BOCA INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING COMPANY

Tesday, January 17th, 2012, 9:10 p.m.

Fifty-five years ago this summer my parents and the four of us children packed up into our old 1951 Ford and towed a 1930s era camping tent trailer of sorts to Old Orchard Beach. It was a trip to remember, one that I did again, although very briefly about 7 or 8 years ago on a return trip from moving a fellow to a small town in New Hampshire. As I was only a very short distance from Boston, I thought I would head that way on my return trip for a visit. I would then come up the coast from Massachusetts into Maine and make a stop at both Kennibunk where my great uncle and aunt used to spend a lot of their summers, have a great seafood dinner there, and end up at Old Orchard Beach before sunset. Of course, this was the next day after having delivered the fellow into his new apartment and i took an extra day since I had not had a vacation in years and the fellow I moved paid for the cost of the transportation and gas. I remember that old Ford because even though it was already ten years old or so, we went for a trip one day and it was a long trip away from the campgrounds at Rollins Pond where we were staying at the time. As we worked our way back towards midnight, I remember waking up in the backseat and looking over the front seat to the dash. My mother, wide awake, but deep in thought had somehow got her speed up to one hundred miles an hour and did not realize it. She certainly slowed down after I pointed it out, waking my father, brothers and sister in the process, well, some of them anyway.

 Old Orchard Beach was like two worlds. I found the old campgrounds on my second trip which had expanded as far as it could go, I even found our old campsite and a few other landmarks. At the same time, the Boardwalk had been shortened and the town itself was a madhouse of tourists, ten times what it was when I was twelve. We went for three weeks. I remember being sick under the rollercoaster ride and not much else about the downtown or the funworld. What did attract me the most was the beach. Nothing had changed. I drove down one of the roads leading to the beach, parked the vehicle and walked to the end of the street. Like fifty-five years earlier the entrance to the sand was barred by a several old posts that had been there since the 30s or 40s and continued on. As soon as I passed them, I recognized the sudden change to the beach I had known so long ago. It was as if it had been left untouched by time and even the light coloured long grass along the fence was as I remembered. It was all I went to see and because of seeing the beach, it brought back wonderful memories of my youth. At the same time, I found Crawford's Notch, New Hampshire on the way to Montreal. It was not what I had expected. The days of 1957 were gone, so was the gas station, the wild animal park across the street and the restaurant. All that remained with the dip in the road but somehow I was able to identify the place where we pulled in back in the summer of 1957 with a blown trailer tire. We set up the tent trailer on a cncrete brick in the trees up an old back road once used for parking old vehicles...more like a tire track in the grass and trees. It was just enough room for the tent trailer and although we had to deal with gnats, we survived the night. The following morning the old fellow who ran the gas station arrived with an old tire left over from his old 1930s car that he thought was still hanging in the old barn. It was enough to get up back to Montreal where Dad was able to order a new set, even though they had been off the market for some time. That old trailer, built in France in the early 30s and imported into Quebec, most likely for the French Canadian market, was the most unique thing you ever saw. It was a high square box on wheels with fenders over a single axle. Whe the top was lifted off, the back end would fold down to expose the contents. It contained extendable poles, spring beds that also unfolded into a normal size bed spring that could be mounted over the fender on each side, mounted with a mattress and enclosed in an orange pup tent with long sides that ran down to the ground on either side, there by making room for two cots under each bed, one either side. On top of the orange tent, another white tent was mounted. It was large enough at one end ot take a picnic table inside and roomy enough to find space for all the luggage, coolers etc. Shaped link a circus tent with both ends opening up with flaps that could be mounted on poles, it also provided additional coverage for sitting in the shade outside when the hot sun was beating down. At night the poles holding up those two flaps which allowed air to flow into the two tents could be removed and the tent could be closed down with simple ties.

We had a lot of good times with that old tent trailer. It also took us through the Maritimes, to Fundy National Park, around Cape Breton before it was fully paved and right down to Peggy's Cove and Halifax in 1964. We got a lot of good years of camping at Rollins Pond near Saranac Lake in Upper New York State, in the Adirondack Mountains and I was sorry when I did not see it again after leaving for a job move to Calgary in 1966.

My father used to love the sound of the old train late at night that seemed to arrive like clockwork across the lake. He could hear the sound of its whistle in the distance. For many years it was an annual thing to camp for three weeks with a family from Swickley, Pennsylvania that we first met at Fish Creek Pond campgrounds, the first park we had to go through to get to the newer Rollin's Pond area. For as long as both parents were alive, my parents would meet with them, long after I had moved away. It was an annual thing and even to this day, I am in touch with a minister of the United Chruch down there occasionally.  He and I used to go chasing girls together in our youth using Tara, our giant Irish Setter as bait. It was an evening thing that certainly showed puberty in transition. While we spent the afternoon at play with Dinkey Toy cars and trucks in the sand we were handsome beast before dinner. When the afternoon began to head towards four, we got all dolled up, put on a clean shirt, filled our Elvis style hair with lots of Brylcream and headed off to the meeting point with Tara, hoping to meet one of the new families of campers there with their 13 year old daughters by then well into young womanhood. It was a time of young innocence to remember. I often wonder if the girls thought so too. Out of those years, I met a girl from Rochester who I wrote to for a number of years and took to her very special high school graduation.. Fond memories of my youth now to be set aside while I look up the old address which I remember to this day just to see what happened to it fifty odd years later. The house was pretty old back then so I would not be surprised to find it had been replaced by a highrise or a new row of houses. Then again, you will never know.......What?......No, I will not give you the address.....Bye!