When I was just a tad, my dad would talk about what life was like when he was my age. As I listened I remember thinking: Holy Moley he’s ancient! This was primarily because of the “modern” childhood that I was enjoying, so that his upbringing seemed only a half-step removed from living in yurts and moving with the herds.
The other day I was mentally comparing my own boyhood to the one available to today’s kids, and it was even more dramatic. For no particular reason I made a short list of items taken for granted today that have arrived during my lifetime.
- Jet planes
- Television
- Computers
- Internet
- Atomic energy
- Atomic bombs
- Antibiotics
- Heart surgery
- Drones
- IV pumps for hospitals
- Antidepressants
- CT scans
- Tom Petty
- MRIs
- Portable electric tools of all kinds
- Microwave ovens
- Tubeless tires
- Slow cookers
- Food processors
- Plastics for home use
- Napalm
- Cell phones
- Transplant surgery
- Ballpoint pens
******
******
******
The last few years something has gone wrong on each of our first campouts that might have been avoided by a test run at home. So Wednesday night I camped in the backyard, testing backpacking tent, inflatable sleeping pad, sleeping bag, and personal resolve. Robin did not join me, but did not call in the mental health SWAT team, either. So there is that.
The evening temperature was lovely as I slipped into the sleeping bag and tried to find where the pad was located under me. Somehow every time I shifted the thing would move of its own accord to a new place in the tent’s interior. At no time during the night was I fully on top of it. This inconvenience was soon followed by the required number of zipper snags.
But I was still only slightly uncomfortable so I settled back and watched the full moon for a while. It was brilliant, and lit the yard like a searchlight. It was so bright that if you had dropped a handful of peas in the grass you could have searched for them in the light of that moon.
You don’t search for peas in the grass at night? Who raised you, anyway?
Once I had settled, the cats both wandered over and stood outside my tent, peering in at me. They did this for several minutes and I could only guess at what they might be thinking.
Willow: WTF is he doing?
Poco: I have no idea
Willow: You’ve been with him way longer than I have, and he’s not done this before?
Poco: Not once
Willow: Think this is it? The last marble has dropped?
Poco: Your guess is as good as mine
Willow: Wonder if he’s got any food in there?
Later they both ventured inside and walked around sniffing everything, especially Willow, who has a nose like a bloodhound. Once their curiosity was assuaged they left, never to return. I finally fell asleep in that lunar daylight until about three A.M., when I received the nightly call from my plumbing system and had to get out of the tent to find a place to relieve myself. In that brightness I felt that public exposure was not the order of the day, so I went indoors and used the bathroom. At that point I decided that the gear testing session was over, and I would finish out the evening on the futon.
One thing is mildly interesting. Sleeping on the ground at my time of life is not much more uncomfortable than on a bed. There are already a host of creaks and stiffnesses associated with being horizontal anywhere for several hours, and the rougher surface of the ground is only one more layer added on.
Getting up in the morning is another matter. I can roll out of a bed without too much difficulty, but climbing to my feet after several hours on the ground made me wish I had brought along a skidloader with its operator to scoop me up and set me standing.
******
My friend Rich Kaplan and I camped out together scads of times. Being abysmally ignorant of the cultural customs of any group other than my own,* I once asked him if this sort of activity was popular with Jews. He said that other than summers in the Catskills it was less popular, and that he was one of the exceptions.
In fact, he said, there was even a song about it. When we returned to our homes after one such adventure, he sent me this mp3.
*Socially inhibited white people
******
Not everyone I have ever met is fond of sleeping out under the stars. A neighbor in Buffalo NY had served in the Army during the Korean War, experiencing the great outdoors in the mud, snow, rain, and exquisitely poor hygiene of the Korean winter. He returned home vowing to never sleep anywhere but under a roof for the rest of his life.
Then there was the RV salesperson in Yankton SD who was showing Robin and I a hard-sided camper. His spiel included this golden paragraph which we still find amusing:
“And one other thing to keep in mind when comparing this unit to one of those pop-up campers with the canvas sides. Someone can stab right through those walls with a knife, and you never have to worry about it with this beauty.”
Oddly enough, I’ve been camping for three-score years without ever encountering a stabbing.
******
******
Robin took a call from a grandchild in California earlier this week. The young woman, a very bright high schooler, had been given the assignment of interviewing some senior person about the Cold War. Looking for the personal side.
The call triggered some memories in another senior, me. The first memory that flashes when the subject of the Cold War comes up, at least for this armchair cowboy, is the Cuban missile crisis of October 16-29, 1962. I was in my first year of being a new medical student and new husband and definitely not looking for additional stressors.
But here they were, the Kennedy Brothers and Nikita Khrushchev threatening mischief on a grand scale over a handful of Russian missiles inconveniently being parked in Cuba, and which were irritatingly being pointed at the U.S..
Rumors flew, one of them being that here was going to be a massive military call-up. This was not music to my ears, what with my being 22 years of age and all. Eminently draft-able.
But then, thought I, why worry? If this was to be the big one I (and everybody else in Minneapolis) would be vaporized so fast I wouldn’t even have time to button my new army shirt and zip up my new army pants. So being drafted wouldn’t be such a big deal after all.
And then the crisis vanished, the Cold Warriors retreated, and I didn’t get that uniform until 1969, when the Viet Nam War was burning high and now there I was looking smart in my Air Force blues. But I was not fighting Cubans, or Russians, or even North Vietnamese. I was squabbling occasionally with Americans who were bringing their children to the hospital at Ehrling Bergquist USAF Hospital in Bellevue NE. Squabbling because they sometimes wanted more child care than the USAF was willing or able to provide for them.
While I was (ahem) routinely able to do the work of two normal pediatricians, I barely made it by when asked to cover for three, and the need … well … the need was for six. Another story.
******
Little Home In The Valley 