Wheels Included

My family, in order, camped in a tent, pop-up camper, pickup camper, and then a motor home. We bought the motor home used. I guess it was a Boise Cascade, since that was the only name I ever saw on it. It was medium sized for a motor home. It would have been monstrous for a loaf of bread. It had good beds, an icebox, a stove, and even a bathroom.

We camped in the Ozarks, on the beaches of Louisiana and Texas, through some of Mississippi (I don't know why), Illinois, and Tennessee. We went to lots of festivals.

There was no casastrophe that made us get rid of the thing. I think my brother and I just got tired of so much travelling.

We had the best breakfast ever--sausages, eggs, and toast on a grille--on a cold morning in Tyler State Park. My brother threw a flounder and hit me in the face. Our dog chased chipmunks in Missouri. We skinny-dipped in a freezing spring-fed creek just off the road in the middle of nowhere. Mom concocted a slumgullion that she called "Chinese-cajun surprise" at Johnson's Bayou, that included freshly caught crab, bean sprouts, cheese, and bread crumbs (mom was an excellent cook). When nobody on the pier at Padre Island had caught more than one or two fish, my little brother took the fish off their hands and we had a smorgasboard of croaker, whiting, sea bass, drum, snapper, and I don't remember what else. We fed a hoard of gulls on the Aransas Pass ferry. When thugs in Vicksburg jumped up on our trailer at night, dad pulled the .44 magnum and they high-tailed it. And we talked about our hairless dogs from one end of our trips to the other.

After my first son was born, dad advised me, "Make whatever sacrifices you have to and and buy a motor home when he's young."

I didn't. I regret it.