Camping Trip to Last a Lifetime

   

Whenever someone hears this story, they invariably think I am exaggerating.  After all, it is not unusual for families to sell their home in order to build a new house or to buy twenty acres of land in order to plant a substantial garden or to take their families on an extended camping trip in order to appreciate the simple life.  However, forty-five years ago, when the Buffington household decided to head for the hills of Hall County, build a home in the wilderness, and raise their own food, our lives were anything but business as usual.

            Daddy developed a plan that included selling the home I had grown up in, buying land, building a house with solar heating, growing our own food, and raising farm animals.  Mama lovingly explained to us that daddy had always been borderline eccentric.  My brothers, sisters, and I laughingly insisted that daddy had always been way over the edge.  Daddy prepared for this metamorphosis from city slicker to country bumpkin by reading publications like Independence on Three Acres of Land, the Farmer’s Almanac, Mother Earth News, and Organic Gardening.  He even had a daily schedule worked out ahead of time.  In the mornings, his plan was for us to work in the garden and finish chores, in the afternoons to mosey over to the lake for a swim, and in the evenings to gather around the home place for quality family time to the hum of Appalachian dulcimer music.  Throughout the entire enterprise, daddy would announce, “It’s not all going to be work!”  To this day, I don’t know if he was trying to convince himself or us.

            As always, my parents were a team.  Daddy had the dreams, but mama made them a reality.  It took over two years to sell the house that had been our home for twelve years.  After a multitude of contracts with real estate agencies, frequent cries of, “they’re going to show the house!” frenzied cleaning sessions of dubious quality, and parades of strangers roaming through our bedrooms, mama finally sold the house- to the Avon lady.  I did not realize then how difficult it was for mama to leave the home where each baby, except for Janet and me, was brought home from the hospital.  There had been a lot of loving, a lot of growing, and a lot of laughter in that house.  Mama’s heart overflowed with cherished memories and squeezed tears from her eyes, but she resolutely hitched her wagon to Daddy’s and they headed for northeast Georgia.

Cutting the driveway through the wilderness.

            The parcel of land was loosely divided into useable regions based on the terrain.  The upper three acres closest to the road were terraced into three sections for cultivating a garden.  Consequently, the rows of bean plants curved and stretched from one end of the garden to the other, like the ocean straining to meet the horizon.  The back five acres, closest to the creek, embraced the skeleton of a new home place, the hint of a future orchard, and the promise of civilization to seven uncertain pioneers.  Between the garden and the future homestead were woods, and nestled in a grove of hardwood trees was our new temporary home- the camper. 

Mama and Billy in the garden.

    Our family was experienced at camping, or so we thought.  The pop-up camper, which served as the main bedroom, had a metal base, two, full-size, pullout beds, and a canvas cover.  Zipped to the front of this was an extended room that served as a kitchen, sleeping area, and eating area when it rained.  A large, plastic dining fly-covered a picnic table for an impromptu dining room.  The living room was a circle of lawn chairs and campstools surrounding the campfire. 

Our new home.

            

In a manner of speaking, we had all the comforts of home.  Our bathroom facilities consisted of an outhouse lovingly referred to as the throne room, thirty paces southeast of the living room.  Daddy even used his ingenuity to create a shower.  The water source was the neighbor's well, connected to a spigot, attached to a pine tree about six feet off the ground.  The pine tree was connected to three other pine trees by a swatch of black plastic forming a rectangular enclosure. The make-shift shower surround was placed at a fairly strategic level to shield our innocence from prowling eyes. The theory was sound, but the location was questionable.  The shower was placed northwest of the camper, south of the garden, and directly adjacent to the road used by the workmen when traveling to and from the building site. However, the workmen’s trucks were big, tall, hardy affairs that easily allowed them to see down from their lofty heights into our lowly shower.  We consistently endured the icy well water and took our showers after dark, when the workmen had gone home for the day.

Daddy, right, with his farmer hat.
Charles, left, allowed us to connect to his well.

Daddy, being daddy, managed to get a hot shower every afternoon.  The hose, stretching from our new shower to the neighbor’s well, meandered along the driveway, across our property, and over their lawn in the sunshine.  True to the physics of solar energy, the sun heated the water in the hose enough for daddy to get a hot shower every afternoon before going to work.  Some days, as the summer temperatures rose, he was blessed with a hotter shower than he had anticipated.  Daddy continued to work for IBM and every day he left for work clean-shaven, sweet-smelling, wearing a neatly pressed suit, white shirt, and polished shoes.  I often wondered if his colleagues knew how he was really living.

            Mama must be descended from rugged stock.  She always could get more accomplished in less time than other mere mortals.  Facing the challenge ahead of her, she braced herself, put on her best, comforting smile, took control of her offspring, and proceeded to make a home in the woods.  Ordinarily, voluminous jobs, like doing the laundry for seven people, including five rambunctious children, became one of her biggest obstacles.  Every other day or so, we piled into the car, along with the clothes, and went to the Laundromat to wash.  As the clothes sloshed and spun in the electric washing machines, we eyed the traffic of people and cars going about their daily, colorless routine.

            Miraculously, mama also managed to prepare the traditional, southern meals we had always eaten, like fried chicken, breaded pork chops, and country-fried steak and gravy with all the extras, using only our makeshift kitchen.  We even had real iced tea, home-cooked blackberry syrup, and homemade jams and jellies.  She planted a huge garden, and as the crops began to come in, she canned food for the winter over a Coleman stove.  From beginning to end, I did not hear her complain, but I did hear her laugh.  She taught us, by example, to make the best of things, look to the future and keep working.

            For my siblings and me, this was the beginning of a grand adventure, an extended vacation, and wonderful home.  Looking back, we joke that we were homeless before it was popular, but at that time, we didn’t realize we were homeless in the traditional sense.  We knew where home was really located.  Our house was the camper, sheltered in the shade trees, but our home was wherever mama and daddy were together.