My family genealogy indicates that there were sturdy pioneers on both sides who broke the sod in the Dakotas, roughing it with mud and wattle huts and rude campfires until they could afford the time and money to put up brick and cement domiciles — which they promptly moved into and never again showed the least sign of moving out of to enjoy Mother Nature’s wonders. They’d had enough of her blizzards and locusts, droughts and floods, mosquitoes and sunstroke. Indoor plumbing spelled the death of the outdoorsy spirit for the Torkildsons.
No surprise, then, that my parents, the direct descendants of these pioneers, had no sympathy toward my childhood requests to go camping. What? Leave their comfortable home — with its modern kitchen, entertaining television, and cozy beds — for the howling wilderness? Not on your wet bar, kiddo!
This makes it all the more mystifying as to why my parents and some of my aunts and uncles one day decided to go to a state park 50 miles away for a weekend of camping. When I goggled in disbelief at the announced trek, I was told to stop making funny faces and help pack the car. We were having what is technically known as a family reunion.
Tents were still made of bulky canvas in those years, and so our family’s tent, even when folded and sat on by the entire family, barely fit into the trunk of the car. Everything else had to be packed around us kids in the back seat. I was wedged in so tightly that when we arrived at the campsite, it took two grown men, my dad and Uncle Jim, to pull me out — accompanied by an avalance of Coleman lanterns and mosquito coils.
The initial set-up was rather fun. I got to pound metal pegs into the ground with a bung starter that my dad had liberated from Aarone's Bar and Grill.
But then Aunt Cecelia took over, and everything went to the devil.
Aunt Cecelia was Uncle Jim’s wife. She was not Scandinavian in the least, unlike the rest of the family. She was of determined Bohemian stock, and the blood of Jan Hus, along with his itch to reform everything, ran in her pudgy veins. She immediately deputized all the men to go fishing, so we could enjoy a fish fry that night. It was an overcast day, with an occasional drizzle and a stout breeze. Not a good day for angling. But Aunt Cecelia overruled the menfolk and sent them on their way to the nearby river with a flea in their ear.
They caught nothing. But they were not unduly worried, since they had brought along a case of Hamm’s beer with their tackle, consuming it studiously as they waited for a nibble. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, a tornado roaring through the camp would not have unduly worried them by the time they unsteadily returned from the river.
In the meantime, Aunt Cecelia had asked the phlegmatic park ranger where the ‘powder room’ was, and had been shown a ghastly tin shack with fat blue flies buzzing around it like an aerodrome. There was nothing quaint or rustic about it, especially the odor, and Aunt Cecelia immediately set up a to-do that caused pine cones to fall in heaps from the nearby conifers. She attempted to corral the women into cleaning up the pestilential place, but they were made of sterner stuff than their menfolk. They mutinied. They were not going to spend their time swabbing out toilets — they had enough of that at home!
While Aunt Cecelia fumed, they built a jolly great bonfire and got all us kids sticks so we could roast wieners and marshmallows.
When the men finally returned with not even a carp to show for their efforts, everyone was inclined to shrug their shoulders and let it go; there were plenty of cans of pork-and-beans and a dozen loaves of Wonder bread (and another whole case of Hamm’s surreptitiously tucked under the sleeping bags). Beans, bread, and some rousing choruses of the Crow Song (Krakevisa, in Norwegian), and we could call it a successful family reunion even though it was starting to drizzle steadily.
But Aunt Cecelia, balked of her sanitary crusade, flung aside the sleeping bags, clamped on to the case of beer, bundled it down to the river, and threw it in. Then she demanded that we all pack up and go to Jax Cafe back in Nordeast Minneapolis for a proper meal of prime rib and baked potatoes.
Confusion and discord followed. Uncle Jim glumly began packing up his family’s gear, as did several others, but a few hardy souls refused to budge and declared their intention of sticking it out for another day, and Aunt Cecelia could take her bossy ways and stick ’em where the sun don’t shine. You betcha!
My dad wanted to go home, but Mom had her dander up now and told us we would stay the night — especially since the reservation fee for the campsite was nonrefundable.
"Ungkarer er heldig" my dad kept muttering to himself as the drizzle turned into a cold steady rain.
Our tent, which had been hastily purchased at an Army/Navy Surplus store just prior to the outing, was as porous as a sponge. And the rain continued the next morning.
We returned home cold and hungry.
There have been other family reunions since that time — but none of them have been held anywhere near the outdoors, or very far away from Jax Cafe -- they offered a complimentary schooner of Hamm's with every roast chicken dinner.
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