My View from 1958

The Teenage Years

As a reminder, I am working backwards in time for my posts about camping. For my last post, I described my current camping adventures in Colorado. This time I will focus on camping during the teen years. My family continued to camp up until about the time my brother and I discovered girls. At that point, chasing girls, sports or hanging with friends a much higher priority than the great outdoors.

 Dad purchased a used pickup camper and a used boat in the last 1960’s.  We initially camped in a tent but dad decided to take a step up. He loved camping, the outdoors, and the idea of getting a boat was a way to entertain us kids. I think mom enjoyed it too, and the pickup camper added another level of comfort. Looking back, it seems like she spent most of her time cooking on our camping trips.  Mom was a marvelous cook and introduced us kids to smores, buttered popcorn made over the campfire (always tasted better), of course bacon and eggs, fresh squeezed orange juice, homemade cinnamon rolls and juicy burgers. To me, there is still nothing better than the smell of bacon cooking over a campfire. Early mornings we would wake up to that delicious smell, jumping out of bed for the taste of that crisp delight. Our family camped and boated for several years, almost every summer weekend. Today, I am thankful for no cell phones, social media and wireless networks in those days.  We made our own adventure. Bottom line, we had a blast!

The picture below is not the actual boat, but it was similar to what we had.  It was a Crestline with a powerful 65 HP Johnson. This was the second boat we had. It was quite a step up from our first boat and was excellent for pulling a couple of skiers. This baby could get up and go!

Like the boat, I do not have an actual picture of the camper, but this picture below is pretty darn close.

The camper slept 4 comfortable. Since there were 5 in my family, guess who had to sleep in the cab.  You guessed it.  The camper had a refrigerator, gas stove, table and couch combo that converted to a bed.  Plenty of cupboard space for food, dishes and other camping essentials and of course the greatest part of all was the cab-over bunk. When we traveled, that is where I rode most of the time.  Laying down, watching the scenery as we rolled down the highway. I would sleep, eat, read, listen to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 with my transistor radio. It was my world. My brother sat in the cab with dad and since my mom and sister got car sick if they rode in the camper, they followed in the car. I had it all to myself.

We camped at multiple places like Viking Lake, Waubonsie State Park, Lake Icaria and Pioneer Park. Mostly we traveled to Big Lake State Park near Craig, Missouri so we could water ski and camp. Dad called Big Lake, “the mudhole”, and he was right. The lake is an oxbow––a curved stretch of water left behind when a river takes a shortcut across one of its loops.  Big Lake is a former loop of the Missouri River. The bottom is sand and mud and when you stood in the lake, you would typically sink about 4-5 inches.  The water of course was very murky, a very dark greenish color.  But hell, we lived in Iowa and needed a lake nearby to water ski and this was it. It was a big enough mud hole. Back then the Park was not well maintained and it was pretty much, “anything goes”.  The Park also had a lot of damage from the almost yearly floods.  The Missouri River was not far and seem like every year, the flood waters would take another toll on the Park.

Fireworks were legal.  We could terrorize the place with our mini-bikes, thinking we were Hell’s Angles or something. You could set up a camp site at any spot that looked good. There were beer parties everywhere.  People went crazy on the lake.  Boat drivers were out of control. There was no clear traffic path or cruising rout on the lake. It seemed like everyone just went any which way they wanted to. Boats parked anywhere and everywhere with sunbathers and beer drinkers. I guess you might say this was hillbilly camping. For a young teen what is not to like? This was my kind of camping!

 I recall one interesting occurrence when some young men (they had to be drunk) were using their speedboat to pull a picnic table in the lake. I thought that was hilarious at the time, although thinking back the sheer physics of pulling a picnic table across the lake with a speed boat seems……impossible.   I not sure how it turned out but I am guessing not well.

Of course, being a teenager, on many of the trips I would bring my buddies. As I recall it was mostly my good friend Randy who also enjoyed the chaos of this teenager paradise.  Fireworks being legal and cheap were the typical go to. Pop bottle rocket fights, shooting rockets at passing boats and of course the thing we are most proud of, we blew up an outhouse.  Since the facilities sucked at Big Lake, running water, showers and a flushing toilet were far and few between. Didn’t matter to us anyway. We got a brilliant idea to construct a makeshift bomb from all the fireworks we bought.  We then ignited it and dropped it in the outhouse pit.  Kaboom!……..It sounded worse that it actually was.  We expected shit to fly to the next county. The wood structure was still intact. We didn’t destroy it, and hardly did any damage, as people were using it later in the day.  Just another day at Big Lake.

Of course we could swim anywhere. There might have been a designated swimming area, but who cared. Just jump in the water with your inner tube and enjoy.  We never used sun screen (I am not even sure we had any), and I would always leave a trip red as a lobster.  I remember one weekend there was a large crowd gathering around an area where people were swimming. Moments later, they dragged a body on shore. Some poor soul drowned.  Sad, and the water was so murky I am not sure how they found the body.  After the ambulance left, sure enough there were people swimming in the same place like nothing happened.

Sometimes we would travel to Big Lake just for an afternoon of skiing. Dad would remove the pickup camper; we would load up and off we would go. Randy and I would get a couple of lawn chairs and sit in the back of the pickup as we traveled the 65 miles down there.   Now think about this.  We were sitting in the back of a pickup, pulling a boat trailer down a rough road (dad always said Missouri had the worst roads, “you always know when you cross the state line as the roads get bad”) at about 60 miles an hour. Looking back, if there was an accident we would surely have been thrown 100 yards.  We never gave it one thought back then. Picture below is just an example of how we may have looked rolling down the road.

We were invincible. My buddy Randy remembers to this day my dad looking at us through the rear window of the pickup and then flipping us the bird as we rolled down the highway.   A 50ish man flips us the bird. No reason, just does it. That was dad. Spontaneous with a kids sense of humor and adventure.

Sure, we were onery, but to us it was all good fun. As teenagers our brains were not quite hitting on all cylinders, and we did some really stupid things.  I am sure Big Lake is a nice place now (I read on the Web they have improvement projects going on), but back then it was paradise to us.

For our first boat, we had a 16-foot fishing boat powered by a 35 HP Mercury motor as shown below.   Notice for the throttle and steering you had a handle for the control at the back of the boat. You had to have your hand on the throttle at all times.  The very bottom picture is a clip from an old video of us skiing at Bagnell Dam of the Ozarks. We loved to go there for our official family vacations. Big beautiful clear lake, and very clean campgrounds.  We must have been quite a sight water skiing behind that boat. Everyone else on the lake had big beautiful speed boats.  No matter, that ole Merc would do the trick. I think we surprised many when we gave it the gas. With dad at the back steering and one of us kids in front to balance the weight, we could easily pull a skier up. One time we ran this motor so hard the head bolts vibrated out. When my brother Mark learned to slalom, the boat would not pull him up on one ski, so we had to get him up on two skis, and then he would drop one off. Whatever it took, we would get it done. Those fancy boats had nothing on us.

Dad was a pretty big guy for those days and we tried to pull him up on skies. We ended up dragging him through the water and he lost his swim trunks!!! That old Merc could just not quite get him up. Ha what a sight. I swear I can still hear him cussing as he swam around looking for his swimming trunks. Mom laughed until her side ached. What a sight!

The photo above is an example of what the boat looked like.

This is the actual boat from an old home movie clip. This was a movie made in the Ozarks with mom on shore filming this crazy crew.  

Dad would finally let me drive as I gained some experience. I am not sure I had his full confidence, but he relented. I loved to be the captain of those boats. I was master and commander, king of the ocean. Passing others in our Merc powered fishing boat or Crestliner, with brother trailing behind on skies. My friends sitting next to me as we bounced across the waves. What a sight.

Did you ever listen to the song “Drive” by Alan Jackson? Man, that song sums it up for me. I loved the way it made me feel when driving these boats or that old pickup that dad first taught me how to use a clutch. I was king when dad let me drive. “A piece of my childhood that will never be forgotten”.