back in, that was the last time the microwave saw the light of day for a month on that trip. All the rest of the meals were taken in a restaurant.
In any case, the rains always came. It didn't make any difference what the tent was made of or what you did - like doing the useless feat of sealing the seams - the rain flowed in some hidden, mysterious, minute channel hand in hand with misery. I always woke up floating in water. No man had ever intuited how to stop the water.
So I began to study the problem. Was there a simple method unknown to mankind to keep rain out of a tent? I pondered this question again one day as I was pitching this behemoth River Lodge on the west shore of a camp on Lake Michigan. The forecast for that evening was ominous. In fact, the entire weekend was going to be a deluge. I looked up into the dark sky with dread. I stepped back and looked at my flimsy house that would soon be flapping, stretching in the wind, and holding water like an Illinois Central water tower. Then the lights came on. Why didn't I think of this before? I had suddenly divined the answer. With inspiration driving me, I raced down to Meijer's and bought a giant sheet of polypropylene that would completely cover this 9‘x12' canvas cabin that stood about 7' feet high. The plastic was so large that after I had clamped it down to the external frame that held up the tent, there was enough left over to completely cover the corners and all the places that leaked like kitchen sink strainers. The plastic roof nearly came to the ground. It was now IMPOSSIBLE for water to penetrate that barrier. The canvas through the night would be as dry as a dog's bone, and the water would roll off of the plastic like BBs on a tin roof and right into the sand. As light drops began to fall, I looked into the heavens smugly.
Darkness was falling. So I gathered Cox's Army into the the tent as if we were entering the Ark in the days of Noah with complete confidence that we would rise above the flood. I touched the ceiling as the downpour picked up. Nothing. Dry. Not even moist. We all prepared with glee for the first night of peace and warmth we were about to enjoy in gale conditions. Everyone piled into his sleeping bag and curled up to the tune of the water drums that were drilling down upon us and lullabying us into the nestling arms of slumber unaccompanied by worry or fear. I lay there on my back with everyone fast asleep, my hands folded behind my head, and staring at the desert-dry top when the lightning let me take a look. A smile crossed my mug. I had done it. At last. It was a tremendous feeling of satisfaction and relief that in the end I was victorious. No more waking up in a stream. I drifted off.
I am not sure just what it was. Maybe the thunder had just slammed on top of us. But suddenly I came awake as if I was in a horror house. The rain was coming down in waves. The walls of the River Lodge were moving in and out like a sheet on a clothes line. Thunder and lightning sharpened my senses as it turned to day inside the canvas. A moment of terror from days past gripped me. But It was merely the echo of distant memories when rains like this told me we were going to suffer. I was brought back to reality when I was reminded that a thin sheet of impervious plastic shielded us all from rivers that were helpless to enter. Again, I smiled. This was all confirmation of the sudden ingenuity that had descended upon me just hours ago. So, I wondered, why had it taken so long for mankind to receive revelation here upon the shores of the Great Lakes? Had I discovered some simple formula that was so basic that it had bypassed those looking for more complex solutions? I must soon pass this on to those who manufactured canvas shields.
While running these thoughts through my mind, my glasses lay somewhere in the tent. So images were not distinct. As the lightning continued intermittently, I started to get a bad feeling that something above me in the tent did not look right. Brief light hinted at it. The more the lightning snapped, the more my smile turned down and furrows of doubt creased my crown. For some reason, the roof looked very peculiar. A ball, or a bulge, seemed to have formed above me. I raised my head a little and put my hand up into the night. And about 3 feet above my face, my hand ran into a firm, cold sphere that was about the width of half of the tent. My other hand came up out of the bag and both hands slid out and around an elephantine tumor as if I were holding in my hands the engorged stomach of an emerging hot air balloon. There suspended above all of us and about to bury us alive was a massive belly of water that weighed over a thousand pounds. It had been accumulating all night long like a river behind a dam inside that plastic membrane. It was pulling down against the frame of the tent and the elastic straps that hung on them and held the tent upright.
I sprang off of solid sand from a supine position like I had been bouncing up and down on a diving board before doing a one and a half flip in the pike position. Bolting from the tent, I ran out into the cold, wet, roaring night in my underwear into the mud leaping off the ground because of heavy water drops that pounded the earth. Linda and all the kids were pushing upward on the swimming pool that was nearly touching the ground in our tent while I pushed the plastic toward the inside of the frame to give relief to the poles. When I did, a cataract of ice-cold water cascaded down over me, across the front of the tent, and into the door as if a dike had given way. My teeth clattered together like the back end of a rattler, and the hair on my body stood just like it did when I saw Linda Blair's head spinning around on her shoulders as she spoke like Satan and hosed down Father Merrin with a projectile of vomit in The Exorcist. It was 3 a.m.
That was the end of the tent. There was no way to combine a tent and rain without wishing you hadn't.
Not long thereafter while driving down the street in Lansing, Illinois, I saw a huge StarCraft camper for sale. I bought it. $1300. It was going to be worth it. Every penny. Memorial Day weekend was coming, and I revved up for my first outing with the family in the open wild. I waltzed out to the camper and cranked it into the heavens to check everything out and pack it up. As I lowered the roof, I shoved the beds back in and tucked sleeping bags, pillows, clothes, food, and other paraphernalia tightly inside. The final act was to fasten down the four security clamps on the corners. Bolt these down and all is well. But no matter what I did, the lid would not go down far enough to engage those clamps. I pounded, pulled, pressed, grunted, and used foul language. It would not go. I huffed and puffed, sat on it, and worked on it to the point of exhaustion. All to no avail.
It was then that my neighbor, Bob the butcher, who had been standing in his window sipping on a cup of coffee and watching this exercise emerged from his house, strolled calmly over, and told me that all this was unnecessary because it was obvious that the top was so heavy that it didn't need to be latched. I looked at the camper. Could that be? I told him what the instructions said. He dismissed the Owner's Manual as a load of legal crap (in fact, I think he used words similar to that since he was in the bovine business) with a wave of his hand like he was flicking a fly. He spoke with such authority that I knew he had to have years of practical knowledge dealing with these things and, thus, those directions were not applicable to this situation. He urged me to see if I could lift the roof. I went over to the trailer and tried to heave it up. It would not budge. It would not come down, and it was not going up either. It suddenly dawned upon me that a man who had been wielding a razor-sharp knife and an ax on sides of beef for over 30 years had somehow gained Solomonic wisdom thinking about something that was totally unrelated to what he did on a daily basis. The more I strained at lifting it, the more I knew that Bob knew what he was talking about and was on to something here. Since we were burning daylight, I let the irrefutable veracity of Bob the meat-cutter's years of experience in slicing bacon guide me. Everybody loaded up and we were off like horses out of the gate. I saw Bob fade from sight as he waved and smiled with knowing confidence in my rear view mirror.
Feeling really good now, I was headed across 170th Street in South Holland, Illinois, at about 55 mph. Linda and I got to talking about something for a few minutes, and the next time I looked in the side view mirror, I saw something I had never seen before. I had passed a lot of campers on the highways in my day. Every camper I had ever seen being pulled by a car looked like a sealed casket and was no higher than the roof of the car. But here was some guy behind me who had bought a camper that had a whole new design that I wished I had been able to find before I bought this thing that had to be welded shut. His did not enclose within a box. To my amazement, they were now making these things so that the roof was fully extended all the time just like a regular hard top trailer. In fact, it was higher than I had ever seen one before. So they were making them now for Wilt Chamberlain. Not only that, with the new design you didn't have to pull the beds out any more. They just came that way. Behind me was a fully extended campout trailer billowing out like a cloud going down the road at 55 mph. It was incredible and a beautiful thing to see. What a lot of work that would have saved me with all that cranking up and down. I was trying to figure out why the engineers allowed for so much air circulation inside that trailer when I saw a loaf of bread, shirts, two beds, sleeping bags, and metal poles fly out the side with several bras, a pair of my drawers and a jock strap tangled up and hanging off of them like they were flag poles, it was then I realized that there was a reason a little tag was glued next to each clamp with these bolded and underlined words, "MAKE SURE ALL FOUR CORNER CLAMPS ARE FASTENED DOWN TIGHTLY."
But to Linda the whole tent scene struck a memory chord of warmth and coziness. Her father had been a California State Park ranger, and she had never seen rain. She had selective remembrance as a little girl of a better time when life was supreme within the confines of a fabric wall. So as the old couple with the Pinto and the teepee sang a Siren song about how the pup tent of old had gone the way of the dodo bird and had been replaced by a technological invention of miracle cloth that was virtually impervious to the elements of weather, she saw a waterproof shed that breathed like a lung.
The next thing you know, I was headed off to some cheap camping store to find a canvas house that would enable us to stay out in the wild woods with incomparable joy, bringing the same sweet memories to our kids that Linda had caramelized in her own mind. When it was all said and done and I dragged the thing out of the box, I stood next to what looked like a heavy punching bag that swung from a chain in a UFC boxing gym. It was nearly 5.5 feet high and encased in a light green canvas sack with a draw string. On the outside were the words Eureka with an exclamation point. As I look back on it, that should have tipped me off right there. Then there was the NAME of the house itself stamped on the side of the box. The model was called "The RIVER Lodge." Another dead ringer as we were about to find out. It took all the manly strength I could wield to hoist it to and from the car. I would cart that thing to the camp sight from the car in the boiling sun, drop it like it was a Ponderosa pine, and then stand there gasping for breath while Linda was screaming, "Get over here and help me with all this crap."
And crap is what it was. Out of the car came every tool that a young couple needed to confront the welter weight champion of torment called early childhood. We dragged out play pens, diapers, cots, packs, strollers, suit cases, Hibachis, Coleman lanterns and stoves, books, tricycles, dogs on wheels, sleeping bags, trucks, charcoal, and even a clock radio and television set. Yes, a television set. In the woods, mind you. So I ran a 100 foot extension cord from somewhere right into a multi-socket so we could have power just like downtown because Linda was not going to walk the mile to the bathrooms to plug in the hair dryer. I had so many wires and extension cords strung high for services that the site looked like a technical call center somewhere in India. I didn't want anybody to get electrocuted.
As an aside, on another trip we made to California from St. Petersburg, Florida, in a pickup truck that I had carpeted from the trash bins of a linoleum store on midnight runs with my grade school sons, I carried into it a microwave/convection oven from Montgomery Wards that weighed about 100 pounds. Jacking that thing up was like getting my arms around a window air conditioner. The plan was to avoid the problem of trying to fire up a Coleman stove without burning my eyebrows off my head. I was lighting that stove one day when the gas finally exploded. As I was bending over low with a lit match trying to find the hole where the gas fumes were coming out, there was a flash of light like I used to see in the World War II movies when they dropped the bomb in the Nevada desert. My face felt like it was on fire. I looked into a mirror and literally saw my normally-black-now-beige-singed eyebrows fall off my face. Throwing that thing aside, I got hold of this microwave with a mile long industrial extension cord . When we got to the Smoky Mountains on the first night, I had made the mistake of burying the microwave - since it was heavy - beneath everything in the front of the truck bed. By the time I carted that thing out just to heat up some spaghetti and then reloaded it all back in, that was the last time the microwave saw the light of day for a month on that trip. All the rest of the meals were taken in a restaurant.
In any case, the rains always came. It didn't make any difference what the tent was made of or what you did - like doing the useless feat of sealing the seams - the rain flowed in some hidden, mysterious, minute channel hand in hand with misery. I always woke up floating in water. No man had ever intuited how to stop the water.
So I began to study the problem. Was there a simple method unknown to mankind to keep rain out of a tent? I pondered this question again one day as I was pitching this behemoth River Lodge on the west shore of a camp on Lake Michigan. The forecast for that evening was ominous. In fact, the entire weekend was going to be a deluge. I looked up into the dark sky with dread. I stepped back and looked at my flimsy house that would soon be flapping, stretching in the wind, and holding water like an Illinois Central water tower. Then the lights came on. Why didn't I think of this before? I had suddenly divined the answer. With inspiration driving me, I raced down to Meijer's and bought a giant sheet of polypropylene that would completely cover this 9‘x12' canvas cabin that stood about 7' feet high. The plastic was so large that after I had clamped it down to the external frame that held up the tent, there was enough left over to completely cover the corners and all the places that leaked like kitchen sink strainers. The plastic roof nearly came to the ground. It was now IMPOSSIBLE for water to penetrate that barrier. The canvas through the night would be as dry as a dog's bone, and the water would roll off of the plastic like BBs on a tin roof and right into the sand. As light drops began to fall, I looked into the heavens smugly.
Darkness was falling. So I gathered Cox's Army into the the tent as if we were entering the Ark in the days of Noah with complete confidence that we would rise above the flood. I touched the ceiling as the downpour picked up. Nothing. Dry. Not even moist. We all prepared with glee for the first night of peace and warmth we were about to enjoy in gale conditions. Everyone piled into his sleeping bag and curled up to the tune of the water drums that were drilling down upon us and lullabying us into the nestling arms of slumber unaccompanied by worry or fear. I lay there on my back with everyone fast asleep, my hands folded behind my head, and staring at the desert-dry top when the lightning let me take a look. A smile crossed my mug. I had done it. At last. It was a tremendous feeling of satisfaction and relief that in the end I was victorious. No more waking up in a stream. I drifted off.
I am not sure just what it was. Maybe the thunder had just slammed on top of us. But suddenly I came awake as if I was in a horror house. The rain was coming down in waves. The walls of the River Lodge were moving in and out like a sheet on a clothes line. Thunder and lightning sharpened my senses as it turned to day inside the canvas. A moment of terror from days past gripped me. But It was merely the echo of distant memories when rains like this told me we were going to suffer. I was brought back to reality when I was reminded that a thin sheet of impervious plastic shielded us all from rivers that were helpless to enter. Again, I smiled. This was all confirmation of the sudden ingenuity that had descended upon me just hours ago. So, I wondered, why had it taken so long for mankind to receive revelation here upon the shores of the Great Lakes? Had I discovered some simple formula that was so basic that it had bypassed those looking for more complex solutions? I must soon pass this on to those who manufactured canvas shields.
While running these thoughts through my mind, my glasses lay somewhere in the tent. So images were not distinct. As the lightning continued intermittently, I started to get a bad feeling that something above me in the tent did not look right. Brief light hinted at it. The more the lightning snapped, the more my smile turned down and furrows of doubt creased my crown. For some reason, the roof looked very peculiar. A ball, or a bulge, seemed to have formed above me. I raised my head a little and put my hand up into the night. And about 3 feet above my face, my hand ran into a firm, cold sphere that was about the width of half of the tent. My other hand came up out of the bag and both hands slid out and around an elephantine tumor as if I were holding in my hands the engorged stomach of an emerging hot air balloon. There suspended above all of us and about to bury us alive was a massive belly of water that weighed over a thousand pounds. It had been accumulating all night long like a river behind a dam inside that plastic membrane. It was pulling down against the frame of the tent and the elastic straps that hung on them and held the tent upright.
I sprang off of solid sand from a supine position like I had been bouncing up and down on a diving board before doing a one and a half flip in the pike position. Bolting from the tent, I ran out into the cold, wet, roaring night in my underwear into the mud leaping off the ground because of heavy water drops that pounded the earth. Linda and all the kids were pushing upward on the swimming pool that was nearly touching the ground in our tent while I pushed the plastic toward the inside of the frame to give relief to the poles. When I did, a cataract of ice-cold water cascaded down over me, across the front of the tent, and into the door as if a dike had given way. My teeth clattered together like the back end of a rattler, and the hair on my body stood just like it did when I saw Linda Blair's head spinning around on her shoulders as she spoke like Satan and hosed down Father Merrin with a projectile of vomit in The Exorcist. It was 3 a.m.
That was the end of the tent. There was no way to combine a tent and rain without wishing you hadn't.
Not long thereafter while driving down the street in Lansing, Illinois, I saw a huge StarCraft camper for sale. I bought it. $1300. It was going to be worth it. Every penny. Memorial Day weekend was coming, and I revved up for my first outing with the family in the open wild. I waltzed out to the camper and cranked it into the heavens to check everything out and pack it up. As I lowered the roof, I shoved the beds back in and tucked sleeping bags, pillows, clothes, food, and other paraphernalia tightly inside. The final act was to fasten down the four security clamps on the corners. Bolt these down and all is well. But no matter what I did, the lid would not go down far enough to engage those clamps. I pounded, pulled, pressed, grunted, and used foul language. It would not go. I huffed and puffed, sat on it, and worked on it to the point of exhaustion. All to no avail.
It was then that my neighbor, Bob the butcher, who had been standing in his window sipping on a cup of coffee and watching this exercise emerged from his house, strolled calmly over, and told me that all this was unnecessary because it was obvious that the top was so heavy that it didn't need to be latched. I looked at the camper. Could that be? I told him what the instructions said. He dismissed the Owner's Manual as a load of legal crap (in fact, I think he used words similar to that since he was in the bovine business) with a wave of his hand like he was flicking a fly. He spoke with such authority that I knew he had to have years of practical knowledge dealing with these things and, thus, those directions were not applicable to this situation. He urged me to see if I could lift the roof. I went over to the trailer and tried to heave it up. It would not budge. It would not come down, and it was not going up either. It suddenly dawned upon me that a man who had been wielding a razor-sharp knife and an ax on sides of beef for over 30 years had somehow gained Solomonic wisdom thinking about something that was totally unrelated to what he did on a daily basis. The more I strained at lifting it, the more I knew that Bob knew what he was talking about and was on to something here. Since we were burning daylight, I let the irrefutable veracity of Bob the meat-cutter's years of experience in slicing bacon guide me. Everybody loaded up and we were off like horses out of the gate. I saw Bob fade from sight as he waved and smiled with knowing confidence in my rear view mirror.
Feeling really good now, I was headed across 170th Street in South Holland, Illinois, at about 55 mph. Linda and I got to talking about something for a few minutes, and the next time I looked in the side view mirror, I saw something I had never seen before. I had passed a lot of campers on the highways in my day. Every camper I had ever seen being pulled by a car looked like a sealed casket and was no higher than the roof of the car. But here was some guy behind me who had bought a camper that had a whole new design that I wished I had been able to find before I bought this thing that had to be welded shut. His did not enclose within a box. To my amazement, they were now making these things so that the roof was fully extended all the time just like a regular hard top trailer. In fact, it was higher than I had ever seen one before. So they were making them now for Wilt Chamberlain. Not only that, with the new design you didn't have to pull the beds out any more. They just came that way. Behind me was a fully extended campout trailer billowing out like a cloud going down the road at 55 mph. It was incredible and a beautiful thing to see. What a lot of work that would have saved me with all that cranking up and down. I was trying to figure out why the engineers allowed for so much air circulation inside that trailer when I saw a loaf of bread, shirts, two beds, sleeping bags, and metal poles fly out the side with several bras, a pair of my drawers and a jock strap tangled up and hanging off of them like they were flag poles, it was then I realized that there was a reason a little tag was glued next to each clamp with these bolded and underlined words, "MAKE SURE ALL FOUR CORNER CLAMPS ARE FASTENED DOWN TIGHTLY."