Doc and the Bimbo Posts

The no camping vow lasted almost 10 years. By that time there were six of us and we were living in a true rustic paradise, Waldport, OR, on the shores of the Pacific. As of this writing Judy and I are still living there in the only home we have ever owned and where we could hardly wait till I retired so we can sell the bitch and move to where it actually gets warm in the summer. Someplace where it rains a bit less than 100 inches a year and where tourism does not show up as the top employer. However, by the time I finally retired, property values in nice places had gone up so much I’m still stuck.

But back to the story. With all those kids and before the invention of the minivan we owned a VW camper bus. This is classified as a Class B Recreational Vehicle. This class of RV is essentially a modified van. They usually have fold down beds, a heat source, stove, possibly a fridge, and often have a modified roof so that you can stand up inside.

We did not intentionally buy a camper van. The VW bus had started out with just a sunroof. Opening the roof while traveling 60 mph was in retrospect probably not the brightest of ideas. Lucky for us traffic was light and the drivers following us were alert or I might still be in litigation. Rather than replace the sunroof, Judy heard of a local who had an engineless VW camper van. For a hundred bucks and a long weekend of work, we had our first RV with a van tent that attached to the side as a bonus. We could hardly wait to take her out. This time we would camp in comfort on our fold out bed in the bus while the kids got the air beds in the attached tent. We were going to have fun.

I took a week off and we drove from Waldport to northern California and the Lava Beds National Monument. In the monument are lava flows, cinder cones and other things typical of other western volcanic areas like the Mountains of the Moon in Idaho, and Lava Lands near Bend, OR. What sets the Lava Beds apart is amazing concentration of wonderful lava tube caves which you explore with flashlight and lanterns without the guides telling you what not to touch. It is a novice spelunker’s paradise with miles of underground mazes and even caves with permanent ice at their bottom most points.

This is where I first discovered that Judy hates and fears caves. The area is also infested with rattle snakes. Judy hates and fears snakes more than caves. I am surprised that Wes didn’t inherit her fear of snakes hate in utero. Years before when Judy was six months along, she noticed a snake at the bottom of a vault toilet as she was just starting to sit down. If there had been an Olympic event where pregnant athletes sprint with their pants and poo-poo undies around their ankles, her world record would still be on the books. Fifty years later I still am required to check for snakes before she will use a vault toilet even if it is the portable kind with the blue smelly shit in the tank.

That night at the lava beds the stars in a moonless sky touched the ground all around us just out of reach. The kids were asleep in the tent as Judy and I sat next to a dwindling campfire in amber glow. I was totally relaxed with a beer in one hand and cigar in the other while Judy sat next to me playing a flashlight over the ground like a fanatic NAZI in one of those WWII prison camp movies. She just knew that that rattle snakes came out at night to eat babies.

Dozing, I awoke to a blood curdling scream of SNAKE! To this day when pressed, I am forced to agree with her that the tail of a kangaroo rat could easily be mistaken for a rattlesnake. They both are sort of round and the tuft of hair at the end of the rats-tail could easily be mistaken for the poison bearing triangular head of the Western Diamondback. I am sure that there must be a footnote in one of those field guides to the reptiles of the West: “Caution: make sure that the snake you are collecting is not a kangaroo rat. Kangaroo rats are fur bearing mammals that hop around the desert on their hind legs and will give you a nasty bite if you try to pick them up by their snake-like tails.”

The next day, a little tired from lack of sleep, we checked out Captain Jack’s Stronghold. This is an Indian war battlefield a few miles north of the lava beds. That war was a sad tale of cultural misunderstanding and our underestimation of the fighting potential of an enemy on its own turf. Seems like 140 years later we have still not learned that lesson.

In the early 1870’s a small band of Modoc Indians went off the Klamath Indian reservation near the present town of Klamath Falls, OR and back to their ancestral home on the Lost River. Seems like Klamaths and Modocs don’t like each other very much and should never have been forced into an artificial nation. The US Army tried to move the Modocs back but under the leadership of their chief, Kientopoos a.k.a. Captain Jack. The Indians retreated into an area just south of Tule Lake that is a honeycomb of caves and natural trenches in an old lava field. From that site a band of 180 men, women, and papooses held off an army ten times their size for nearly a year. Only when the brass hats decided to cut off their only water supply by posting guards at night by the lake (duh!) did the army finally get to use its military prowess to force them out. The Indians probably just got thirsty and left. The retreat was likely a relief to them as they were sick and tired of having to sneak thought army lines every night to get lake water which was not the purest. After leaving the strong hold, a couple of other battles ensued in which the Indians again embarrassed the army. Only when a few of the Modocs turned themselves in and helped the army hunt down Kientopoos did the war finally turn in the army’s favor. Kientopoos eventually surrendered and was hung for murdering an unarmed General Canby at a peace conference during the siege of the stronghold. The surviving Modocs, including the ones which helped the army, were all eventually rounded up and shipped off to Oklahoma or hell, a dichotomy which depends on whether you have just heard about the state or have actually been there. I don’t feel too sorry for the turn-coat group of Modocs as some of them were the very ones who convinced Kientopoos to kill Canby. As an aside, General Canby was the only US General to ever be killed during all the Indian wars. Although Custer was a civil war general his rank had been reduced to colonel by the time of the Little Bighorn. The town of Canby, OR is named after Gen. Canby. As far as I know there is no like memorial to Kientopoos, with the exception of the “You Don’t Know Jack” computer game.

The day we visited the stronghold was warm and sunny. The kids were having a great time running ahead playing Indians ambushing the army. This required for them to do a bit of off the trail maneuvering. Judy was having a hard time with this due to the ever present kangaroo rat danger. The fact that it was a weekday and we seemed to be the only ones at the stronghold multiplied her fears. After half an hour of her having to yell at the kids to stay on the trail, she lost her voice and I started to get those dirty looks meaning I had to take over supervisory duties. How she was able to spot me from my perfect ambush spot was really depressing. Rather than be the bad guy, I yelled at the kids that it was time to go. We were back at the van in 10 minutes heading up into the Cascades where altitude and pumice soil discourages snakes whether they are of the rattle or kangaroo variety.

We chose to go to Miller Lake about 12 miles up a pumice dusty road out of Chemult, OR. We had heard about the lake from a Waldport family who had lived in the Chemult area. They described Miller Lake as though it was an undiscovered Cascade paradise. Maybe it was, but not in mid- June. We had no sooner got the camper top up, and the tent attached than it started to snow. What happen next can be construed as really bad parenting basically because it was. What to do when you are huddled up freezing inside of a van tent with four kids and a case of hard liquor purchased at a last chance liquor store in northern California? Not only did all my kids learn to drink that evening, they also learned to smoke, and curse like white trash. By two AM even sweet little Delda was slurring her words. This was probably a good thing as I was pretty sure in my drunken haze that she was saying things like “Damn! Shit! Piss! Give me another fucking drink! I dropped by fucking cigarette in my fucking drink!” To this day, if the lighting is just right, you can still see a slight blue haze hanging over the forest to the west of Chemult.

The next morning was warm and sunny. I awoke first and noticed that during the night a few mosquitoes had worked their way into the van. As this particular insect variety is not one of my favorites, I opened the rear hatch to let them out. For every one of the little buggers inside the van there were 100,000 of their giant relatives outside awaiting the right moment to attack. Like Gen. Canby I had seriously underestimated the enemies fighting abilities. Within seconds we were all awake and fighting a losing battle. Under normal circumstances they would have carried us all off to feast at their leisure, but mosquitoes can’t handle their liquor either, after biting each of us a few hundred times they weren’t sober enough to coordinate their attacks and we managed to escape during the lull.

We kept the camper for many years after that, but never used it that much to explore the natural wonders of Oregon. Instead we rented cabins, complete with beds, real mattresses, running water, flush toilets, screened windows, and stocked with an ample supply of liquor and smokes. It would be nearly another 10 years before we seriously tried RV camping again.

Over half century ago, I grew up in southern Oregon or “God’s Country” as the locals preferred to call it.  What they neglected to add was that God has a left to go along with his right hand. 

The largest town in the area was and still is Medford, which in my youth had a population of about 20,000 with the principal industries being lumber and pears.  While this sounds like a rustic Garden of Eden, it had a bit of a smog problem made nearly intolerable by frequent atmospheric temperature inversions.  In those days, lumber mills had no way to get rid of sawdust, so it was burned in huge metal teepees misnamed wigwam burners.  This coupled with the nasty process of burning old tires used to prevent the pear buds from freezing during the spring, produced witches brew fogs that put London’s pea soups to shame.  Although winters were mild, they were dreary with misty rains, while summers were often miserably hot with daytime temperatures often exceeding 100 for two or three weeks at a time. 

But even hell has its rewards. Less than an hour away are the southern Oregon Cascade Mountains.  This is a truly stunning place, with mixed groves of old growth Douglas fir, ponderosa pine, and western hemlock.  Together these trees combine to shade an understory of ferns that can grow to your navel.  It is an area of countless pristine high mountain lakes and creeks that are filled with rainbow trout that were catchable even with my adolescent angling skills.  At lower elevations, numerous reservoirs contained warmer water pan fish like crappie and blue gill, which were easily caught in abundance using worm and bobber. 

My dad and grandfather loved to fish, which often involved camping in an old army surplus canvas tent.  I hated that tent.  It was greasy, infested with earwigs, and smelled like a musk ox in rut. I hated sleeping on those terrible army cots or worse on the original air mattresses which bore almost no resemblance to the fancy inflate-a-beds of today. They had four rubberized longitudinal tubes which required an hour of blowing by mouth to achieve a lumpy firmness which leaked out overnight.  Although the mattresses were uncomfortable, what I hated the most was the noise they made.  My parents rolling over in their “sleep” sounded like a terminal emphysema ward.  I also hated having to bathe in ice cold lakes then trying to warm up next to a fire that produced more smoke than heat.  As a kid I could get away without daily baths.  As I grew older, the first day without a bath left me with a pungent sweaty gym shorts odor.  The next day I developed the stickies. followed the rash.  The tent eventually disintegrated into a greasy blob which was then carelessly discarded into a rat- infested landfill, where I suspect it might have been seen and warped the mind of a young and impressionable Steven King.       

After the curse of the tent ended, we seldom camped.  Even after my father bought a small camp trailer, we still did not camp.  This was because my father always dreamed of owning a farm or at least to be as self-sufficient in food as humanly possible.    He reasoned that when the next great depression happened, we could live off the land while others less foresighted would starve or be forced to become bootleggers like great uncle Frank. 

For years he had been looking to buy land so that he could have a few cows, pigs, chickens, and a garden.  On the surface, my mother seemed to support him, yet there was always something wrong with the land deals he found.  In truth, she did not want to be a farmer’s wife and somehow managed with subtle feminine guile to dissuade him.  She was so good at this that, in retrospect, I am surprised that he ever was able to realize his dream. But after years of searching and now into his early forties, it was finally realized. 

It was only 16 acres, which was not enough to support a family, so dad always had to have a steady job in town. But it was enough to raise all the beef, chickens, rabbits, and carrots that it took to survive in the harsh world of his youth.  My sister was probably the main reason why mom relented, for if anyone was better at manipulation than mom, it was her.  And Sandra like all young teenage girls of her generation wanted a horse.  Somewhere in the musings of Sigmund Freud there is probably a sexual explanation for this female fascination with large powerful animals being ridden by girls with spurs on their high-topped leather boots.  Regardless of the underlying reason, if Sandra wanted a horse, she was going to get it.  She begged, pouted, cajoled, promising to keep it fed and groomed.  I am sure she even convinced herself that she would keep those promises.

I, on the other hand, got a duck.  Not that I wanted a duck.  Nor to the best of my knowledge are there any male fantasies involving carnal knowledge of ducks or any species of waterfowl.  I had actually wanted a goldfish.  But the dime I was tossing at the carnival bounced out of the dish over the fishbowl and dropped into the one over the duckling cage.  Seems like everyone at the carnival won a duck, even the kids that lived in town.  That is something that probably does not happen much anymore unless you live in rural Laos.  But in those days bringing home a duck from the carnival was pretty common.  Most did not last a week.  Mine lasted three.  My sister’s collie killed it.  The dog was something else she had begged to have on the farm after watching a Lassie movie.  This was yet another thing which she had promised to care for and train, which of course she didn’t.  I was devastated.  Quacky, Donald, or Daffy or whatever name it had that week, was dead.  I pleaded with my father that the crime deserved capital punishment, but my father refused.  It might have been different if it had been a chicken or rabbit as dad was highly protective of our potential food resources.   But Quacky-Donald-Daffy was not considered as food, being too “greezzy” as mom so aptly put it.  But a week later, when Lassie killed about 30 baby chickens that were under a brood light, she was quickly “disappeared”.  I don’t know the actual fate of the beast but suspect that she succumbed to the three “S”es  (shoot, shovel, and shut up). 

Over the years I had other more traditional farm animal pets, but I never got as attached to them as much as I did Quacky-Donald-Daffy.  I knew that eventually they would all meet the same fate—-food.  Sometimes that first bite or two was a little tough, but all my pets turned out to be mighty tasty.  It may sound cruel, heartless, and a bit sadistic but such is the way with farmers, and it is not a bad way to live, with the exception that you can’t go anywhere.  There were always cows to feed; eggs to collect and a garden to weed.  In the summer we irrigated, cut hay, baled it and stacked it in the barn.  Most of this work fell on my father and grandfather, who came to live with us. My father also had to maintain the farm equipment.  We even had a hay baler.  This was silly as only about eight acres were in hay, but he thought he got a good deal on it.  The problem with the baler was powered by the old 45 horse Briggs and Stratton air-cooled engine.  It had to be started by hand crank.  This was easily accomplished when the engine as cold, but once it warmed up there was no way to restart it till it cooled.  Dad never learned this lesson.  As I walked up the long dirt driveway after getting off the school bus one early September afternoon, I could hear him trying to restart the beast after it gorged itself on too much hay.  Crank, crank, crank, then silence for a bit, then crank, crank, crank again.  Drawing closer I could feel his frustration.  If I had known he was beginning to suffer from Chrohn’s disease I might have taken over for him or better yet suggested that he relax with a beer for an hour till it cooled off.  Maybe he would still be alive today if he just learned to relax a bit as I believe that stress was a contributing factor to what ailed and eventually killed him.  If I had been in his shoes, I would have taken a nice nap as well, or better yet just sold the farm and moved to town where there was far less work and food came pre-wrapped.  But Dad was not that type, he continued to crank in total frustration and silence.  When I was within  20 feet he looked up at me and spewed out a string of creative cuss words that hangs over Medford to this day as a light blue haze.  It was such a shock to hear my dad curse so colorfully that I involuntarily snickered.  That turned out to be a really bad idea. 

The beginning of the end of his farming days was the result of milk cows.  While one cow produced all the milk we needed, with two, then three, we produced more milk than we could use.  This was converted to cream which my mother sold to a local creamery where it was made into butter or other high fat dairy products.   Mom though that this was a great way to get a little extra spending money, especially since she, having never milked a cow, did not have to work for it.  Sandra, being a girl, was not expected to do it either.  And even if she was, she wouldn’t.   I might have been able to help, but could never get my mind to accept the idea of sitting on a stool near the ass end of a living fertilizer factory.  So my Dad milked them morning and night for two years.  Then one day he had to work late at his real job of being a lift truck mechanic.  He got home about 2AM to the sounds of three bawling cows wondering why the guy with the calloused hands did not show up that evening.  Dad got to bed just before dawn.  The next day they were all for sale at the local beef auction.  A year or so later we were living in town.  Took the ol’ boy about eight years to figure out that if he wanted to be a farmer, he was on his own.  It also convinced me that I never, ever want to be a farmer. 

Although Dad never totally gave up the dream, we only had a large garden after that.  No chickens, pigs, cows or rabbits.  It also meant that we could take up camping again.  The trailer was eventually replaced by a pickup with a camper so that Dad could pull a small boat trailer behind that mobile bedroom.  As much as possible I tried to avoid these trips.  I still enjoyed fishing, but girls and partying in my parent’s house had much more appeal to me at the time.  And if I did go, it was my job to clean the fish, another job that my mother worked at avoiding.

Time heals all wounds, and the same can be said of bad memories of childhood camping trips.  In college, I worked summers for the forest service which rekindled my love of the southern Oregon Cascades.  During those summers, I lived in rustic but comfortable cabins, complete with showers, flush toilets, heat, and beer.

In the spring of my senior year in college I married Judy, and Wes, much to my mother’s relief, was born ten months later.  By the time Wes was two we were making a little more money and I even had some paid vacation time.  I don’t know if Judy or I came up the idea of a camping trip vacation, but we both were excited to be in the mountains near Union Creek, OR, where I used to work.  We bought a small tent, a couple of sleeping bags, borrowed a Coleman camp stove, and were off to enjoy the wilds.  We didn’t last one night.  The mosquitoes were horrible and Wes took the greatest joy in crawling backwards down a steep hill with the bottom hem of his shirt digging into the soft earth like the blade of a giant earth moving tractor.  Even at that point we might have stayed if there was someplace to bathe him, but we only had the Rogue River, which is so cold at that elevation that hypothermia would have been almost instantaneous.   We packed our newly purchased tent, stowed the sleeping bags and drove home in the dark vowing to never try camping again