Home Is Where We Pitch Our Tent

Memorial Day weekend is the official kickoff to summer and the vacation season. For some folks, vacations conjure up foreign locales, fancy hotels with room service and fine dining. But those experiences were never mine.  

When I was young, we went primitive camping at places with pit toilets and murky ponds. My father erected our big blue camping tent, my mother cooked on the propane stove, and my brother and I swam and had some of the best times of our short lives.

In 1969, my parents bought a parcel of land in Fogland, and we were the proud owners of an idyllic piece of land by the sea. We had no shelter and plumbing facilities, but solving the shelter problem was not too difficult. We erected our tent. At night we used a Coleman lantern for light and sometimes a kerosene heater for warmth. We slid into the comfy down of our green plaid sleeping bags and were soothed to sleep by the incessant breaking waves. My father hired a local firm to dig a shallow point well, and my parents spent that entire first summer building a concrete-block well house to protect the pump. Storing our food in an ice chest, we cooked hot dogs, hamburgers and fish on a charcoal-fired hibachi grill. For entertainment we listened to the battery-operated radio or played board games.

Our next makeshift residence was a 1962 Ford Econoline camping van. The aluminum roof of the vehicle popped up to create standing room, and it slept four comfortably. I slept in a hanging bunk in the top section, and another canvas bunk hung over the front seats for my brother. The dining table lifted off and fit between two benches to create sleeping quarters for two, where my parents slept in their double sleeping bag. A hand-pumped sink with a large storage tank in the base filled the space behind the driver’s seat, and a propane gas stove and ice box occupied the rear of the passenger seat near the double metal doors.

Our next upgrade was to a 24-foot Nomad camping trailer. My mother went to the and filed for the proper permits to install a septic system on the land, and my father hired a crew to lay the piping. We would now have electricity, water and sewerage. The trailer included a gas stove, refrigerator, sink with running water, toilet and mini bathtub. My brother and I slept in two single beds in the rear of the trailer, while my parents slept on the convertible couch. At night we watched television on a 13-inch, black-and-white set.

Over the next few years, my husband and I added some furniture to the interior of the trailer, a playpen, baby walker, carriage, swing and portable crib, to accommodate our baby daughter. Three years later the place was well furnished for the arrival of our baby son.

When the trailer became too confining for our growing family, my father had a pre-fab mobile home transported from New Hampshire. We now had all the amenities: a large living room furnished with an old loveseat, rocker and chair that my parents purchased when they married; a dining room complete with a maple table, six chairs and a chandelier; a deluxe kitchen with banks of cabinets, stove, refrigerator and sink; and a laundry room with washer, dryer, sink and cabinets. A long hallway led to a small bedroom; a bathroom with two mirrored sinks, toilet and bathtub; and a large master bedroom with a double bed, built-in chests and closet. My father constructed wooden stairs for both the front and back entrances. Castoffs from my parent’s house, an old stereo/record turntable and color television set, entertained us on hot and humid Sunday afternoons, while the window air conditioner purred in the background.

Decades later, the summer house is much the same. On Memorial Day I took out the vacuum, and over the next few hours covered every square inch of surface, sucking up dust, pollen, cobwebs and dog hair. My mother polished the furniture she bought as a bride in 1950. My father admired the old gleaming paneling.

Endeared to this place, we know that furnishings do not make a home. People do.

ABOUT SEA, SKY & SPIRIT: Drawing from the many seasonal faces of Fogland, Linda Andrade Rodrigues paints vignettes about nature and spirituality.