short story

An American Camping Story

I think my wife Sally and I were in the early stages of our romance when she suggested we spend the 4th of July weekend at an Oceanside campground in an exclusive state park in Connecticut .
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As is typical of the early stages of any male ,female relationship, I agreed whole heatedly with everything she suggested we do. She was in a positively rapturous swoon after having learned that there was one campsite still remaining for the popular holiday weekend by the shore, and this just two days before the 4th.

To hear her tell it this had been a lifelong dream of hers, to spend the 4th of july weekend at this beach in this state park. For years, even decades she had tried to rent a campsite there but there was never one available. Actually finding a campsite at such a late date was an incredible coup due to the incredible popularity of this wonderland by the sea. Fortune then had shined on her at last.The state park itself was in the wealthy coastal region of Connecticut where reclusive hollywood stars and artists made their home. We would not only be spending a glorious weekend in a forest Shangri-La by the sea but mingling with the upper crust of New England as well. For the two days before the 4th she was all aquiver and I was happy as well as this was our first real outing together and it seemed destined to be a weekend of golden memories.

I have to admit I am not really a camping person.I think this may be because of my experience as a “cub”. When I was a young “scout”our “pack” spent a weekend in little tents camped somewhere on a wooded hillside. As soon as the the sun went down it began to pour and the entire camping experience consisted of digging canals inside the tent all night to channel the many small streams of water away from our sleeping bags. “The pack” was forced to cut the trip short. We left the next morning everyone's’ sleeping bag was soaked ;there were many sick “cubs.”

But that was then, and this was now ,and the forecast for the fourth of July was hot and sunny. Sally had one of those collapsable tents with zippered screen doors and windows that nearly pitched itself. I spent the day before the 4th cutting some firewood and finding an ax. The night before our trip Sally had all the food ,picnic baskets, towels, blankets , and suntan lotion carefully packed in the backseat of the car, while I had loaded the trunk with firewood and the ax. We decided to leave early in the morning to try and beat all the holiday traffic.Thrilled as she was, Sally had invited her pregnant daughter Michelle her husband Nick and their 3 year old son Steven to share in our camping good fortune .They would be meeting us there on the early evening of the fourth and spend the next day with us. For Sally this was a vacation dream come true She would be spending the weekend with her family her grandchild and me her new love interest there in the campsite of her dreams at the shore.

At the time, I didn’t really know her daughter Michelle and her husband Nick all that well. I knew her grandchild Steven because as a typical. loving Grandmother Sally had him at her house as often as she could .She was constantly taking him to playgrounds and toy stores I’m not sure what he thought of me, whenever we were alone together for a time he seemed to like to jump on me and hit me a lot.
In retrospect it was a very gracious thing that Michelle and her husband Nick did in joining us there for a day or so. I think they did it out of respect for me and the special relationship Sally and I were developing. Knowing Nick and Michelle better now I realize that there is little chance that they would indulge Sallies’ lofty camping dreams today.As a matter of fact that weekend may have put them off camping forever.

And so, prepared for a weekend of communing with nature near the ocean, we set out early on the morning of the fourth under a clear sky and a blazing sun; an incredibly blazing sun. In fact the sun had not blazed this hot on the fourth of july in new england in over a hundred years. It was so hot that there were elderly people expiring in their homes of heat exhaustion by the score. When we got to the little booth to check in at the entrance of the camp ground, there was no one there. As it turns out the guy was in his car with the air conditioner on. He finally saw us and came over and gave us a little map that identified our little 20 x 30 patch of camping heaven.

When we first drove in to the campground I thought perhaps we had taken a wrong turn. I don’t know what I expected but what we were coming upon was a field a mile from the beach with blocks of 20 x 30 plots laid out like a future housing development grid. A few of the camping plots had a tree on them , ours alas did not. It was a grass incinerated postage stamp of land backed up to a swamp facing a road across which afforded a panoramic view of scores of other lucky campers. Also there was a fire pit and a picnic table

Luckily the 20 foot plot next to our own scorched piece of earth was vacant which gave us the sense of boundless freedom every camper will recognize I imagined the people who had rented it might have been some of the elderly that had been dropping like flies in the heat. We settled in to this little plot of paradise and set up the tent and unfolded the chairs we had brought and headed for the beach where all the other campers must have been, along with a huge steaming heap of vacationing new england humanity. We stayed at the beach for as long as we possibly could which meant that a few hours later when we left my body was of a robust crimson hue. We drove back to the campsite and attempted to sit in the chairs but they were too hot to touch. We ended up putting wet towels on them and settled in to “camp” under a blazing 100 degree plus sun. Some of the other campers were beginning to return as well I noticed that they all had beach umbrellas, something that we had neglected to bring. And so we went shopping. I immediately steered us to a package store to buy beer.

The entire town had run out of ice except for one remote old Ice house where we waited in line for perhaps a half hour or so praying that the supply would not give out until our turn came. As luck would have it we got the last two bags. The people in line behind us left grumbling to themselves, except for one guy so desperate he bought one of those huge blocks .He was struggling to his car with it when we pulled away.

Then we went to buy umbrellas to protect us from the cruel sun and perhaps a radio which we had also not thought to bring. As it turns out the only store open anywhere was a import place called ocean state job lot where we bought two incredibly hideous pint sized beach umbrellas and two tiny chinese radios that were so small they contained no speaker and so came with a little earpiece.

It was now perhaps 4 o clock and so hot at our campsite that you could have started a fire by simply crumpling a piece of paper. This was spontaneous human combustion weather if ever there was any.

The umbrellas that we had bought, which were made in china like everything else in the store were apparently designed for use by small chinese children. Once they were pounded into the scorched earth the umbrellas themselves stood approximately 4 feet off the ground which meant once we were in our chairs covered with our umbrellas we couldn’t see each other or anything else except the colorful interior of the umbrella.

And so I settled in there opened a beer and listened to the one station through the earpiece of my tiny cheap chinese radio that seemed to be broadcasting a medley of elevator music. We tried adjusting the umbrellas but they kept falling over so ended up slouching out of our chairs in an attempt to communicate. “And so this is camping” I thought to myself slithering out from under my umbrella after another beer.

Sally for some strange reason seemed still in the thrall of actually being here at the campsite of her dreams. She laughed about the worthless little radios and beach umbrellas and the triple digit temperatures. I kind of saw the humor in it all at first but after a few more beers under the umbrella I began to put our budding romance into prospective and I announced that I thought we should take a break from our camping and go to an air conditioned bar somewhere. This caused a heated argument and a few minutes later we were silently driving to the package store. I had convinced her that we should at least go there since they would be closed tomorrow.

The sun was finally going down when we got back to our campsite and just after we returned , Sally’s daughter Michelle her husband Nick and young Steven arrived. Michelle was about six months pregnant at the time and feeling sick, which is why they had not come earlier in the day, which was lucky for her since I’m sure her unborn child might have boiled to death there during the day. Steven it turns out was feeling poorly as well and Nick had been working a double shift and so we didn’t bother lighting a fire and cooking the marshmallows that Sally had bought and instead all straggled into our tents to sleep.

While the campsite on one side of us was still vacant,the campsite on the other side of us was up a little rise around a corner under one of the several highly prized trees. I had noticed the middle aged couple there as we came in. They had no tent but were sitting in lounge chairs drinking beside their lincoln continental there were liquor bottles there on their picnic table.

According to Nick whose tent was closer to them than ours, a loud drunken argument went on between them far into the night keeping He an Michelle awake. Nick said the gist of it was they had not planned to spend the night here, just the day but the guy had got so drunk there beneath the tree that he couldn’t drive home.But of course he was insisting to his wife who was also drunk that things were fine., and it all degenerated from there After a couple hours Nick said he heard one then the other getting sick until they passed out and finally there was silence .

Behind us in the swamp a cloud of mosquitos took flight under a pale sliverous moon and began a slow swarm onto our tents as single bull frog croaked a loud yet mournful ode to their departure.

The next day may not have been as hot as the 4th of july, but it was close.I had lost track of time but at some point we all walked the 200 yards or so down the road to the public bathrooms to clean up. Sally had paired up with her grandson Steven and now and so I felt a bit alienated.I began to wonder about my future with Sally . Had I in fact stumbled into a family of insane people. How could she not see how torturous all this was., could she not see that this was like camping on mercury. Nick was politely silent but Michelle who had morning sickness reassured me of at least her if not my own sanity by announcing to her mother after she had returned from the bathroom with Steven. “Mom, this is not camping!” Emboldened by his wife Nick then told the charming story of the couple on the hills drunken raging and puking through the night . This comforted me a great deal, I felt suddenly closer to them both, but Sally was now in the company of her 3 year old soul mate Steven which transported her into a blissful kind of childish oblivion which found them both calling each other names like “Butt head “ and “Pig face”

We spent most of the day at the beach, but for some reason I couldn’t really enjoy it.I had brought a a six pack of cold beers with me and after drinking a few of them suddenly recalled a drink inspired “epiphany” that I had the day before. It was a cosmic magical moment in time there under the chinese beach umbrella with about 9 beers in me slouching in my chair to address something to Sally when my umbrella became unstuck and fell over. Because I had nine beers in me I did not race to put it back in position instead went to the cooler got another beer managed to get it open and looked around me , perhaps for the first time. And then something ;the juxtaposition of the sun, the beer; the parboiled heat in my brain,all of it together along with the roasting field of tents across the road, then closer to me ; the tiny chinese radio parts there beneath the ax, but it suddenly came to me Michelle was right; This was not camping.

Why would people, grown people put themselves through something like this ? .It was insane Why leave your air conditioned house to live like a soon to be incinerated ant under a beaming magnifying glass sun in these little parched plots of earth. Why not sleep in the backyard at least you could go inside every once in awhile. I suppose it might have had something to do with being only a mile away from a connecticut beach, but still was anything worth this torture and, we paid actual money for this experience this was like a drive in movie,without the movie even without the safety and security of your car, and no snack bar only a little bathroom in a field, and I was to believe we were lucky to be here. Who were these insane camping people (besides us) I wondered.

We found out when we returned from the beach. The camping spot beside us was now occupied by a Recreational Vehicle, a large recreational Vehicle. It was so large that the rear bumper nearly intruded into our coveted 20 by 30 camping space. The owner was outside cooking burgers on a gas grill he was a dark haired man in his 40’s wearing loafers and slacks that made me think he might be on his way to a sales presentation .His wife was a bit younger and blonde and there was a child there who looked to be about 10 she was blonde also.

I can’t remember weather we cooked dinner or not,we all had a beer or two when we got back, except for Michelle who was puking because of her pregnancy and Nick who was consoling Michelle and Sally who was with Steven.Then we settled in relaxing under our umbrellas for a while.

The next thing I remember was Steven saying he had to go to the bathroom really bad.. Sally of course took him and while she was gone I had one more beer and then for some reason decided I should announce my intentions about Sally and me to Nick and Michelle. “Say” I said , “You know Sally and I.....”and suddenly the large compressor which ran the air conditioning in the r .v. roared to life.The motor was located there next to the back bumper about 4 or 5 feet from me. From then on it was like being in the original Texas chain saw massacre movie. Sally returned at sometime with steven .and somewhere in the mental landscape of the lawn that was being mowed forever in my brain I heard the words, “Sick” “Had an accident,” and “ Carry a Turd.” These cryptic components of a message created a picture in my mind of a woman standing in line at a crowded rest room with a turd in her hand.The roaring of the compressor seemed to be growing louder.

I always wondered in that first chain saw massacre movie whether it might not have been the incessant roar of compressor in that texas slaughterhouse that made the guy loose it and want to chop people up with meat cleavers and axes.That noise like an eternal lawnmower in your brain might drive anyone crazy, in fact it was driving me crazy. And not only me but Sally seemed to be coming out of her camping reverie as well. The compressor engine was so loud we could barely speak, then the guy came out of his r.v. and began to put his propane grill away. I walked over to talk to him.“Is there a guy with an iron lung in there or something?.”I said,He looked at me smiled then pointed to his ears signaling he couldn’t hear me,.and went back inside.

And so we sat there.I looked over at Michelle who was pale and haunted looking under the umbrella, Steven who was now stomach sick and Nick who was affecting a sad far away look that suggested he might be trying to transport himself far away from all this.Finally after an hour or so of this audio torture when it became apparent that the compressor was not going to stop and that this was yet one more version of camping, as practiced by the sales rep and his blonde bimbo wife and kid ;sitting inside an air conditioned r.v. in a field oblivious to those in the outside world around them who were beginning to loss their minds, and their hearing.We all even Sally decided we had to leave. And we were out of beer.

We left in a great hurry.I was pretty mad now throwing the pieces of unused firewood into the trunk of our car oblivious to all the pans ,poles ,picnic baskets and anything else., I might be crushing there in the trunk. We stuffed the tent in the backseat along with the unrolled sleeping bags and drove off the roar of the compressor the insane heat of the blazing sun and my maddened beer buzz now growing fainter and fainter.

Halfway home in the early evening it began to rain so hard that all the cars on the freeway had to come to a stop as it was pouring so bad you couldn’t see .I knew this camping thing was something Sally and I would not talk about and I probably shouldn’t think about, ever again. Even so I couldn’t help wondering how it might have been if we were still back there.