The pop-up camper that my parents made out in our front yard...
(click on picture for larger view)
circa 1956ish... (I can tell from that chubby little 2-3 year old Janny Lou trying to climb backwards up into the camper to join her Dad! Older sister MJ standing so nice and tall on the other side...)
Materials:
Plywood, cast aluminum bed rails for the inside frame and side supports, on a chassis and trailer hitch that was welded together at Marshfield HS where Dad taught...the "box" was painted a nice "Forest Green" to blend in with the wooded campsites that we would frequent.
I remember seeing my mother sitting behind her sewing machine outside in the driveway with yards and yards of brown canvas all around her and somehow she knew how to get the right parts to fit together just right and fit the frame of the camper perfectly!! That, and the windows that she sewed in made of mosquito netting...to give us some nice ventilation on those hot summer nights...and, keep the mosquitoes out!
Dad had seen the plans for how to make one in an issue of Popular Mechanics, or some such. Ever the frugal one, he didn't buy the magazine, just eyeballed the plans! I think it barely cost them $100 in materials to build the whole thing...and lots of Yankee ingenuity to figure out how to put it together!
The whole thing folded up together quite nicely and the big green box pulled smoothly behind the family car...usually a big station wagon. We each had a job to help it open out or fold up so things fit perfectly. The difficult days were when we arrived at a campsite in a full downpour. Leaving us all in the car, my parents would set up the camper with minimal problems. They were good!
For years, brother Mike and I were designated to sleep in our flannel-lined sleeping bags on air mattresses on the floor, while my sisters got one of the fold-out sides and my parents the other side of the camper. Of course, being the youngest, we were the first to go to bed, leaving others to climb on top and over us when their time came to climb into their sleeping bags. Watch where you step!
Year after year we'd pack it up and head north to the woods of Maine and NH for many a great adventure! The inside had plywood built-in storage boxes that everything had to fit into. If it didn't fit, it didn't come on the trip. The camping cookware and utensils; the Coleman cookstove; the red and white checked table cloth; a hatchet; a custom-fit utensil holder that my mother created and sewed together to hang on the door once we set up camp; fishing poles and tackle kits; sleeping bags and mattresses; clothes (though we mostly lived in our bathing suits every day); a big rain tarp that we positioned over a picnic table that we dragged to the front of the door of the camper; some reading books and a pack of playing cards for rainy days...
I remember one rainy, rainy day at some campsite in the woods of Maine my parents taught us how to play cribbage using the the squares of the checked tablecloth as our "peg board" and raisins were our pegs!
"15-two, 15-four, 15-six, 15-eight...and, a pair is ten!"
The raisins moved from square to square on the tablecloth.
Who cared about all of the rain that was pelting down around us?!
Eventually the first canvas top to the camper wore out after several years, so my folks went ahead and made a second one, this time a light green color.
For years the old camper was also used for the overnight camp-outs at Camp Daniel Webster. Usually the counselors got to sleep in it, while we campers got to sleep on the hard ground...but, underneath the open sky and beautiful stars...ahhh...as well as with all those mosquitoes!!!
After the family grew up and moved on, my parents still lent it out to other families in town to go camping in until it came to its final resting place next to the old garage and garden at CDW. It eventually became home to some local raccoons and mice and, as it decayed, it sort of just melted into the ground.
For over thirty years that old camper served us well!
hi janet mike is trying to teach me to learn more about computers all the time so maybe i will be able to get dads going when i get home.
that was a great story about our camping and fun days we had as a family--dad certainly knew how to keep us happy and busy and become good campers. love you, mom
Posted by: mom | December 28, 2006 at 07:13 PM