The first place I remember sleeping away from home was at a summer camp for Campfire Girls. There were canoes and a bunkhouse involved so I’m thinking it was a camp on lake but my memory isn’t all that clear on the details. I do remember making s’mores and going home with poison ivy and the Campfire Girls’ motto of "WoHeLo" which stood for "work, health, love." I want to believe we also sang the Campfire Girls’ official song back in the day but I just don’t know if memory and wishing I did got mixed up in my brain.
The next memorable place I slept away from home was on a vacation with my parents and I was probably fourteen at the time and we slept in a tourist trap kind of place that had a circle of tepees where travelers spent the night. Not authentic tepees made out of buffalo or deer hides but I was a kid and that didn’t matter in an era when my brother and I probably saw every black and white cowboys and Indians movie ever made. (And now that’s he’s an old man and living in the Memory Care building he’s back to watching them from morning to night. Note to my future cargivers: When I’m too old to remember how to change my TV channel put mine on HGTV or anything other than the old people channels. Why anyone wants to watch black and white after color was invented boggles my mind, but those channels are popular here in independent living, too, so just call me Bogglehead.)
Next up in the I-Slept-Around lineup was back here in Michigan in a cottage on Lake Michigan complete with sandy beaches and a peer where I soon learned that drawing boats coming and going was a great way to meet boys. Like the Campfire Girls' week-in-the-woods this one was also chaperoned by my mom. By then we’d moved up to be Horizon Girls and this was in our senior year. I have many fond and silly memories from that week at the beach but the one I’ll share is of my mom leaning out an attic dormer window with a broom ready to beat off the boys who were dangerously close to using that window to sneak into the house. Crowded behind her was a gaggle of screaming and laughing teenage girls.
Fast forward to a time after meeting my husband and on vacations we started out sleeping in the back of his pickup truck with sleeping bags but we soon graduated to having a camper cab in the back of the Chevy 4x4. (Not sure 'camper cab' is the correct term, but lets go with that for now.) One of those places we slept under the stars in the bed of the pickup truck I wrote about in a post titled The Happiest Day of my Life. It was written in 2012 and it my archive of memories it still lives up to that title. No bait-and-switching with that blog title.
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| Our cozy little family back in the day. |
I don’t remember why or when my husband decided to give up tent camping and buy a motor home. He called it our ‘Rolling Dog House’ and that might give you a clue. The dog we had before Levi and my husband were brothers by different mothers, as they say. And Don didn’t like leaving him at home and I wouldn’t let him take the dog if it was really hot. So even on day trips along Lake Michigan or to go to the heavy equipment bone yards across the state we’d take the motor home so Cooper could ride along. It was also a time in Don’s life when he was heavy into collecting his way across the country and near the end of trips it wasn’t unusual that we’d have to rent motel rooms because he had the motor home too loaded up with things for his gas-and-oil memorabilia collection and for resale in our antique booths. (Think American Pickers. We actually knew those guys before they had that TV show and Don did the same kind of picking as they did.)
The last memorable place I slept was in the same inn as Susan B. Anthony stayed in for a month. It’s a bed-and-breakfast in my favorite little tourist town on earth, Saugatuck, and my niece and I had a wonderful weekend that included going to a play at the local theater, driving along Lake Michigan and shopping main street. At one time I did a deep dive into all things related to getting women the right to vote so sleeping in the same place as Susan B. did was an awesome treat. She was the founder of the National Women's Suffrage Association and the bed and breakfast at one time had a bunkhouse wing with 16 bedrooms that housed 100 lumberjacks who worked the vast forest lands in the mid-to-late 1800s. Being in places with historical significance has always energized me a way that is hard to explain...like I'm a spear carrier on the timeline of humanity. Historical place remind us of what past generations have fought for, what we (hopefully) can build on it and then pass it on to the next generation.
There were other memorable place I’ve slept like on a steamship that sailed the Great Lakes and on top of a grave site during a low point in my young life and on a beach in Jamaica with a happy-happy rum buzz going on in my head, but we all have similar places we could catalog when we're as old as I am. And a second post that actually lives up to the title of this one? Don’t hold your breath waiting for it. Until someone gives me an expiration date I won’t be spilling my deepest, darkest secrets. ©
Until Next Wednesday…
* Photo at top is of the Park House Inn Bed and Breakfast in Sautatuck.
I recently read a little book titled, "The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning," by Margareta Magnuson. She has a section in there about making sure you get rid of embarrassing things that you don't want the living to see. My favorite was to keep your favorite vibrator and toss the other 14.
ReplyDeleteThere used to be a woman in the blog community who took that book to heart and did the 'death cleaning'. She lived at least two years afterward before moving into a nursing home. The concept makes sense but I could never bring myself to do it, I visualize myself sitting in an empty room twiddling my thumbs with nothing to do. And if you visualize yourself dead whose to say we become a self-filling prophecy?
DeleteHulu has the Swedish death cleaning show available now. I've watched a couple of them and they really aren't about throwing everything out. It's more about organizing the things that you love and getting rid of the clutter that others will have to deal with after you're gone. Since you've already made the move to continuing care, you did a lot of that. So you're good!
DeleteI don't feel like I'm good. I kept too much but I'm too cheap to just donate some of the stuff that made it through downsizing. And apartment living isn't all that conductive to selling the way I did when I downsized. We have a shredder coming to campus next month and I'm hoping by then I can talk myself in putting my old, half written manuscripts in that truck. I would like to see an episode of that show! I think the title was just a provocative way to set the book apart from all the other downsizing and organizing books popular in the aftermath of Marie Kondo. But the Death Cleaning Ritual is real, I understand in Sweden. I just hate the death.
Deletedeath = title (up above.)
DeleteThe show features three Swedes: an organizer who helps the person eliminate what's unneeded; a psychologist who looks at the emotional attachments to things; and a designer who creates a pleasing space that works for the client. The second show in the series featured a woman who has inoperable lung cancer. It sounds depressing, but it was pretty uplifting what they could do for her.
DeleteI would hire a team like that to help me if I was terminal.
DeleteJean, you sure know how to grab our attention!! That title will probably haul in lots of readers, lol. After I read about your memories, I tried to think about mine, and the sad thing is that I've forgotten more than I remember. Oh well. I'll just blame aging and chemo brain fog. I love that picture of your family!
ReplyDeleteI live with a lot of well traveled people who talk about all the places they've been. One couple has been on over twenty cruises and is going on another this fall. It would take them forever to name all the places they've slept. In a day or two I'll check my stats and see if the title brought in extra readers...(Dawn Claims it does) but that wasn't my intent. I was just have a good time writing the day I did this post.
DeleteThis was fun -- and a fun idea! And you have me thinking back -- where have I slept that was particularly interesting or meaningful. Only a few come to mind -- the upstairs bedroom in our old cottage (now my cousins) where Cousin David and I shared a room until we were considered "too old" by our parents -- the sound of the lake through the open windows and lots of giggles; a ryokan in the mountains of Japan on a tatami mat; the cottage outside Bath where Rick and I spent several relaxing days near the end of our England trip; a horrible motel that smelled like someone had died there in Traverse City with camera club buddies. There must be more... I'll have to think on that. (And by the way, I STILL love Perry Mason, even though I've seen them all about eight times each! But I'm with you on the Westerns!)
ReplyDeleteI forgot about the horrible motel coming back from the New England states that we stayed in for half a night before leaving to finish the night sleeping in your truck cab.
DeleteYou love to read mysteries so I get way you like Perry Mason. It's never been a favorite genre of mine but I hear about the show from time to time at lunch. Those 'old people' channels are popular, and from what I can see in Memory Care they act like adult babysitters not unlike putting toddlers down in front of cartoons.
You had a lot of nice adventures! Made me remember the days at girl scout camp - latrines UGH! but also s'mores YUM!
ReplyDeleteWe had lots of family trips in our station wagon when I was a kid. There were 4 kids in my family and my folks were patient as we looked for a motel with a "vacancy" sign. We'd be so thrilled if the place had a pool out front!!
I wouldn't even know how to find a motel in this day and age. I'm thinking it's all done on apps now when back in my days of cross country travel we, too, looked for vacancy signs.
DeleteMy mother (age 93, Alzheimers) is deeply committed to the Grit channel, which plays old black and white westerns all day and all night long. (When she's not watching the Game Show Network). I detest all those kinds of movies and their amazingly clean and clean-shaven cowboys wearing perma-press pants and shirts, even in the dusty Old West. LOL.
ReplyDeleteAs far as sleeping around, I did so at age 17 all across the northern USA from Ohio to Washington state and two provinces of Canada, then back again! Accompanied by my parents and my 12-year old sister, no less. Not anyone's favourite trip, as it turned out.
I don't like game shows either. And they play a live version of several of them here on campus. I watched a couple of them but they could never get me to take part. I have too many brain farts and I'd embarrass myself.
DeleteI think everyone has at least one trip they wish they hadn't made or at least one town they wish they hadn't visited.
My parents liked to move. They were not "flippers", they just sold and bought a different house, in the same small town, every few years. By the time I was 18, I had lived in 9 houses. I did all my sleeping around as a child. We bought our starter home in January 1979 and I still sleep here, lol.
ReplyDeleteI would have liked flipping houses back when I was young. We did a far amount of DYI projects in an apartment house and a starter house my husband had before we were married.
DeleteThis is a wonderful idea for a trip down memory lane. My favorite "sleep arounds" have been camping trips and overnight train trips (where I paid the extra money for a roomette or a bedroom). When we were in our twenties, my ex-husband and I had a little pop-up tent trailer which combined all the things I love about tent camping with the advantages of being up off the ground, having a real mattress to sleep on, and having a roof over your head. Probably our most memorable camp site was on the north rim of the Grand Canyon. We arrived there in mid-May, when the snow had just melted enough to open the 40-mile road to the campground and very few people were there. Our campsite was very close to the rim, and we turned the tent trailer so that its "picture window" looked out over a breathtaking view of the Grand Canyon! On train trips, I've always loved waking up in the morning and being able to open the window shade and see the world rolling by without having to even get out of bed. On a train trip across Canada in the 1980s, I once kept myself awake quite late just so I could see what a town called "Moose Jaw" (a scheduled stop in the wee hours of the morning) looked like.
ReplyDeleteThose are all great memories and I'm glad you shared them. I've been on trips but not overnight. Sounds like a lovely way to wake up.
DeleteHahaha! Now I'm singing your title to the tune of the Beach Boys "I Get Around" (could be a nice double entendre moment too 😉). Fun trip down memory lane - thanks for taking us!
ReplyDeleteDeb
DeleteAnytime. LOL
I do not like camping been a few times in my life but it wasn't for me staying in a caravan or motor home (RV) is more to my liking.
ReplyDeleteHave never done much house moving in fact I have lived in only 5 different houses in my life, been here since May 1988.
To each his own. At my age I don't think I'd like camping anymore.
DeleteLoved your happiest day story--thanks for including the link.
ReplyDeleteI've slept in a lot of different places from the back of my van for part of a summer to a teepee. One fall I slept in a cabin at a former nudist camp in NJ, and met a guy hiking who was wearing just a pair of boots. Where to look? But my most interesting place was when I knocked on the door of the apartment of a friend of a friend in Ann Arbor, MI, and said I needed a place to sleep for a few days while heading back to Oregon. Couch surfing before (50 years ago) it became a thing. That friend of a friend became one of the theater critics for the NYT.
What an interesting collection of memories you shared! Thanks for that and especially for liking my Happiest Day story.
DeleteThe Shout Out was flattering my Friend and you did Good 😊 on the Title 🪝 too. Don't wait on some salacious Posts tho ... inquiring Minds need to know as the National Inquirer says. Winks. Did you ever think of being on an Episode of American Pickers since Don had Primo Transportation related Treasures? I'd think the rapport already established would have been a good Episode to film for the Show. We stayed in those Teepee Motels. I also stayed in a Lake Cabin in Upper Michigan... Dawn the Bohemian
ReplyDeleteWe Knew the guys from American Picker in the '80s/'90s. We were all in the same collector circles for gas station memorabilia and spent time at conventions in the that time frame, which was long before they had a TV show. And Don talked to them on the phone occasionally. If the time frame had overlapped we wouldn't have gone on a show like that. For one, we had all the same contacts to resell the primo stuff to so no need to let them get the top dollar and a few of the people who did go on the show got robbed afterward and all of them got hassled by other collectors.
DeleteI had wondered if it puts the Collectors at Risk to be Televised and then robbed for what the Show shows is a Primo stash of a Lifetime. I know on some Reality based Shows like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, some of the people got robbed after their Episode aired. One Woman it only made the News, not becoz she got Robbed, but, becoz all her possessions of alleged Famous Designer stuff, was fake and knock-offs. So, her Insurance balked at paying out a Claim and I'm sure the Thieves were shocked none of it was Real that they went thru such lengths to do a Heist of. *LOL* I would also not be Surprised that the harassment from other Collectors would be an Issue as well, for a variety of reasons. Competition in those Circles can be fierce and sometimes very cut-throat. My Industry Friends all get along with me really well, since I'm not in it to make a Living so I'm not Competition... but, they all do squabble for dibs on any Picks you might extend Invitations on... everyone wants an Exclusive and I don't do that, no particularly Exclusivity exists in my World. Not even with Promoting Small Businesses on my Blog, since, I'm not on anyone's Payroll and am not Monetized by any Source, so I give coverage to anyone I choose and at times, a very few got butt hurt that I promote ALL my Industry Friends and not just a select few who would like to be Showcased above everyone else. I don't get involved in the Behind The Scenes Drama that can play out among Industry People and they all know I'm a No-Drama Mama, so don't even try to pull me into any gossip or disputes... not interested and won't engage in any of that. They can sort out their messes with one another and I stay Neutral. *LOL*
DeleteI know what you mean. Specialized collector circles are pretty small when you get really deep in and everyone knows everyone. Most are square and fair with each other and everyone knows who isn't.
DeleteWell, the title grabbed me and then I got to thinking of all my "sleeping around" as well. One memorable one was sleeping on the steps of the Field Museum in Chicago to get tickets to the King Tut exhibit...sometime in the 70's I think.
ReplyDeleteThat was worth sleeping on those steps!
DeleteGreat title and interesting post!
ReplyDeleteThanks.
DeleteI have always loved black and white movies since I was a kid!!! Still do. Best movies ever. Alfred Hitchcock, Gregory Peck, Katherine Hepburn oh yes, the 30's - 50's were my jam as a kid.
ReplyDeleteAs for camping, that is a hotel without room service for me. 😁 I've done it but don't love it!
Your transition to Memory Care or an assisted living place will be so much easier because you do. LOL
Delete🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
DeleteI'm jealous of your night on a Great Lakes ship. Was it a freighter? Can you tell me more?
ReplyDeleteI also want you to know I'm way more shallow than you. Susan B. Anthony? Nah, but I did sleep in the Elvis motel in Clinton, MO where Mr. Presley stayed on his road trips to Vegas. 😁
Sleeping in the same motel as Elvis would give anyone bragging rights.
DeleteIt was a steamship that held 288 passengers named the SS Keewatin and it was our senior class trip in 1960. Our cabins were to tiny you could barely fit our suitcases inside and it had bunk beds for the two of us. It picked up us somewhere along the eastern, lower coast of Michigan and took us north where we went through the locks and back stopping at Detroit before going down the western coast of Lake Michigan to Chicago before coming back to where we started.
I don't know where the ship is now but it was retired and parked at Saugutuck where you go inside for tours for many years and 10 years ago it was towed to another, bigger shipping museum.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Keewatin
Now I'm even more impressed! We watch live Great Lakes ship cams on YouTube and earlier this year, we actually watched this ship being towed to it's new home! I had never heard of or seen the boat and now I know someone who actually rode on it. So cool! That sounds like such a great memory. My high school never took class trips. 🙁
DeleteHere's the story: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/windsor-steamship-keewatin-1.6824672
Up until my Brother's class (three years before mine) the class trips were always to Washington D.C. but they misbehaved so much on that trip that the school stopped them. I used to have photos of taken on the ship but with the downsizing I'm not sure I have them anymore. Thanks for the link. I'll check it out. I'm glad to know what happened to it.
DeleteWhat a trip down memory lane! Apart from a few stayovers at my grandparents, my first time of sleeping somewhere other than home also was at Campfire camp. It was grade school, and I was a Bluebird, so I was in a cabin -- where we all envied the older girls who got the teepees. Family vacations provided some interesting memories, too: particularly, the night in Rainy River up on the Canadian border, where the only lodging we could find was above a bar, and when the fights broke out, my dad shoved a chair under the doorknob. I'm not sure whether it was better or worse than the night in Arkansas (also with family) when the cricket swarm came through town: and I do mean swarm. Thousands and thousands -- it was terrible, but memorable!
ReplyDeleteI've never been one for camping with a tent and all that, although your memory of those deer grazing around you is charming. I do love this post; it started me thinking about some of my own odd sleeping places. Decades ago, when air travel was more civilized than it is now, I slept in the Frankfurt, Germany airport during a blizzard that grounded all flights. Believe it or not, somehow the airport staff found pillows and blankets for people who needed them!
As much time as you spend outdoors photographing nature I'm kind of shocked that you've never been a camper. The deer were not the only animals we had memorable experiences with.
DeleteGlad this post triggers some memories for you. I think I'd take the room over the bar vs the cricket swarm. The latter sounds like something out of a horror movie.
This is a wonderful theme for a blog post. I went away to Girl Scout camp, and I didn't like anything about it. I've never been in a camper like yours, but the name is great. Now you've got me thinking back on all the places I've slept around in.
ReplyDeleteWhen you start thinking of places it's amazing what you can come up with. After writing this I remembered a few more as well.
DeleteI still can't comment on your blog and, believe me, I've tried often. I have have a WordPress membership.
I remember when I first met my ex and we would go camping in a National Forest in Louisiana with just a mattress thrown in the back of the pick up and the stars overhead. We too graduated to a cover he built. We went tent camping but in Arkansas and I really loved those State Parks. Ah, to be young and flexible and truly believe it was fun.
ReplyDeleteit was fun, wasn't it.
Delete