A Time to Remember

I can remember my very first camping trip for two reasons, it was my first camping trip and my sixth birthday. Mom had bought me one of those little stuffed poodle dogs with the radio in its stomach. My mom took my brother, two uncles, two cousins, her youngest sister, and me, which were around my age ranging from six to eleven years old. We had watched something on television about someone camping and it looked like fun. Mom got everyone of us kids together and put us in her 1976 Nova, now this car was hardly big enough for all of our gear and us, but we managed. Mom's sister, Leola sat in front with my little brother who was three at the time in her lap. In the middle of them set on the “hump” was my youngest uncle, Bruce. In the back seat scrunched up together were my two cousins, my older uncle and myself. In the trunk were our food, pillows and blankets.
Now this was not planned out, so we had no tents, sleeping bags, Coleman stoves, or none of those fancy gadgets like we have now, but we thought we were really doing something special. So we called our campout “cowboy camping.” Well that’s about what it amounted up to.
So we get to our campsite over at the Saltpeter Cave in one of those big fields. Mom builds us up a fire to roast hotdogs. We had a couple jugs of Kool-aid so we were really styling. After we ate, we played tag and hide and seek, we ran across the old swinging bridge. Then at bedtime we all got our pillow and our blanket out of the trunk and curled up on the cold hard ground for our cowboy campout under the stars.
I don’t remember what time I woke up, I just remember waking up to the thunder and lightning and the hard, hard rain. We grabbed our pillow and our blankets and we ran all behind Mom, me holding to my uncle’s hand. We got to the old pavilion. We made our new beds on top of the picnic tables most blankets were wet. Richard Mullins, who lived over there and gave tours through the cave at the time brought us dry blankets God Bless his heart.
We were all settled in going to sleep again when the rain came down harder, the lightning brighter, the thunder came louder and all of us kids more scared. The pavilion was kind of dug out with about a foot high rock wall around it the back wall was rock and up against the hill, well the rain came in so fast and hard it became standing water in our little sanctuary. We got up to gather up our stuff our shoes and socks knee deep in water my little stuffed poodle radio floating on top of the water. That is it enough was enough so we packed up Mom's Nova and set out for home. Only this time we didn’t pack up so neatly. My cousins and I sat in the trunk and we held the lid up to keep it from conking us on the head. We were poised up on all those wet blankets, pillows, and a dozen eggs and a loaf of bread.