• I think it’s fairly safe to say that many of the best memories in my short life have been of camping. Not setting up, of course (I really could have done without all of my father’s yelling, thank you very much) but the actual camping part. My tent would be set up around 30 feet from the family RV on my grandmother’s 10 acre plot in the backwater area of the Southern Tier. Out of the back of my tent I could see and hear the rushing waters of what in three miles became the Allegheny River. Out the front, I could see and hear the constant hum of the highway any time of the day or night; although the big rig trucks were prettiest after the sun set over the distant hills of the valley in which we stayed for a portion of the summer.
    Aside from another RV, a few tents, and several vehicles belonging to other family members, there wasn’t much else to do. Aside from the generators and the RVs, we had no electricity. There was no running water, and it has only been in the past few years that we’ve upgraded from a hole in the ground to the small tow-along camper belonging to my late great-grandmother which had a removable septic tank that has been appropriately dubbed “ Old Crapper.” There were also go-karts, which were often in repair from one of us kids doing something stupid again and crashing into a tree, flipping upside down, crashing into the crick, or that one time my younger brother and his best friend crashed straight into the rear end of our RV (and didn’t that make my mother upset). We brought along a few hand-held video games, some board games, a few books, and both mine and my mother’s laptops (for movies), but between a quarter and half way through the two-to-three-week stay (depending on vacations and holidays), we often found ourselves bored, and had to resort to a few bins filled with (slightly illegal) fireworks and each other for entertainment.
    Around the time we became bored, we (that is to say, the other children and I) looked forward longingly to the day or days that we would go shopping. About one half mile up the main road (and by main road, I mean the closest road that was asphalt and not dirt or gravel) was a small combination gas station and convenience store, but unless our mission was to get beer, cigarettes, junk food, ice, and/or weak coffee that I now swear must be boiled toilet water with coffee grounds floating at the bottom (and sometimes that was our mission), that was the wrong direction.
    Our other route-the one to get real groceries when the need arose- was to go three miles in the other direction down the main road to a little backwater town. To be fair, the town did have a “mall” and a “community college,” but the mall consisted of five stores connected on the inside (three of which were restaurants) and the community college was three gated buildings that also served as the community center for the town in general. Nevertheless, it’s a pretty, quaint, little place, and the antiquaries and pawn shops often carry an item or two of interest. It also isn’t a bad thing that the grocery store had indoor plumbing, which was a large portion of the reason that we children liked going so much. It was always nice to head back to camp, though, if only to see what kind of stupidity my father and his brothers had been up to with my step-grandfather while we were away with the other women.
    It may sound like camp was boring, since we felt the need to bring electronics and books with us in order to entertain ourselves. And to be honest, yes, it was. However, the way the weeks worked out usually meant long periods of nothing to do broken up by short spurts of excitement. This usually came in the form of one of the adults (usually a male… and usually my father) either suggesting or deciding to light a pounder off. You see, a pounder is a large plastic bottle filled up to the brim with a pound of gun powder. We poke a hole in the top, feed a fuse through the hole, light it, and throw it. We don’t run away or go and hide; we usually just hope we’re far enough away not to get caught in the blast, and that is usually enough. Boredom isn’t even the only occasion to light one. Whenever a neighbor annoys us, we light one off as close as we can get to them. If we want to scare the crap out of some one (in more ways than one, that is) one might be lit just behind Old Crapper when it’s being occupied by someone. We’ve even lit one before tossing it into the crick a few times, resulting in a rather large splash of muddy water. One time, we even wedged one down a hole in a tree stump to see what would happen. The only time a pounder didn’t go off was the one time we tried to light it off in the swill hole out front. The thick, rank muck refused to allow even the waterproof fuses to stay lit long enough to ignite the gunpowder. But even when we run out of pounders, there are ways to find entertainment.
    Our second source of great entertainment is the go-karts we bring with us on a trailer attached to the RV. My family brings a pair of two-seaters; one red and one blue. Between the other family members that stay one or both of the two multi-week stints at camp, we usually end up with another two-seater and two or three single-seat go-karts. The go-karts we drive aren’t necessarily what first comes to mind when one says the word. Rather than a small, close-to-the-ground vehicle that buzzes along at fifteen or twenty miles per hour, our go karts are significantly larger, with steel roll-cages, and we often drive them around the half-mile track on the property at between twenty five and thirty five miles an hour. And those cages come in handy. We’ve been up trees, into trees, stuck on bushes and in thick mud. We’ve driven over the embankment of the crick, and gotten ourselves so out of sorts that we’ve been upside down.
    One year, my brother and I were each allowed a guest for a long weekend at camp. My brother decided to teach his guest how to drive the go-karts, so he began showing him how to work the controls while driving himself. His friend was distracted by something off to the left, and as my brother turned to look, the vehicle veered to the left. And into our RV. My father and I, who had been making sandwiches inside the RV felt a sudden, sharp rumble followed by a set of expletives (courtesy of my brother). When we went outside to investigate, we saw the go-kart crashed into the RV, the bumper wedged inside its steel roll-cage. My brother and his friend evacuated the go-kart, and we were able to yank it out from being entangled with the bumper. The bumper had been less than six inches from impaling my brother’s head. The next day, we dubbed the go-kart “fixed enough” and my brother took it for a few laps to make sure nothing was permanently damaged. However his friend, for some reason, politely declined when offered the driver’s seat.
    Our favorite way to combat boredom, however, comes in the form of several large plastic bins full of fireworks. Since New York State, for some reason, prohibits the use of fireworks, we light them off around 4th of July weekend only. There is, of course the main show, where what was bought from the Phantom Fireworks stores of either Pennsylvania or Ohio are shown off. We use fountains, multi-shots, and single shots in the most creative ways we can think of. While most shows would have one stand at least dozens of yards away, we sit about 15 feet away from where my father, his cousin-in-law, and my step-grandfather stand atop a storage container and light the displays. The explosives whistle and boom with great echoes through the valley, as impressive patterns of light decorate the sky. Even those on the highway stop to watch our show. One year, we even had 15 cars stopped on the side of the highway to watch the excitement, and in memorial to Nana (the great grandmother who bestowed upon us 'Old Crapper), we launched a few mortars with her ashes inside so that she might always be in the place she so loved to go for vacation.
    The other wonderful firework we love to take advantage of is bottle rockets. We used to aim the things at the crick to see and hear the underwater explosions. Then we learned that if you were to rip the stick out of the rocket, there was little, if any way to control where it went (needless to say, this became our favorite hobby very fast). Finally, in what started out as a spur-of-the-moment idea involving salt potatoes, we discovered the excitement that was blowing up extra food with bottle rockets. Yes, food. Salt potatoes explode into chunks, or just vaporize when the bottle rockets combust. Hot dogs are peeled and ripped to shreds. Strawberries and several other fruits send showers of juice and flesh in every direction. Snack cakes leave a disgusting spray of creamy white filling nearly everywhere. And raw eggs, amazing things that they are, result in a wondrous halo made up of a mist of white and yolk that is nearly inescapable when one stands any closer than twelve feet to the explosion.
    As hard as I am trying, I just can’t seem to scratch even the surface of the experience that is camping with my family. There just don’t seem to be enough words for it. While I’ve only begun to describe the ways we have fun, I haven’t even gotten a chance to explain the long days that are nothing of rain and rousing rounds of “Name That Debris” (pronounced “day-briss”) that ultimately end up with people arguing over whether what’s currently floating along the quickly over-flowing crick is a Pepsi bottle or the wrapper to a pack of napkins. Nor have I gotten to explain the satisfaction of spending days in the crick swimming, building up the small waterfall by hand, washing dishes, and even lugging driftwood from the island over to the camp to use as firewood that evening. There is no room, nor words to describe how much better food seems to taste cooked on a wood fire. And I don’t think that words can ever express the pure and simple pleasure that is late nights with the extended family, staring silently into the campfire as the soft glow of lightning bugs flickers by in the background.