Yes, we are there yet!

Standing on the lakeside, the Spinner family is partaking in one of our family traditions. At the close of our annual summer vacation to Mossflower, our family’s camp in the Adirondacks, we walk together to say good-bye to various parts of the camp. “Good-bye boat house. Good-bye lake. Good-bye hot tub.” Kira's father John, and his wife Lucy bought this camp ten years ago. And it has become a special place for our whole family. We started talking to inanimate objects when our boys were little, in an effort to ease their sadness at vacation's end. Of course I feel silly talking to a canoe but I always get a little catch in my throat as I come to the realization that never again will Nick, Brian and Charlie be 10, 8 and 5 respectively. I know, because everyone tells me, that in the blink of an eye, they’ll be 22, 20 and 17.

Driving home, the boys give the running commentary as we pass our landmarks, “There’s the dalmation at the Saranac Lake Fire House. There’s Tail of the Pup! There’s the big beaver!” I always snicker when they say big beaver. Kira backhands me in the ribs and tells me to grow up. Some day the boys will think, “There’s the big beaver” is funny. Eventually they settle in to watch a movie, Kira begins to nap and I begin to the think, about family vacations past…

In the blink of my mind's eye, we are in the Spinner family station wagon. We are finally leaving East 4th Street (my father was a notoriously slow starter) en route to Beach Lake, Penna. Have to use the old abbreviation. Going to "The Country" as we liked to say. It was maybe a three hour ride but boy did it feel like forever. Makes me appreciate how my kids feel driving 6 plus hours to The Adirondacks.

Like most of you, memories of my childhood vacations are seared into my brain. Just like our kid’s will be. I always thought it interesting that there were 51 other weeks, but for all of us, memories from that week are turbo charged. Our landmarks were different going from Brooklyn to PA. (Of course, we were not in seat belts, didn’t have a movie system in the car and hand held Gameboys were something out of The Twilight Zone) But this is more about similarities than differences…My father would take the Battery Tunnel, to the West Side Highway then to the Lincoln Tunnel. Along the way we’d pass the new Twin Towers, the gritty meat packing district while the Hudson River rolls to my left. To this day I take comfort in the fact that Yale Trucking still has the same replica truck up on the second floor of their building. Although it’s weather beaten, it’s a connection to those trips from long ago.

The Spinners were introduced to Twin Willows Cabins, by John Tracy, my best friend at the time. Because of our friendship, our fathers became tight and coached our baseball team together. I can imagine the conversation after practice, Mr. Tracy holding a can of Schaefer, telling my father, “You have to come up, we’ll have a great time, there’s a ton a things for the kids to do.

As soon as we get to our log cabin, Cabin 4 on the far right side, we are greeted by the familiar smell; a combination of moisture and pine needles. We pick our respective bedrooms. After we unpack, we run around the horseshoe of 14 cabins, looking to see “who else is here?” A haven for working class families from Brooklyn and Queens, we see a lot of the same families every year. Always hope to see Danny and Kevin Reilly from Rego Park, Queens. Mr. Reilly and my dad became fishing buddies. Usually we’d see Linda Wagner and her family, she was a little blonde tom-boy and her dad looked like John Wayne. My friends and I would all vie for Linda’s attention.

Like Kira and I today, my parents knew this week was special. Mom and Dad seemed to smile more, they said YES more often. One of my fondest memories,if you can believe it, is food shopping. We'd go to the Giant supermarket in Honesdale and Judy Spinner would finally throw financial caution to the wind. “Mom, can we get Skippy Peanut Butter please?” “Sure.” Name brand items were a luxury. “Mom, how about Wonder Bread?” “Why not?”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Out to dinner at Belly's in Mountain View, NY and the boys ask, “Can we get soda dad?” Kira and I exchange a look and a shrug of the shoulder, “Alright.” Brian, Nick and Charlie, in unison squeal, “YES!” I see them exchanging giddy looks that say, Can you believe our luck? Who are these people we are on vacation with? They wise up, they recognize, it’s Vacation Mom and Vacation Dad. “Can we stop for ice cream? “Oh alright.” “Yaaaaay.”

Back to the Poconos. After helping unpack the groceries we would don our bathing suits and head to the pool. Walking across the grass field that was the center of the horseshoe of cabins, in bare feet! We never did that in Brooklyn! The built in pool was the center of the social scene at Twin Willows Cabins. Like the cabins, the pool was not the greatest, the diving board was home-made, wood covered in some type of vinyl protection, but it was ours. The water was cold and refreshing. John Tracy would usually bring a friend, Jimmy Quinlan, and we would play for hours. Tag around the pool, relay races, diving contests (cannonball, pencil dive, flips) and occasionally someone would get thrown in the pool by a particularly exuberant father. Sometimes we would try to throw Dad in! The concrete housing for the pool's filter was where all the teenagers sunbathed. It was here that the Billard sisters, Lisa and Lynn would place their radio and tune it to WABC, a.m. Today, listening to Sirius 70’s on the satellite radio, songs like "Afternoon Delight" or "Band on the Run" come on and I am transported poolside to Twin Willows Cabins.

Walking back from the pool, asking “Dad can we have a catch?” Vacation Dad always says, “Yes.” Or even better, we would organize a baseball game on the big field with all of the kids and the fathers. I always liked the fact that my dad was pretty good, even if he did overswing and try to cream the ball all the time. This was one of the few times of the year my father would don his sneakers. They were "no-name" sneakers my mother bought him. I used to think, don’t you care enough to buy decent sneakers? You let MOM pick them out for you? You had to see these sneakers; black with little car racing checkered flags on each side of the foot. I think those sneakers might still be in the bottom of my Mom’s closet. The sound of a man running with keys and change in his pocket makes me smile as I see Jimmy Spinner Sr. gamboling around the bases like a graceful janitor. Never knew why he had so many keys, he was a carpenter.

Vacation Mom and Dad did other fun stuff with us too! We’d head down to Cosmos, a combination mini-golf, go kart, batting cages, arcade, ice cream, hamburger joint. What a gold mine for a kid! As we got older, sometimes, we were mischievous. One year, I guess we were around 12, 7th graders I suppose. I teach middle school and I am pretty sure 7th graders send their brains out for maintenance for the year. So Quinland Tweety and I decided to play a practical joke on the guy who ran the go-karts. It was an oval track with tires around the outside and on the inside just on the turns. On the straightaways, there were no tires. So my friends and I decide to ride across the grass infield of the oval. You had to see that carny dude running after us. Looked like a Little Rascals episode. Three go-karts going this way and that and one guy in his Cat Diesel Power hat trying to catch us. Carny guy got the last laugh. Turns out he wasn’t some tobacco-chewing carny guy, he and his brother owned Cosmos. The next summer, 51 weeks later, we buy our tickets and wait on line. Mr. Cosmos waited for us to get to the front of the line then wagged his tobacco stained finger at us and shook his head No. Never did ride those go-karts again.

Beach Lake was a novel town for Brooklyn boys. Even things like walking seemed more fun on vacation. One of the things we did was the “four mile walk.” If you left the Twin Willows Cabins, made a right turn and then walked to the end of each road and just keep making lefts, you would eventually go in a big square. Scuttlebutt around the cabins was that this was four miles. And we would do this, for fun. We spent the walk looking for turtles and frogs, chucking apples at trees and most of the time just talking about things little boys talk about.

We loved to walk to The Beach Lake General Store, it was like going to the store with Half Pint from Little House on the Prairie. Dusty wooden floor, proprietor selling sundries, place smelled like Teaberry gum, remember that stuff? Basically they sold the same stuff we could get at home, but these Beach Lakers knew city people would pay a premium for shopping at The General Store. The best was being old enough to pick out a pocket knife. Then my friends and I would become " little hicks" for the week, whittling sticks and carving things. We'd swear when we got back to Brooklyn that our accents had changed a little. I bet they had.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As the summer nights are growing shorter and cooler, and the school year nears, this was my effort at remembering some of my family vacations past. I was hoping my musings would remind you of the family vacations you used to take. I would love to hear about them.

P.S. Thanks Vacation Mom and Dad! You were a lot of fun!

Among the Great Unwashed

“Daddy this year I am jumping off the cliff at the waterfall hike,” Brian pipes in from the back seat. We are on our way to our annual camping trip to Hickory Run State Park. I smile, put my book down and look through the windshield. Before I reply, Kira pipes in from the driver’s seat, “Oh no you’re not.” I am wondering why my wife is taking the bait. Brian, my middle boy, the self proclaimed “risk taker,” is looking to get a rise out of us. I am not sure if he is really an 8 year old adrenaline junky or if he has created this persona in an effort to differentiate himself from his siblings. This birth order stuff is awfully intriguing don’t you think? “Daddy almost did it last year! I’m jumping off the cliff. I think it will be cool.” Now I pipe in. “Brian, you might recall that I went to the edge of the cliff. I looked at how far the jump was. I listened to your mother shrieking, If you get a spinal cord injury don’t think I’m going to take care of you ‘cause I already have three kids! It was then that I did something called risk/reward analysis Brian. I decided the thrill of flying through the air for a second and a half, to land in a pool of ice cold water was not worth the bad things that could happen. Maybe I would land safely and swim away. Or I might wind up braking an arm, a leg or wind up spending the rest of my life in a wheelchair.” “Or Worse!” Kira shrieks again. “You could DIE!” “Well your mother is being melodramatic but that was why I decided the reward was not worth the risk.”

I leave Brian to ponder that. He stares out the passenger window as the Pennsylvania countryside rolls past. After a few minutes he says, “You know, maybe I won’t do it.” Kira and I exchange a knowing smile as we continue west on Route 80. I thought about how this was an apt analogy to explain why we go camping. A handful of our friends enjoy tent camping as much as we do but the majority seem to look askance at us when they find out we enjoy camping in tents. It’s similar to the look you might get if you say you enjoy going to the dentist. A neighbor will pull up in my driveway and say,

“Hey, you guys packing to go on vacation?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you going? Camping? You mean like in tents?”

I had one friend get out of his car, come over and ask me, “Is everything okay? You know, financially?” I assured him we were fine that we were choosing to camp.

I see the drawbacks, or risks of camping. I do. For the most part I am with the majority. I am an admitted germophobe. Usually it would take an act of Congress to get me to use a public restroom. I tell Kira I don’t like to play “away games.” I’m a teacher and I don’t even like to use the faculty bathroom. Then again, you should see some of my colleagues. On that note, you should see some of the clientele at some of our nation’s parks. I have never seen more donut boxes and body ink in my life. My boys always wind up bike riding with the requisite kid with the “hair tail.” What I like to call, "the mullet starter kit." The thought that we are sharing a restroom with Mr. and Mrs. Marlboro red pack and their children is not enough of a deterrent, even for me. Camping is still worth it.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, I’m really not a big bug guy either. Who is? I don’t have the patience for every flying, buzzing, biting, annoying creature that seems to love to spend time with ME every time I am communing outdoors. Sitting on my porch, reading the paper, I high-tail it inside at the first buzz. While camping, you just lather yourself up with some Deet-enhanced liquid and hope for the best. Mosquitoes, black flies, deer flies, horse flies, yellow jackets, white-faced hornets…still worth it.

Like most of you, particularly as we head toward our “advanced years,” I love my creature comforts. There was a day I would sleep on a Funyun-caked couch just to spend the weekend partying in Belmar, New Jersey. Now I will drive to Manhattan for dinner and unless I am guaranteed a bed at my buddy Murph’s apartment, I drive the 90 miles back to Middlebury, CT so that I can sleep in my own bed. I like ice in my soda, crisp clean sheets, preferably of a decent thread count, on a nice firm mattress and a hot shower. These are all things that you eschew once you decide to go camping. Any given camping weekend you might wind up with a root in your back or with your tent on a slope so the blood rushes to your head all night. A "nature call" in the middle of the night is really a hassle. You have to zip out of your sleeping bag, put your shoes back on, grab your flashlight, unzip the tent, crawl out, zip the tent back up, then traipse to the communal bathroom or find yourself a nice tree. Then back to the tent.....Still worth it!

Checking in at Hickory Run State Park, the lady with the Smoky the Bear hat tells us that we have to watch for black bears. As if the numerous signs printed on neon green paper weren’t enough warning. Apparently bears know that campgrounds are a gold mine for food,. She recommends that we keep our food locked safely in our car overnight and take other necessary precautions. “Please make sure your kids don’t hide any sweets in the tent, we had a bear pull two boys out of their tent a few years ago to get to their Hershey bars.” Wide-eyed I stare. She looks back at the trail map and says, “Hate to tell you this, but they were staying in your campsite, site 11. Bear came right down the hill. You see you guys are the most secluded, the closest to the real woods, so be extra careful. Enjoy your stay.” Gulp. Still worth it!

So what is it about camping? Sleeping out in tents? Carousing with other campers, who I like to call, “The Great Unwashed.” Since Memorial Day, we have camped out a grand total of 9 nights. Luckily for us, one of the things I failed to mention, mother nature for the most part has cooperated. Camping in tents is a bitch when it rains. Actually this year’s trip with The Boyles, The Quiltys and The Grices to Hickory Run was pushed back to Saturday morning after we looked at the local forecast and made a communal decision to pitch our tents on Saturday morning. Some risks are not worth taking.

Like any vacation, you have to pack, a lot: tents, sleeping bags, bug spray, sunscreen, flashlights, clothes, food and beer. Then, like any vacation, you have to drive. Here’s the kicker. Then you have to, as a family, create your lodging. In addition to building your weekend home, other things become more difficult as well, like cooking, doing dishes, showering. That being said, our network of national and state parks that allow camping are really quite good. They know what people will need while sleeping outdoors and they do their best to make everything, let’s say, reasonable.

What are the rewards for all this hard work? First is a feeling of accomplishment, of working together as a family and or a group of families. Mom, Dad and the boys, packing and unpacking the car, pitching the tents, and then breaking down camp is a challenge we enjoy. “Braving” the great outdoors, sleeping in a temporary shelter of your own creation, binds everyone together, kind of like a team.

The best reward is seeing the kid’s faces as they run excitedly around the campground. They have the feeling that they are free, that we are not watching, but we are. At Hickory Run, Elaine Boyle, the architect of our trip, ensures that we have our own little cul-de-sac of campsites. Running along the left side of our campsite oasis is a stream. The boys play in the water all day long. I love to watch them building dams and racing makeshift boats of sticks and leaves down the stream. Kids being kids. There’s nothing like watching a little boy’s face as he expectantly turns over a mossy rock in the hopes of finding a salamander. THAT makes it all worth it.

Fire! One of the rewards is the community fire. Boys, big boys, girls and big girls, love the fire. We build it and tend it together. As a group, we gather the wood. Then we teach the kids how to build the fire from paper, to kindling, to bigger sticks, to logs. There’s something intrinsically human about the process. We are cavemen again, We build fire. You can see the kids gaining a respect for the power and the dangers of fire. This year, 11 year old Brian Quilty pulls a stick out of the fire and burns his hand on the hot embers. After that mishap, he or any of the other kids won’t make that mistake again. Fire! Beats another park and rec soccer game.

Staying with the caveman connection, while camping….people get dirty. Covered in bug spray and sunscreen, smelling like campfire, wearing the same t-shirt for a while is par for the course. Mark Migliaccio, another friend and fellow camper, didn’t take his Yankee hat off the entire Memorial Day weekend. I think he might have slept with it on. We'll have to ask his wife. Memorial day weekend this year, at the end of the first night, we realized the kids had not brushed their teeth. And this would mean traipsing the lot of them to the communal bathroom a few hundred yards away. Melissa Migliaccio made an executive decision and said, “Ah, it’s alright, we’re camping, it’s only one night right?” There’s something liberating about that. Shower or no shower? Brush teeth or no brushing of teeth. Who cares? You feel removed from civilization, leaving behind the ties, the bounds of everyday life. And it feels really good.

Speaking of severing ties…there’s no internet! No TV! No Gameboy. And nobody notices. Not once this summer did I hear my boys say, “I’m bored,” while we were camping. Too many adventures to be had, mushrooms to discover, trees to climb and waterfalls to traverse. They don’t have Wii Hiking. You have to go camping!

Of course there is a bit more in it for the adults. We are not THAT altruistic. After a communal dinner of marinated London Broil, cooked over an open fire, assorted salads, topped off by smores, we sit around the campfire satiated. The last activity of the night, the kids play flashlight tag. Around 10 or so the kids go to bed. Comfortable in the knowledge that our offspring are exhausted from the day and snug in their sleeping bags, the adults then sit around the fire and enjoy a cold beer or two. Ensconced in a hooded sweatshirt, looking up at the stars, there’s no better way to spend an evening as the “truth syrum” begins to take effect. Steve Boyle usually orchestrates the conversation by tossing out what I would call a “Kumbaya” prompt. You know the, “Tell us why you love camping out.” Or, “Say something positive about each of your kids.” Sitting around the campfire with a group of close friends, I would highly recommend it. The risk is definitely worth the reward. “Hold on, I think I hear a bear!”