This is my mom and my stepdad, who by the way was more of a dad then my biological dad was.
He was 21 years older than my mom. He loved to go camping and fishing. He is the one who taught me how to fish. They would take me out of school for sometimes up to 3 weeks at a time to go. I remember having to get all of my assignments from my teachers. I would do all this schoolwork and have it finished by the time we got to where we were going. Upon returning to school I would always be ahead of the other students because they hadn't gotten as far as the teacher thought they would. I don't suppose they allow this type of behaviour anymore.... Although I am the youngest of 3 it felt like I was an only child growing up. There are so many years between us that my siblings were already out of the house by the time I was 9. I was lonely a lot... We started camping in a tent. I remember being told don't touch the tent when it was raining, for if you did this the tent would then leak. After the tent my stepdad got one of those little campers that you put into the back of a pickup truck. I remember riding inside of it laying in the upper bed that was above the cab of the truck. I hear that is against the law now. After that camper my stepdad got an Airstream camper that was pulled behind our truck. Sometimes I would also ride in it while we were traveling. Another against the law thing. Then my stepdad bought this school bus from our local school district.
He turned this bus into a camper. I was allowed to "help". I used hammer to pound some nails in and helped measure this and that, hold this and that. It was a very nice camper when he finished with it. My mom made curtains for it. He painted it white.
Later he painted parts of it orange, you can't see it in this picture but the sides of it had an orange stripe where usually you would see the school name.
We would go to different places camping and fishing. Sometimes there was another couple, friends of my parents that had a Winnebago, that would travel with us. Here is a picture of my mom and the lady. We were in Hot Springs, Arkansas, it was Christmas. There was a babbling brook close by. I would have rather been home for Christmas though....just didn't seem like Christmas to me.....
You know, it's funny, but as a kid I used to dream of that lifestyle. I even had dreams about touring around America in a converted bus (an idea I got from a corny Brit movie called Summer Holiday where a gang of teenagers travel Europe in a converted London bus).
ReplyDeleteI understand the bit about lonliness more than you'd think. Being an only child who had difficulty in making many friends, I felt that quite a bit as a child.
Ah yes, I know about difficulty in making friends. With me being gone so much from school, I was also away from what little friends I did have...I still have that difficulty...
DeleteI always wanted to travel in the back when we had a trailer. Tom always told me it was dangerous and against the law.
ReplyDeleteIt's one of those things that sounds like it was more fun for your parents than it might have been for you. My sister, who is 9 years younger than us, would really understand the "only child but not really" feeling. I liked the pictures. That sure is how they did it back then. Nice blog, Mary.
Yes your sister probably would understand. Thanks for your kind words...I can't figure out why my pics are scanning into my computer so small ever since I got the computers with windows 7...
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