The Worst Funny Tent Camping Ever

When I was growing up, our family did not have a lot of money for travel, so we went camping. Our accommodation of choice was usually a big green Coleman tent. This was a tent from the days before fiberglass poles held together with bungee cords. This behemoth had probably thirty or so individual aluminum pole segments that were coded with tiny dots punched in the ends. Then there were the stakes, structurally important. And there was of course the tent itself, waterproofed heavy canvas, huge and closely resembling a lichen-covered boulder. It took about an hour to set up under good conditions. This assumed daylight, low wind, two competent adults, and that the directions for tent assembly had actually made it into the car. With this tent, we did not go camping - we went car camping. No backpacked trips into the wilderness for us; we wouldn't have made it fifty yards up the trail with the Beast. They never said, but I suspect the strain of repeated tent assembly on those camping trips may have been a factor in the breakup of my parents' marriage.

This tent accompanied us on a trip to Indianapolis. My mother was visiting colleagues there, and then we were to go on to Brown County State Park and do a little family camping. We had stopped for dinner, gotten stuck in traffic, and were now entering the park close to sunset. The ranger assigned us what he claimed was a lovely, quiet campsite not too close to others, with a great view. As we pulled into the site, we certainly did see a lovely view of the sun setting. Goodbye, daylight!

We pulled all the sleeping bags out of the back and then the strongest in our party hoisted Big Green up and out. Then we began the process of wrestling it out of the carrier sack. Unlike modern tents, this fabric was not slippery in the least. My mother had lent it out to some friends for THEIR camping trip and they had not repacked it well. Later on in life I assisted at the birth of a calf. Getting the tent out of the bag was more strenuous than birthing the calf, although admittedly less sticky. Finally the Monster was ready to be unrolled and the long process of fitting together the many little pieces of aluminum pole in the ever fading daylight could begin. The bugs were just getting hungry by then, and we had forgotten our mosquito repellent.

As I mentioned before, there were some structurally important stakes that held the tent up. On a previous camping trip we had neglected to bring a hammer and used a rock to pound the stakes in. My dad only lost one fingernail. This time we had remembered the hammer, and as the oldest child I was tasked with staking the tent out. The poles were coming together under the dim rays of the setting sun augmented with a flashlight held not quite still enough by my younger sister. I was ready for some serious pounding to get out the aggressions of three hours in the backseat of the car. Hammer in hand, I began to search for the stakes.

They did not appear to be in the pole bag. They were not inside the poles. We unzipped the tent and held it up so we could have a look inside - no stakes. We patted the tent down. No stakes. The family "friends" had not returned the stakes with the tent after their camping trip.

Not willing to give in just yet, my mother sent me in search of sticks. After wandering in the dark and being attacked by vicious mosquitoes, I found a few, and we pounded them in. To no one's surprise, they immediately snapped. Next, I was sent to the camp store to see if they had any spare stakes. They were out, but expecting some "next week."

It was time to call the camping trip off. We shoved everything back in the trunk and the ranger found us a cabin for the night. While replacement stakes would have been easy to buy, I don't remember ever going camping again as a child. And when I go camping now, we put the tent up in the backyard a day or two before to make sure all the pieces are there.

Brown County State Park

Abe Martin Lodge