My step-father Pops’ lovely wife Sweet Liza enjoys good food, good wine, and traveling, among many other things. Pops and Liza got married seven years ago, and I was the best man at their wedding. When I was researching the history of their relationship while working on my best man’s speech, Liza told me that when she agreed to his hand in marriage, there were two things that he could forget about ever doing with her. One of those things is bowling. The other is camping. “No bowling and no camping, that is the deal,” she said. Pops agreed, and although he’s been to many amazing places with Liza, including Germany, China, Portugal, and Belize, he hasn’t been to a single bowling alley or campsite since he said “I do.” I don’t care so much about the bowling, but his renouncement of camping, however, considering Pops’ background, is a shame.
Many years ago, when I was a kid and Pops was married to my mother, we would go camping every summer for two weeks at Camp Seguin on the coast of Maine. Without fail, at least one of those weeks would involve fighting the boredom caused from sitting around inside our tent waiting for the rain to stop. My little sister Boo, who is seven years younger than I, provided little relief from the long, dull days waiting for the sun to come out. She had no interest in pulling the long legs off a Daddy Long Legs spider and teasing her would get old or get me in trouble. Mom would just lie there and read, propped up with a few pillows, happy as could be. She would occasionally try to explain how, with a book in your hand, you will never be bored. Be that as it may, her words did nothing to change the mood of her 10-year-old son.
So, being the great step-father that he was, between his long naps, Pops would be my playmate. He wouldn’t, however, participate in torturing insects. Instead, he would play Cribbage with me, and he would play with me for hours. After the fun of playing cribbage wore off, which for me was after about 20 minutes, he would continue to play Cribbage with me. On one particular rainy camping trip, we played no less than 21 games in a row. Eventually, after we couldn’t stand the thought of one more game, we left the campsite and made our way to the Rec Hall.
The Rec Hall at Camp Seguin was more of a wreck of a hall than a Rec Hall. When you opened the creaky rusty screen door, a deep, dank, musty smell would welcome you like a ghost butler vacationing from his duties at the haunted mansion. Inside the walls of the dilapidated green building were a few card tables, an old couch, a shelf with random board games with pieces missing, and a row of dusty books, and in the middle of the room was a ping pong table with wobbly legs and a faded, sagging surface. As decrepit as it was, it stood, indomitable, like an old work horse named Bourbon, with one more harvest left.
To get the thing in playable condition, we would use a few bingo chips to level it out and we’d cram a magazine under the clamps to tighten the net. After searching around for a while, we’d always manage to find at least one ping pong ball that wasn’t cracked. All ready to go, Pops and I would play ping pong for hours and hours, and we would actually have fun.
To think that he doesn’t camp any more is hard to imagine. I asked him recently if he ever misses going camping, and he said, “No, I don’t.” He then continued, “Besides, it would always rain whenever we went. But I did enjoy all those hours we spent together playing Cribbage and ping pong.”
We went camping a lot growing up because we weren’t fortunate enough to have a camp. We were never “going to camp,” we were always “going camping.” There is a big difference. I have friends who go to camp, and I’ve been invited many times to their camps. Every time I go, I never want to leave. Camps are great, and someday I hope to have a camp of my own. When I do, I’ll give it a name, something like Camp Here-We-Are, and I’ll furnish it with an exposed wood-framed couch with tweed cushions and a coffee table made from an old wagon wheel. There will be bunk beds in the bed rooms that will be too short to stretch out in and too narrow to roll over in, yet will foster the most amazing sleep.
In the kitchen, an iron skillet will hang on a nail next to an old-fashioned fireplace popcorn popper. On the wall in the living room I’ll tack up a brown paper bag with the outline of a large fish and an inscription that will read something like “Uncle Bruce’s Rainbow Trout, 5 lbs 2 oz, June 18, 2019.” In the front yard there will be a hammock hanging from two tall pine trees, a badminton net, and a bird house. Down by the lake, tied to the dock, will be a rowboat with rusty oar locks. Just offshore will be a float, floating. I’ll make sure there’s a cribbage board and a deck of cards, of course, and with any luck, there will be room for a ping pong table. Once everything is in place, I’ll invite Pops and Liza to stay for the weekend. After all, the deal was “no camping,” not “no going to camp.”
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