Never
did take much to the great outdoors, having become attached at an
early age to such amenities as lights, water and four walls.
On vacation trips, my idea of camping out was to lounge in a lawn
chair by a motel swimming pool with a good book and a cold can of
Coca-Cola. Well, don't knock it. At least I was outdoors.
Once I tried roughing it on a fishing trip with my parents in the
thickest, darkest, most intimidating patch of piney woods in Angelina
County. The minute we arrived, I was asking, "Can we go now?"
That night while mother and daddy slept comfortably under a tent,
I hovered in the car, wide-awake to weird noises of the night. After
the rains came, I felt stranded, reluctant to make a sloshing trek
through the mud from the car to the tent.
No sir. Not in the dark.
With creatures unknown lurking about.
Neither mother nor daddy volunteered to come after me and carry me
o'er the mud puddles to the tent. After all, I was 12 years old and
big for my age. Can you blame them?
So I spent the most miserable night of my dozen years inside the car,
enduring eerie and unidentifiable sound effects. I thought, but wasn't
sure, that some of those unsettling sounds came from panthers. They
didn't call that football team the Lufkin Panthers for nothing!
At the break of dawn, my parents were brewing coffee over a campfire
and making plans for fishing in the Angelina River in my granddaddy's
boat.
I was the only member of a large family of fishing enthusiasts who
refused to get in that boat.
My cousins had told me too many horror stories of snakes slithering
alongside the boat in the middle of the river. Laughing aloud, our
granddaddy would collect a reptile with an oar and then swing it back
and forth, scaring the heck out of everybody.
Everybody laughed when telling about it. I couldn't even muster a
smile.
As mother and daddy were preparing to go fishing, they asked me to
join them. "That's OK," I told them. "I'll just stay here and watch
out for everything."
Hark! In the distance we heard an automobile approaching.
Uncle Dave was coming to see us.
I can't recall now if he was just checking on us or bringing more
provisions.
For several more days, mother and daddy enjoyed fishing and camping
without a worry in the world about snakes or panthers or anything
else that the primeval forest could produce.
My granddaddy joined them that weekend, and I have no idea whether
he pulled his famous snake 'n' oar trick on them in the fishing boat.
I wasn't around to find out.
As you may have guessed, I returned with Uncle Dave to my favorite
place to visit, the great city of Lufkin.
Ah, it was good to be back in my comfort zone … movies at the downtown
Pines Theater,
shopping at if she and her mother were enjoying camping out.
"No," she replied. "We city girls."
© Wanda Orton
Baytown Sun Columnist
"Wandering" April
17, 2017 column |
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