Part One: Utopia

 

September 14, 2020

 

Greetings from Part One: Utopia.

 

I am standing in the shallows not far from shore, the waves, nearly too small to matter, a gentle touch against my legs.  My feet are as clean as they will be all summer, immersed in Lake Huron.  If I stand still long enough, the soft sand will silt around my feet, and the minnows will gather around my legs.

 

The wind makes waves in the wispy clouds, and waves on the water, and the water makes waves in the wet desert beneath.  I stand in the ribs of sand, watch little bits of green float around me, swaying sensually to the water’s music.  I look out at the lake, not understanding, really, that if I could dogpaddle far enough, I’d reach Canada.

 

Behind me is a small swath of beach, and beyond that the campground we call home for now.  I may be seven or ten years old, I don’t think about my age except on my birthday.  Or if some relative I don’t know asks my Mom that question.

 

We are camping, ‘going camping’, we say, which makes it sound like an activity and not just another dirty place to sleep.  My Dad bought a trailer for us to camp in.  Years before that were spent in an Army surplus tent, sleeping on canvas and wood folding cots that all smelled of mildew and old summers, which is the aroma of camping that stayed with me longest.

 

We are surrounded by Airstreams and Shastas and Holiday Ramblers and Jaycos.  We are in an off-off brand of camper called ‘Utopia’, which in the years we owned it, and all those since, I have not seen kin to.  Holiday Rambler people belonged to a national club of thousands and they proudly numbered their trailer accordingly.  My Dad went to the hardware store and bought stick-on numbers and in the front window of the Utopia placed ‘#0001’.

 

For us, this is ‘Up North’, that term people in Michigan use to describe almost anywhere outside the cities.  The campground in East Tawas was nested along a spit of sand inside the pier that jutted out from the road into the lake and bent to form a sheltered cove of sorts.  The camp was an irregular oval with sites on either side of the road that wound through it.  In the center was a little building that held the bathrooms and laundry room.  From nearly anywhere in camp you could see the edge of the little town, and above us the radio tower from the State Police post.

 

My Dad would back the trailer into one of the narrow lots, usually after several tries, guided by my Mom’s panicked directions hollered from the sand, perhaps the tensest moments in their marriage until then.  There would be the process of levelling the trailer, which was done mostly by swearing.  And then my parents, with as little help from us kids as we could get away with, unpacked the box that made the place our little paradise.

The trailer slept eight, if you used every option, which would mean transforming the dinette and a sofa into a bed, as well as the upper bunks, ‘bunks’ being a generous term, because ‘coffin’ was already taken.  There was a narrow closet bathroom that we were forbidden to use, a tiny built in kitchen with sink and a stove, which for some reason my mother was always afraid would explode or leak gas and kill us all in our sleep.  These images were dealt to us to remind us not to touch the knobs on the stove.

 

The upper bunks were mere inches from the ceiling, so tight you needed to dislocate limbs to turn in your sleep.  The ceiling was adorned with tiny swirls in the finish, held in place by plastic floral shaped buttons.  I know these shapes intimately since I stared at them for hours at a time, sweltering in the dense heat trapped around us in the trailer.

 

There were tiny slot windows, maybe four inches high, which we would crank open in hopes of a breath of air.  We children, wedged into this shelf before the sun was even gone, would bake in the bunks, listening to our parents outside, sitting around the fire with their friends, drinking refreshing things with ice in the glass, a maddening sound to us parched prisoners.

 

Getting into the bunk meant climbing onto the counter to pull yourself up, which is how we transferred sand onto every surface from where we tracked it onto the narrow galley.  I suppose there was once a ladder, and probably a safety guard to keep us from rolling out, but those were sacrificed by the realties of five children and the chaos we created.  My brother once fell out of the bunk and bounced off the counter before landing on the floor, a story we tell repeatedly to explain all of the questionable things he does.  According to lore, the fall didn’t even wake him.

 

We had most of the modern conveniences of home, wedged into a near Apollo-capsule experience.  My Dad brought along a tiny black and white TV to watch the Tiger’s games, which produced a near perfect image of static, most of the time.  There was a refrigerator, a small furnace, and an assortment of cupboards to hold boxes of cereal and cans of OFF!.  The windows had screens and our job, mine I guess, was to poke holes in these so that insects trapped inside could escape.

 

When the kids grew too large to wedge into the coffins, my Dad bought a tent to clip to the side of the trailer, dubbed forever The Add On.  From the road it appeared as though a green monster was devouring the Utopia.  The Add On would serve as extra bedroom and storage area, and most importantly a way to other adventures.

 

In the mornings a man would walk along the road through the park selling newspapers.  In a soft song he would call out ‘Deeetroyyyt Newws, Saaaganaw Newwwws, get your Freeee Presss.’  It was part of the morning opera, partner to the smells of bacon cooking and the quiet snick of trailer doors, of tents being unzipped and people talking in hushed, waking tones.  I would prowl the camp in this magic light, amidst first campfires, coffee brewing, the sound of the lake sighing at the beach.

 

I would wander among the other campsites, getting my feet dirtier, and then out onto the beach, firm and damp from the night’s dew.  I picked up things washed ashore to be saved until they are lost, and listened to the first seagulls conversations.

 

And then, I am standing in the shallows, within sight of the Utopia, but now in my own world.  I am wearing swim trunks, still damp from yesterday despite being dried in heap in the sand.  The sun is coming up in front of me, turning the stippled lake into a blanket of diamonds.  The day unfolds in these first glimmers and shadows, teasing us awake to notice.  I go into that day without the burden of plans or direction, which for a boy of my kind, is paradise.

 

Hope this finds you with sand between,

 

David

 

 

 

Copyright © 2020 David Smith