Tin Can Camping

Tin Can Camping

In the early 70’s my parents bought a lot in Wisconsin on Lake Kegonza, a very Indian name, but that’s those Wisconsin Indians for you. My parents were so proud of their purchase and invited us all to come stay a night at their summer retreat. The small quarter acre lot had a trailer parked under the one and only pine tree on the property. My work-a-holic husband actually asked for a few days off from his job. We packed our bags and went. After all it was a free vacation and that’s all we could afford. Our children were four and six, so I packed suitcases full of clothes, bathing suits and towels.

We packed coolers of food and paper plates never considering that Wisconsin has their very own grocery stores. It was the first time in my life that I had to plan a few days of menus. I packed a large box with our mixing spoons, tongs, electric frying pan and toaster, my main essentials to cooking a meal for my family. We packed sheets and towels into a black plastic garbage bag because we ran out of suitcases. We let the children pick out their favorite toys. This was going to be fun.

Somehow my husband got everything into our car. Here came the Beverly Hill Billy’s off to a Chevy Chase vacation. It should have been only a two-hour ride, but two hours of listening to, “Are we there yet?” became a long trip through construction delays. After stopping to pay four tolls, we finally reached the state border and triumphantly announced to the excited children that we were crossing into Wisconsin. The freeway lined with pine trees and wild flowers looked beautiful. I suggested that the children watch for deer. Finally, we found our exit. We were circling the off ramp when one of the children spotted a dead deer, its feet stuck straight up in the air as it laid on the side of the road.

“Is it Bambi?” one asked.

Both children looked. “What happened to Bambi? Why is he sleeping like that?” asked the youngest.

The more experienced six year old quickly explained “He’s dead!” and they both started crying.

My husband cheerily said, “We’re almost there.”

After driving county highways and little back roads, we found our vacation retreat, a rusted-out camper with one tiny door, no emergency back door for escape, but it was next to a lake. Wow. We opened the doors to get out of the car and stretched our legs. The children emerged with their arms full of toys. Rob unlocked the camper door and we started carrying in our supplies. After many trips back and forth we finally unloaded the trunk. A problem arose: Where in the tiny camper do we put everything? The camper was small. There were no chairs. The tiny table lowered to bench level, and cushions from the benches were laid over the table to make a bed. The bathroom was the size of a telephone booth. This was not the Ritz. It wasn’t  even Motel 6, but it was camping with a roof over our heads. Think positive and smile a lot, I told myself.

“Let’s go swimming,” someone suggested, so I found their little bathing suits and beach towels. After getting both little ones dressed we headed to the water. They stopped before even sticking a toe in the cold water to complain “This water stinks. It smells like fish.”

How can a lake filled with fish, not smell like fish? I thought.

Then they spotted the dead fish floating by. Okay, even after my husband scooped the dead carcass out; it took some time to convince the kids to get into the water, but they actually had fun in the chilly water playing with their beach toys. But when it was time to get out, we realized there was no shower. We had to wash off in the one and only sink which was located in the kitchen area of the camper. This area was not clearly defined, but it was close, very close to the table/bed. Do I dare even call it a kitchen?

I started helping my daughter off with her wet bathing suit, when to her horror, she found dark wet seaweed sticking to her little body inside her bathing suit. High shrieks came out of this terrified little girl. I showed her how we pick off all the green stuff. She sobbed that she wasn’t not touching it with her hands.

After everyone was washed, the best we could do in these circumstances, and dressed, we were hungry. It was time to make our first meal. There wasn’t enough room in the trailer for me and the family unless we put the children into the telephone booth bathroom to play. Their father decided to take them outside. I was left unpacking our food supplies. My first meal plan was fried chicken because all the finicky eaters would eat it. There were only two outlets in the entire trailer. Because of the distance between plugs I ended up with the electric frying pan plugged into one outlet and the toaster plugged into the other outlet at the farthest end of the trailer. I was running from one end of the trailer to the other turning chicken pieces and ejecting toast before it burnt, getting my exercise before the meal. The meal wasn’t elaborate but we were filled. My husband again took everyone outside while I figured out how to wash an electric pan in a sink that was half the size of the pan. Right then “tiny” sounded like a big word to describe this kitchen.

After a couple of hours of playing outside, the mosquitoes forced us to retreat inside our tin cave. There wasn’t enough floor space for us all to stand up at the same time, so we put our pop cans, chicken bones, and dirty napkins in a plastic garbage bag and placed it outside. We sat to read stories until bedtime. The miniature table was lowered and bench cushions were placed over the table. I tucked sheets over the cushions. We all had to sleep together, and soon we were all trying to get comfortable over the kitchen table. Comfortable is not a word that described that night, but the children finally got to sleep. In the middle of the night it started raining. At first there was a couple ping pings of rain drops on the metal roof, then they started coming faster and faster. Suddenly there were millions of drops. We were trying to sleep in a tin can! After several hours of lying there, listening to the storm, the rain stopped, and I heard another noise outside. It was an animal tearing apart our garbage bag in search of food. Then it was crunching on our chicken bones, one crunch at a time. Was it a bear? I could hear every mean bite through the thin walls.

All night long someone’s head was in my stomach, or someone’s little foot was kicking my head. By morning, with no sleep, I was beyond crabby. Then my husband growled “Every time I looked over at you during the night, you were sitting up.”

As the children woke, it became evident that we were all crabby campers.  I started to wonder if we should try fishing for our breakfast or try to make pancakes or move to a Holiday Inn.