A Camping Trip During the Great Depression

When it comes to travel, I’ve been fortunate. I’ve vacationed in the Himalayas, the highlands of Guatemala and the lagoon at Bora Bora.

I’ve seen the Alhambra, the Parthenon, the Taj Mahal and the great temple of Karnak. I’ve walked through many of the rooms in the Prado, the Topkapi Palace, the Vatican and the Hermitage. I’ve experienced the elan of Vienna and Paris and I’ve circled the globe.

Marvelous experiences, all. But none has diminished the pleasure of the unexpected vacation I had in 1932, during the worst of the Great Depression.

Bobby Bauer and I had several important things in common; each of us was 10, each of us was too poor to own even the simplest toy and each of us, for all practical purposes, had just one parent.

Bobby’s father had left Bobby’s mother, Billie, for parts unknown some time before, and no one really knew what had happened to him. My father still was trying to sell things no one wanted to people who couldn’t afford them, but at least he apprised us of his lack of progress from time to time.

Fortunately for the two of us, there was Bobby’s taciturn Uncle George. When truck-driving opportunities disappeared, George reappeared. It was he who taught Bobby and me how to make coasters from a discarded 2-by-4, two wooden apple crates and an old rusty pair of roller skates. And it was Uncle George who paid for our bleacher seats the day a 20-year-old San Francisco Seal outfielder named Joe DiMaggio hit a home run right over our heads.

Of course, we had more serious ways of occupying our time. There were always our chores. And sometimes we joined the neighbors when they visited a strawberry farm that paid 1 cent per box--and free strawberries after two back-breaking crates of 24 boxes each had been picked--to every bona fide berry picker.

In 1932, 48 cents represented a sizable bag of candy and four child’s admissions to the neighborhood movie theater or, more realistically, two loaves of bread, a cube of butter, one pound of smelt, two bunches of garden vegetables, 10 pounds of potatoes and a cent’s worth of special treats.

Old Battery Radio

Our other recreational opportunities largely were governed by the foibles of an old and unreliable battery radio someone had left in our communal dining area. If it were willing, we were able to listen to Eddie Cantor’s “Chase and Sanborn Hour” or Ed Wynn’s Texaco Fire Chief program, but rarely both in the same week.

No wonder, then that Bobby and I experienced sheer ecstasy when George announced that the three of us would be leaving on a camping trip the very next day, and that we would be gone for three whole weeks. Bobby had been camping once before, but I, city boy that I was, had never had such an adventure.

Bobby and I did what little we could to further the preparations. Under George’s guidance we gathered firewood and chopped kindling. Then, caps in hand, we solicited assistance from neighbors who had fruit trees in their yards. Because Oregon crops were lush and juicy that summer, we set aside a goodly store of delicious apples, peaches, pears and apricots for our larder.

Finally, we placed our contributions next to George’s Willys-Knight, an old but carefully maintained touring car whose side curtains already had been removed for our journey.

The back of the car was neatly packed with all kinds of items, so Bobby and I enthusiastically slid into the front seat with George early the next morning. In a few minutes we were on our way, first down the almost deserted streets of Portland, then along the highway that led in the general direction of Mt. Hood.

After a few hours that seemed more like an eternity to Bobby and me, George turned off the road into the midst of a large, deteriorating farm. Perhaps a bank had repossessed for non-payment of a loan, or perhaps the county had foreclosed for non-payment of taxes, both common occurrences in 1932. For whatever reason, the former owners were gone, and the farm was ours to enjoy, at least for the time being.

Appropriate Campsite

After choosing an appropriate campsite, George removed a large tent and all of its appurtenances from the rear of the Willys-Knight. He drove stakes into the ground at predetermined intervals, and we helped him secure the tent by tying its mooring ropes to the stakes. As soon as we jockeyed two tent poles into position, the envelope of our temporary abode was virtually complete.

I swept the ground under the tent clean with an old broom. George used large dowel pins and pre-cut 1-by-6s to construct functional bed frames. Bobby and I filled the frames with hay from a nearby stack, and George threw three colorful old quilts on top of the hay to serve as our bed coverings.

Handing each of us a small shovel and a burlap bag, Bobby’s uncle led the two of us to a nearby field where he showed us how to dig for the potatoes he was certain we would find there. While Bobby and I were proving that prediction correct, George made an efficient camp stove out of an old wash boiler by cutting an access door in one end, placing it upside down on the ground and then banking it on all sides with soil.

Later when he walked unerringly to an obscure well and returned with a pail of cool, sweet water, we really wondered if George were receiving divine guidance.

Over the next three weeks, George surprised us in many additional ways. In particular, he proved to be an excellent cook who used his skill as a marksman to provide the rabbit for rabbit stew and his knowledge of the land to find growing, complementary vegetables.

Years later I concluded that George must have explored the farm thoroughly before he took Bobby and me there. But that realization did little to diminish the admiration I felt for this exceptionally resourceful man.

Our days were lazy and carefree; after trivial chores were over, they were ours to enjoy in any reasonable way we chose.

Real Excitement

Evenings were a different matter. Even though they exacted the cost of preparation, they provided us with all of our real excitement. Late every afternoon, Bobby and I would bury potatoes in and around the door of our oven, and use kindling and small branches to start a fire. Concurrently, George would prepare a large container of stew and a pot of coffee, and then place both utensils on the oven top. By nightfall we would be ready to hear the stories and the music and singing of the uninvited guests we knew we would entertain.

In 1932 one out of every four workers was unemployed, and much of America was on the move. Not surprisingly, these displaced people coveted the bare existence that continually seemed to elude them. Few, if any, gave thought to pursuing happiness or to acquiring luxuries.

The stories Bobby and I heard were many, and listen to them attentively we certainly did. Although there were some accounts of the Great War, most of the narratives had the loss of material items as their central theme. Such things as businesses, farms, houses and cars, we learned, really were transitory possessions that could vanish forever through the strange workings of an unkind fate.

In particular, I recall the tale told by an engineer who had undergraduate and graduate degrees from Stanford University at a time when fewer than 2% of our general population had even attended college. Subsequently, he had lived for some years on the Eastern Seaboard, where he had established a successful business.

In the months that followed the stock market crash, he successively lost all of his investments as well as his house, his car, most of his cash and, finally he had lost his wife and children. At his hour of greatest need, he told us, his wife had deserted him for the security offered by her affluent parents.

From that moment on, he had been a gentleman of the road. The only things he had left, he said, were his two degrees from Stanford. “They can’t take my education away from me,” he told us with conviction.

Concept of Ownership

These stories affected me so profoundly that never since have I placed any real significance on the concept of ownership. Museum-type items aside, I believe that material things are to be used, not coveted. Moreover, despite my horrible economic prospects at age 10, I ultimately succeeded in earning undergraduate and graduate degrees from Stanford too.

Not surprisingly, I was motivated by the desire to have something they couldn’t take away from me either.

When the clock had wound down on the narratives, a harmonica or a banjo or a guitar would appear, and there would be music and singing long into the night.

Though more than 50 years have elapsed since that vacation, at times I still can taste the baked potatoes, I still can smell the coffee and I still can hear a guitar-playing cowpoke singing these words:

Goin’ back, goin’ back

To my good old Texas home, home, home

Down by the lazy Rio Grande. . . .