Author: Donald Guenther
Uploaded: 10/25/2013
I remember taking three vacations. One up to a camp by Powers and the other two were trips to Portland.
With so many kids we had to take two cars and until we got our new Econoline. That car was a beaut. Our Econoline could seat 8 people but we managed to get 12 to 14 in the rig. When we’d get out people would think “how many Guenthers are there”? The year before the Schroeder family had gotten a van and Dory made fun of it. Then we got ours. Dory talks big about being proud of the big family and all because she loves us but she wasn’t like that as a teenager. Ronny, Bobby and Louise had fortunately left home by the time we got our van. They were the lucky ones. The year before we got the van an extremely humiliating event occurred.
When we went to Portland we took two cars. One car, a station wagon that Rick later tried to make into a dune buggy, and dad’s old Packard. The two cars were full of kids and dad while mom stayed home. Mom knew how to get dad out of the house. She’d pack him a big lunch full of goodies. Dad would have his lunch downed before we got to Reedsport. Having polished off his lunch he’d turn barn sour and want to return home.
The trips to Portland consisted of a visit to the zoo, grotto, and Multnomah Falls as part of a drive up the Columbia Gorge scenic highway, mount Hood and to top it all off attend a professional football exhibition game. Dad would keep his window down and those in the back seat of his car would freeze. When we were headed up the gorge it got so cold in the back we pleaded with dad to roll his window. Finally out of desperation we held a box behind dad’s head and the cold wind circled around onto to him. He got mad but rolled his window up. With car loads we lived on the cheap. We’d camp out so to speak. I hesitate to call what we did camping out. The boy’s had cheapo sleeping bags and we’d get kicked out of the car. On one trip we camped up on Mount Hood. That night got so cold and the girls in the Econoline refused to let us in. Phiddy had prepared a large batch of cupcakes and started feeding them to us out the window in an effort to keep us quiet. Finally we were let back into the van and we headed down to buy tickets for the game. We stood in the wrong line by mistake and when the ticket booth opened we had to go to the back of a long line.
On the trip the year before we purchased the Econoline dad’s Packard kept dying on him. We would push start his car. At the zoo I can remember circling that parking lot several times before his car started. We were totally humiliated. On the way home just as we were crossing the bay-front out of Hauser the car died for good. Thus the econoline purchase.
Dad was a big whiner and didn’t fare too well when we camped out. When we camped out up at Powers I can still see him sleeping on a mattress he brought so he didn’t sleep on the rocks. We didn’t sleep in camp grounds. Didn’t believe in them. They were for city folk. We had to find our own camp site.
The rivers were always cold but good for storing a water melon or two. We didn’t have tents. I seem to remember an old tent but by the time I came along the tent had been destroyed. 14 kids can do a lot of damage. No tents, junker cars and lots of desert. As a boy these are the makings of a fun time. I can’t remember any of us ever complaining except on the Powers trip when Phid said she couldn’t take it. Sleeping on rocks did her in. I didn’t much care for that location either, too many salamanders.
As a rule our vacations were disasters and that’s what makes for a good vacation, disastrous elements of surprise.