Car Camping: 50's Style

Some people in the 1950's probably had state of the art camping equipment, but we didn't. When it was time to go camping, we just loaded up the cars and went out in the woods.

I don't know if our camping trips were planned more than a week ahead of time. It depended on so many things: the weather, who was working, and of course, the health of the people involved. That would be my mom and dad, my brother Dave and I, and my dad's father and step mom. Mom and Dad would have been in their 30's at the time, Dave and I would have been grade school age, and my grandparents would have been in their 60's or early 70's.

My parents grew up in a little mill town called Bordeaux here in Washington. Dad moved there when he was about 6 in 1926, and Mom and her family arrived in 1933 when she was 10. Both of them were very familiar with the environment of a mill town and living in the woods. So, of course, they knew all the good places to go camping too. Their favorite was a place called Waddell Creek. My dad had adopted his family's speech patterns of Missouri, so to them it was called "waddle crick". When the mill closed in 1941 in Bordeaux the town closed too. Dad went in the Navy, and grandpa and grandma moved to Olympia where he went to work at another mill. After the war, my parents and Dave and I lived in Tumwater, WA.

Waddell Creek is located in the Black Hills of Thurston county, and at the time we went camping there, it was still wilderness with big fir trees, tiger lilies and wildlife in abundance. It seemed like it took forever to get there because the road to the camping area was gravel and if you were traveling together as we were you spaced your cars apart and drove slow to keep the dust down. No air conditioning in the cars in those days, so if the weather was hot we had the windows down for fresh air. If a car was coming from the opposite direction we were the fastest 'window rollers' on the planet. We were always on the lookout for deer, even during the day. Sometimes we would see quail along the road where they were eating gravel to clear their craws, and most times we would meet up with a big hulking logging truck barreling down the winding dusty road from the opposite direction. We gave them a wide berth and hoped that their load of logs was adequately secured!

At last, we would arrive at Waddell Creek about noon and everyone would pile out of the cars. Grandma and Mom would get out the chairs and blankets to sit on, while Grandpa and Dad would get the watermelon out of the trunk and one of them would tote it down to the creek to put it in the ice cold water to chill. We would have hot dogs, potato salad, olives and probably some potato chips too. Why is it that the very same food you eat at home tastes so much better when you are camping? Dad and Grandpa might have a beer, and us kids would have canned pop and water. Dave and I spent a lot of time down by the creek and we could get just as muddy and dirty as we wanted. I know I did because there used to be a picture (now missing) of me as a little girl with nothing on but my birthday suit and my butt is just covered in mud!

Our Grandpa was a man of many talents and virtues, and one of Dave's and my favorite memories of one of our camping trips was when Grandpa made us a waterwheel in a little calm section of the creek. We loved it! I think that same day he made whistles for us out of willow too. There is a certain fragrance when you are near a creek like that. It must come from the plants that grow and thrive there, not just the smell of water. As we would walk down the path to the creek you could tell you were getting close not just by the water rushing over the rocks and deadfall, but by the sounds of the birds who caught the bugs that lived there, and the very aroma of warm happy plants.

At the end of the day we would all settle down to sleep. Grandpa and Grandma in their '51 Ford, and Mom and Dad, with Dave and I, would sleep out on the ground by the campfire. Our big overstuffed quilts were so warm and cozy when it would cool off at night. Dave would sit for hours by the fire just keeping it going. We would drift off to sleep to the sounds of the campfire popping and sizzling, and a chorus of coyotes off in the distance. We got a rude awakening one night though. Grandpa and Grandma were of the age and stature that didn't accommodate sleeping on the ground, so as I said before, they were in their car. Grandpa was larger than Grandma, so he was in the back seat of the Ford. Grandma was sleeping in the front seat when all of a sudden she heard the coyotes really close and it startled her. She rolled just right and honked the horn accidentally. I believe we heard some conversation exchanged between Grandpa and Grandma, and no doubt there were some snickers from out by the campfire too. We laugh about that to this day. Poor Grandma, and we never let her live it down either. She was such a good sport though, she would just smile and say, "no" when we would ask her if she had heard any coyotes lately.

I cherish these memories so much because they can never be recreated. Where we camped is now a housing project with half a million dollar houses. That is so sad to me because I would love to be able to take our grandchildren and let them play in the woods like we did. It could happen, someday.