Memories

Today it is rainy and cold.  It is a like a late November day, NOT late October.  I am tired of the dreariness of it all.  While driving to school to help in Sam's class, I saw a Cadillac Escalade pulling a boat.  Not a speed boat, but a cruising boat.  The kind you load up with a bunch of friends, a cooler of beer and go water skiing or just chillaxin'.  I thought to myself, self, this would be a good topic for the ole blog.  A lot of other things happened today, but I think I am going to focus on this.

When I was a kid, we pulled a cruising boat, not with a Cadillac, but with a Ford LTD station wagon, with wood paneling.  It was a beaut.  My Dad totaled it when he drove into a parked car, because he was looking at a girl in short shorts in our neighbors garage, when he was driving me home from a friends, but I digress.  This Ford pulled the boat, ladened with everything we needed to camp for a few days.  Which is to say it was filled to the brim.  It is a testament to my mother's love for my father, that she put up with this... it would take weeks of prep work to get ready.

We would go camping and skiing at Lake Havasu or Lake Mojave. This entailed a two day adventure, or so it seemed, my mom just said it was really about 8 hours.  Anyway, the car was loaded with at least 6 kids and my parents.  We sat 3 up front, 4 in the back and the rest in the way back.  It was long, it was boring, and it was hot.  The station wagon always over heated heading up the grade.  It was over 100 degrees outside and we ran the heat to cool the car off, don't even think about asking for A/C.  We would stop, pile out of the car, think clown car, and wait.  My dad would cuss a lot.  Then when all was well, we would pile back in.

When we arrived, my mother would back the boat down the launch pad, with my dad screaming directions.   Left, left, your left, your left.  It is truly amazing they did not divorce over these trips.  Then all the kids would sit on the bow, and my mom and dad would squish in around all our stuff, while we boated to a camp site, for 2 days, sometimes longer, of camping.

I have great memories of these trips.  My family laughs about it every year.  We all had a moment of silence when we tossed the custom built camping equipment my dad built.

Seeing that Caddie with the boat reminded me of all of this.  Something tells me that the kids in that family probably do not have the same white trash memories I do.