Summer Vacations with Fizzies & Fartless Baked Beans
Summertime. 1960s. Getting out of Saginaw.
It was a ritual of summer:
Dad, up in the rafters of our one-car garage on Glendale Street, rummaging for tent poles and stakes. Teenage brother Jim balancing on a ladder, helping Dad attach the homemade wooden car-top carrier to the roof of our steel-gray Chevy Impala station wagon.
Mom in the kitchen, cooking up a big batch of her famous fartless baked beans. Brother Bobby, 18 months older than me - being his typically bratty self - teasing and taunting me, the solo sister.
Ronnie, four years younger than me, just trying to stay out of everybody's way.
Me? Ready to go. Wishing we would just get in the car and GO!
Dad had three weeks of vacation from his job at Michigan Bell Telephone Co. We’d almost always be heading west on our summer vacation – toward the mountains. Dad loved his mountains. But before we got there, we had to endure endless hours driving across boring plains, prairies, and cornfields. We'd head south on I-75 out of mid-Michigan, skirt the northwest corner of Indiana, traverse the width of Illinois, then Iowa or Missouri, on to Nebraska, South Dakota, or Kansas before finally reaching our final destination at Mt. Rushmore, the Rocky Mountains, Yellowstone, or the Grand Canyon.
Our car was not air-conditioned. Dad always drove with his window rolled down, left arm resting on the window frame. No sunscreen back then, either. I remember the time he got a blistering sunburn and had to drive with his forearm swaddled in a towel.
We should have known “Navigator” Jim would be an engineer one day, as he dutifully followed the roadmap from place to place and neatly logged our progress in a notebook. The back seat folded flat to make space for us three younger kids – so we could squirm, lie down, or play games. No seat belts or car seats back in those days. Mom frequently scolded me and Bobby for bickering. (“But Mom, he started it!”)
My brother Jim (the future engineer) made these titles for the vacation movies.
Once in awhile, to break the boredom, we'd roll down the window and furiously pump our arm as we passed a big semi-truck, encouraging the driver to blast his air horn. Always a big laugh when the trucker responded!
At lunchtime, Dad would pull into a roadside rest area. Never a restaurant. Mom would retrieve the flowered tin breadbox, unfold an oilcloth gingham tablecloth, generously slather Miracle Whip on Spatz’s white bread, and add a piece of ham. We hurriedly wolfed down the sandwich before the bread dried out from blast furnace of roadside heat.
Miracle Whip was only 37 cents! And Lays Potato Chips only 79 cents! Hmmm... wondering if Spatz's Bakery is still in business in Saginaw?
Our beverage was always a “Fizzie,” a lozenge that frothed and hissed like Alka-Seltzer and flavored the water like KoolAid. Sometimes Mom let us have potato chips. But there were always homemade cookies. Dad loved his cookies.
On travel days, we’d pull into a campground late in the day after driving for 8-10 hours. Bobby and I always lobbied for a campground with a pool, but that almost never happened because Jim had calculated exactly where we would stop. Once at the campground, we searched for the perfect campsite – one that had trees spaced the proper distance apart from which to hang Dad’s hammock.
We’d set up camp – with a monstrous, green, smelly canvas tent - upgrading to a Reliart (that's "trailer" spelled backwards) pop-up tent camper after those early years of wrestling with tent poles and stakes. A canvas tarp provided cover and shade for our al fresco kitchen, dining room, and living area.
Required gear (clockwise from top left): Chevy station wagon, metal bread box, "Reliart" camper trailer, Coleman two-burner camp stove.
Dad would attach the propane tank to the green Coleman stove, pump it a bunch of times, and light the burners with his Zippo lighter. I was sent off in search of water and Bob would find kindling for the campfire. Dad and Jim hauled out the heavy aluminum cooler with the almost-melted block of ice. I set the table with our plastic camping dishes, which were stored in a homemade plywood cupboard. And Dad would settle into his hammock, smoking a cigarette.
Within an hour of pulling into the campground, ham slices were sizzling in the cast iron skillet alongside a pan of Mom's famous fartless baked beans.
I can hear it, smell it ... taste it - like it was yesterday!
Our camping setup in the early years: a big green canvas tent plus tarp.
Then we graduated to a camper trailer, borrowed from my Uncle Ferris.
Mom and our first dog, Penny. She (the dog) gave birth to a litter of puppies in our tent one year - right under my cot!
I think this was the Petrified Forest in Arizona.
Obviously, the Grand Canyon!
Niagara Falls.
A bad photo from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
One summer we broke tradition and traveled east - to the coast of Maine.
This photo must have been taken the year AFTER Madras plaid was popular! (We only had such trendy things when they'd be discounted.)
Always the best part of our camping vacations ... making s'mores in our jammies!