I don’t understand camping. I’m not putting it down; I’m just saying that I don’t understand it.

I went camping only once and it was enough. Myself and three other idiots decided camping would be a great idea for spring break back when we were in high school. Having no cash was a contributing factor, as was getting away from our parents and drinking for sixteen hours a day.

None of us had ever been camping before so we rented a giant tent and scavenged for supplies in our parent’s houses. We loaded up two cars full of shit and guitars and set out for points unknown. When we finally reached our destination, a National Forest, we pulled over to debate the best course of action.

“I say we don’t go to a campground. We just pitch our tents in the woods and live like Indians,” one guy said.

“We need a campground, dammit! With running water and bathrooms. Are you prepared to shit in a hole?”

I wasn’t. It was eventually decided that we would go to a campground just outside the National Forest. We set up the tent and then stood there looking at each other. I knew at that moment it would end badly. We were bored and we’d only been there for thirty minutes. None of us were old enough to buy beer so we set out immediately to start going from liquor store to liquor store trying our luck. It turned out to be unnecessary and the first place we came to looked like they hadn’t seen a customer since the Conestoga wagons went by. We loaded up with several cases of beer and a big bottle of Southern Comfort. At the tender age of seventeen we had no idea how bad of an idea that was, but that’s another story.

I won’t boor you with the details, but our four day trip was cut to down to three. As soon as we backed the car up to the tent, popped the trunk and cranked up the Hendrix we started drawing complaints. We had so many empty beer cans that all the garbage cans in the place were full of them. We burned the oars from the rowboat for a cooking fire. Our singing was obnoxious and profane. There were bugs. The day before we left we had a more serious problem.

Four seventeen year old kids go through a lot of weed and the supply was gone. That’s when it got interesting. Someone had the idea to drive back down the road some twenty miles where we passed what appeared to be some old slave shacks, now inhabited by poor white trash. You really had to see it to believe it. So we drove down there and sitting outside in a rusty lawn chair was this skinny guy who looked like an 1860s tenant farmer. He was about twenty-five, was tall and weighed about 80 pounds. A hay bender, if you will. So we pulled up and one of us gets out to inquire about buying a bag and before you know it the guy’s in the car with us and we start driving up and down while he tries knocking on doors asking his friends if they had any weed.

At first we found this hillbilly ingratiating and hospitable, but soon we realized we’d driven 60 miles and we were aimlessly stopping for this guy to knock on doors. Our patience with Cletus had expired. And as he got out to bang on yet another door I proposed the inevitable.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

There was silence for about two seconds and then we back out and drove away. Cletus looked like he’d shit his pants and broke into a run hollering, “Wait! Wait!” But there would be no waiting. We carted his unemployed ass around for over an hour touring the shittiest hovels I’d ever seen on an almost uninhabited county road. Did I mention he was barefoot?

In the morning we decided we’d had enough and so did the proprietors of the campground. We’d worn each other down. We decided that in order to complete the trip one more thing would be required, so as the boys packed up all our shit I wrote a note to Cletus. It was along the lines of, “You need to get a job and paint your shack and get yourself some shoes because you may not realize it but we have electricity and shit now, etc., etc. I remember it was a masterpiece of letter, quite long and touching on many subjects but no apologies about stranding him at some fucking sod house in no mans land.

The only thing missing with the note was a method of delivery. I ended up tying a guitar string around a potato and wrapping the note around it. As we pulled out of town and past the slave shacks, there he was on the porch sitting in his rusty lawn chair. We started to pull over and his eyes lit up as he recognized us. He ran towards waving and smiling. He wasn’t even pissed off, which pissed us off. As we drove by slowly we didn’t stop…I just launched the potato and it bounced off the door of his 1863 hovel with a thud. As we drove away he was inspecting the parcel post we’d so ceremoniously delivered.

And we got on the road and headed for home. My first and last camping trip.

I’ve changed a lot since then. I haven’t smoked any weed in twenty years and I’ve moved up to the Marriott as a bare minimum as far as comfort is concerned when traveling. I don’t commune with nature very well. I don’t like getting dirty and smelling like smoke. I need a full bar and restaurants. Maybe if I went with someone of the fairer sex it would be different?