A Place I (used to) Love

There’s a place I used to love that I recently returned to after many years away. Time changes all things, and twenty years is a long time in the life of a campground.

From the afternoon we limped in with busted u-joints in “Cousin Eddie,” the old Winnebago we were embarrassed to admit was ours, to the allowance—always more substantial on a camping weekend—that we blew on Airheads and candy cigarettes within five minutes, camping defined my childhood.

It’s where I learned to ride bike without training wheels, had my first French kiss, and fell hard for a boy who would never love me back—and many more who would color my teen and preteen years with small thrills and tearful drives home. After pulling in and setting up on Friday, my cousins and I were expected to scatter, returning for meals and curfew, and little else. If we showed our sunburned faces at three o’clock on Saturday afternoon, our parents knew we ran out of money, and they’d scrape together a couple more bucks to get us out of their hair—as long as we took the little kids with us.

Of the few rules we lived by, you didn’t miss the Buckboard ride, just like you didn’t miss bingo. Twice a day we clamored for the best seats on the wagon pulled by a tractor through the campground to wave like royalty on parade at the campers down Beaver Lane getting happily drunk in the afternoon. If supper conflicted with the beginning of bingo, you swallowed a few unchewed bites of barbeque chicken then ran over to claim your spot at a picnic table. And even though you didn’t understand why the whole place erupted when B-11 (eeeeeleven) was called, you’d spend the rest of your life picking bingo cards based on O-69 and the ever-popular B-4…and after.

Today, long after we stopped coming up when I was a kid, the stomping grounds of my youth have literally been stomped to death by change. There is no Buckboard, there might as well not be bingo, and the revolving door of families anxious to release their children to the campground wilds for a few unadulterated days, is closed. It’s quiet here. Giant fifth wheels and thirty-foot travel trailers with elaborate decks, and sheds filled with yard tools and beer fridges are packed like sardines on every square inch of green space. The Haves are mowing and whacking and primping their tiny plots of treeless playground frontage, the sites even we—the Have-nots—always avoided because no one wanted to bake in the sun or wake up to the pounding echoes of Grimace rocking at dawn.

I walk unsteadily through the unfamiliar streets, trailing my son on a tricycle. He has no idea that my childhood has been pillaged by well-meaning folks looking for a quiet weekend, and I wasn’t here to stop it—to beg them not to throw yet another permanent site on every empty patch of grass, including the teardrop in the middle of the road that actually rents at a premium with its waterfront view (I mean, is nothing sacred?).  A man drives a cooler (yes, drives) through a custom archway that almost reaches the volleyball courts and a sweet old bitty reads a book from the front porch of her camper a stone’s throw from the band-aid strewn sandy pits below the jungle gym where we used to have free reign to run feral, and my heart breaks a little. My son will never skid barefoot into the camp store with fistfuls of grubby money to fight with other grubby kids with their own fistfuls of crumpled dollars for the last orange push-up now that the store isn’t run by the nice lady with the curly brown hair and is instead a fully automated, video-monitored “honor” system. There don’t seem to be many kids here at all, anyway. Where did they go? And why do the few that remain look at me sideways, like I’m the stranger and they own the damn place?

Oh…yeah…because they do.

After a few deep breaths and possibly a bottle of wine, I start to get it. I don’t like it, but I think I understand what has happened here. In a time when there are no homes-away-from-home for sale, even if anyone could afford to buy one, my former childhood haven is filling a need with a waitlist to prove that people want every square inch the campground is willing to carve up and sell. Here, every slice of swing-set real estate is prime.

I might mourn the lively music, rowdy neighbors spilling across site lines, dancing and singing to Cotton-eyed Joe, the blinking lights of the arcade promising new friends my cousins and I would probably never see again, and stalking this summer’s crush, but the truth is—like this place—I’ve outgrown all of those things. Judgment aside, I know that if I showed up now at age thirty-nine without any preconceived notions about the way this place should be—what it used to be—I would love this version more than the noisy, crotch-fruit infested refuge of my youth. I might even add my name to the ever-growing list of people who just want to get the heck out of town.

Now that I’ve said my peace—knowing it will change absolutely nothing for no one—maybe I can finally forgive the changes and move on. My son may never have the privilege of being a scrappy weekend camper, pulling in for three days, acting like we owned the place, then pulling out, leaving a trail of candy wrappers and cigarette butts (because everyone smoked back then) in our wake, but he does enjoy a few rounds of putt putt with grandpa and walks with grandma down to the boat landing—both the mini golf course and the lake remaining mostly unchanged by time. As long as grandma and grandpa maintain their permanent site (one of the lucky spots with square footage, decent shade, and a camper we definitely would not have been embarrassed to claim), he’ll grow up creating his own memories, making his own trouble, and driving his own parents crazy.  

In time, he might even get as excited to see that giant sign by the road as I was when I knew my next boyfriend was only a few speed bumps away. In that way, if nothing else, the magic of Northforest will live on.