Heave Ho

.
Some 50 years ago, my parents took me camping for the first time.  We loaded out '60 Chevy Bisquane station wagon with borrowed miltary ice chests, blankets, lanterns, a gas stove, and then strapped a tent to the roof before climbing into what space was left.  With Pop driving, Mom riding shotgun, a baby brother and a little sister, we headed off to the Appalachian mountains from our modest miltary housing in Conneticut.

Even at 10ish, it seemed things were a fiasco.  The tent Pop borrowed from the motor pool was made of very heavy canvass and had huge wood poles that would raise the roof with a heave-ho from all of us.  The kids were stationed outside to hold the walls to the ground while Mome hammered the stakes into the ground with a rock because Pop forgot a hammer.  Actually, I think it was his first time camping too, because it seemed he didn't know much what to do.  Seems my Mom was the mastermind that held things together.

But, I loved every moment of it from catching my first fish on a hand line, to being in charge of pumping up the gas stove and lantern.  And Pop brought his plastic raft with a sail that he had won at his Platoon's anual picnic a few weeks before.  Never did get that sail to work, I guess because we had no idea of how to set a sail.

Anyway, that was how it began.  Since then we tent camped, until my wife discovered the RV's with real toilets and showers that other people had.  Soon it was good bye to the porta-potie and sleeping bags as we progressed (if you call it that)  from tent trailers, to hard side trailers, and all the way up to our Motorized Diesel Pusher.  How 'bout that?

Gone are the blankets, gas lanterns, and sponge baths.  Two bathrooms provide piping hot showers, a kitchen with filtered drinking water, a double sink, microwave, and a stove.  All rounded off with 2 HD televisions and forced air heating and air coditioning.  It's not even called camping anymore, but rather RV Resorting. 

My, Mom and Pop could never have imagined!
.