We're all packed, standing in the driveway, and ready to go on our first ever mothers-and-sons' camping trip in my new white Vw pop-top van.
My skeptical neighbor-friend, Cathy, and her 8-year-old son eye me dubiously while Cathy's 7-year-old daughter shoves fistfuls of Fiddle-Faddle into her face, and my (then) eight-year-old son demonstrates the vehicle's features as I chronicle in my new adept camping-person voice. "Voila! Seats come to be beds, a sink, a inexpressive port-a-potty, a mini-fridge and a fold-down dining table. Everyone in!"
We sing-along to Frank Sinatra's "Pocketful of Miracles" as we navigate the 405-Santa Monica-Interstate-10 Freeway-loop straight through uptown La.
"Tree-rou-bles, more or less,
Bee-ah-ther me, I guess when the sun doesn't shine.
But there's a pocketful of miracles,
The world's a inspiring and shiny apple that's mine, all mine.
I hear sleigh bells ringing...and go nearby like theres a snow around,
I feel so good, it's Christmas every day!"
My son leans forward, "Mom, Tracey just threw-up a fountain of Screaming Yellow Zonkers all over your new white comforter. Best pull-off."
"Slight detour. No worries. We campers are prepared for any eventuality!" I exit into the mid-morning financial district traffic and circle taxi-tooting blocks until we search a gas station.
In a minuscule bathroom sink I rinse the Queen-sized comforter and accept a handful of discarded fan-belts from an attendant who says they're out of bungee-cords to attach it to the roof for drying. In the process, black-grease skid-marks appear on my forearm, face and thigh that don't rub off--a small price to pay for picture-postcard memories.
Within hours we've left the city chaos behind and are hugged into the lulling attractiveness and bounty of mother Nature. We soar up the twisty two-lane mountain road as in a 1950s "See the Usa in a Chevrolet" commercial. Windows rolled down, hair-blowing, the blessed perfume of sweet yellow Scottish Broom hits our nostrils.
"Let's see where that fire road takes us, probably a frightful view." I chirp in my new adventurous-camper-mode, and point up a steep dirt road. My friend isn't so sure, her daughter starts to whimper. "It's Ok, Tracy," her brother says, "This is what campers do. Explore."
Please don't throw-up again, Tracey, I pray silently over and over, until the top-heavy van stalls precariously on a peak at a 45% angle on a one-lane dirt road. We start to slip backwards towards the cliff's-edge. I yank the crisis brake, jump-out and break nails placing boulders behind the tires. My son opens the back-hatch, and compares its twisted innards to the owner's by hand diagram, which resembles the La-405-I-10 Interchange to me. Then like Dr. Kildare he calmly sorts out smoking-wires and rewraps them together in duct-tape. The car starts but won't go forward. My camping mates get out, and with large smirks and small head-shakes, amble down the mountain while I stick it into reverse and inch on down.
"That was dumb," my friend glares at me at she gets in and slams her door. Soon we pull into the empty campground. "What's B-u-b-o-n-i-c?" Her daughter spells out the white and orange painted warning sign.
"Ah, it says some squirrels were, umm. Unwell," I say, weakly.
"Yeah, ailing with a Medieval disease that'll turn your skin black and pus-y with white big bumps with red in the center, and you die in agony the same day," Scott says raising his fingers like an open mouth to bite his sister, who screeches and cries.
"I'll check with that ranger." We pull up to a big, grinning Andy Taylor of Mayberry, Usa type who drawls, "A bear's been yonder in them woods so best keep the youngins near."
That night, after rowing a rented, leaky canoe nearby the lake, we cook steaks on a grill that, in the twilight, we'd not first noticed was thickly coated with unidentifiable animal hair. Dishes done, and wet clothes drying on a line that runs from the car-roof to a tree, we set-up the pop-top, make-up the beds and call our sons back in. Mind has a ¼" diameter tree field rammed straight through his skin and half up in his leg.
"Get in!! Get in!!"
I can't get the pop-top down and we take curves on two-squealing tires as we race to the Er on the opposite side of the lake. The comforter has loosen and is chasing alongside us like a ghost with a black fan belt nearby its neck. The line of clothes waves from the opposite side. At the hospital they take my son in before a man who had a car fall on his chest. A bicycle cop finally catches up with me and delivers a mark for the flying comforter and clothes, plus driving with the raised pop-top that sheared off some tree limbs. "And you knocked over a mail-box," he rips off the mark and forks-it-over between his two disapproving fingers.
To make up for my son's stitches and inoculations we have hot fudge sundaes at an outdoor patio bistro downtown. When Tracy pushed her folding-chair back it collapses and slides off the patio with her retention on to it, over the side, and 6' down onto the roadway. The ambulance arrives and we return to the Er and are welcomed like quarterly customers.
Later we're asleep in the locked camper in the eerily deserted campground when we hear rustling. "Forgot to hang the ice chest from a tree," I mumble. A bear paws straight through it, eating our morning meal bacon and drinking the pancake syrup. The car horn doesn't work when the car is turned-off and I can't find the keys.
The inside of the camper resembles a college dorm from Animal House and smells like dirty socks.
Tracey throws-up into a frying pan. The bear stands against and rocks the van. "He can't get in," I reassure the kids, and we bang pots together and make noise until he leaves we. I find the keys and the aspirin for my head and we leave our gear surface at 2Am to go hunt down a hotel room.
We pass six 'No Vacancy' signs then spot a Rumplestiltskin-hovel, garishly shiny under its day-glo orange neon sign, with what looks like 8-Hells Angles motorcycles parked outside.
'Hogs.' My son corrects me.
The others schlep-into our accommodations for the remainder of the night while I clean the interior of the car. Hands full, I bump the car-door terminated with my bottom and half of my skirt gets caught in the door. I twist for a while trying to get free and spot the keys in the ignition.
Unfortunately, the ties of the wrap-around skirt are stuck in the door. I can't yell and wake people up; the lights are off in our room. I drop the dirty towels on the ground, and get the waistband loose adequate so I can wiggle-down. When I get to my chest with my arms raised above me head, I'm stuck in a half-squat, caught nearby the shoulders with my elbows squished against the side of my head in the waistband.
"For the love of merciful God!" I yelp. Exhausted, dirty and starving after my uneaten hairy steak, imprisoned by the skirt that is now transformed into a Burka. Tears run down my grease-streaked cheek. "Where's a guy buy a break nearby here?"
After few minutes the cheery Campfire Girls' jinkle starts to run 'round my head like a hamster on a wheel, and by the second or third pass and I'm half-singin':
"I will come to your door.
Friendly and warm in my uniform,
Nice as a girl scout can be.
Please buy your cookies from me.
I'm a girl scout.
I'm a girl scout.
Campfire girls
We're pretty."
I feel a tug on the ties of the waistband, hear the sawing sound of a knife, and I'm free. When I stand up and wiggle the skirt down there's a 6'6' refrigerator-sized man in long underwear, with cumulus clouds of white hair, beard, mustache, and eyebrows. He's retention an open jack-knife. I look at it and then back up at him. He squints like the Skipper on Gilligan's Island.
"Campfire girls we're pretty," He mimics in falsetto. "Good night," he grumbles as he stalks back in the direction of the Hells Angels' Hogs in front of Room 109.
The next morning was sunny and gorgeous. The blue jays were singing. We had sizzling bacon and buttery pancakes on a rock terrace at the Four Season Hotel under the pine boughs alongside the blue lake.
"This is the life!" I nod my head as the waiter prepares to take our group photo. He looks-up over the lens, "On the count of three Everyone say, 'Camping is grrreat!'"
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