The Fifth Wheel and Big Red

 Journal of Our Journeys

Chapter 17 - The Fifth Wheel

 For years, Dad had been looking at fifth-wheel travel trailers. In the 1970s, they were still a novelty in camping. Also called goose-neck trailers, the style was more commonly used for horse trailers at the time.  

I will never know what Dad's fascination with fifth wheels was. We looked at so many of them over the years that I never really thought that my mom would cave and let him buy one. When we first got the pickup camper, we thought that it was so amazing. You can't even believe how excited we were by the prospect of getting a fifth wheel.

I was excited anyway; by the time Dad really got serious about getting a new, larger camper, Pat was a senior in high school. Her days of camping with the parents were numbered. I would be the lone child to continue the tradition.

After all the dreaming, Dad found someone he knew who was selling their practically new fifth wheel. The couple had bought it a year or two before, and after only one trip, the wife decided that camping was not for her. Obviously, she had never camped in a tent. The fifth wheel was more like a motel room on wheels.

So, camping in the fifth wheel really wasn't like camping. Besides the private bedroom over the bed of the truck for Mom and Dad, this thing had a full bathroom with a shower. The refrigerator was practically as large as the one we had at home, and the kitchen even had an oven. We didn't do much baking in it, though, using it mostly for storage.

Several weeks after returning from one trip with the fifth wheel, Mom was looking for one of her cake pans. It dawned on her that she had left it safely in the oven in the trailer. Ever the helpful daughter, I scampered out to the camper to retrieve it.

Well, not only had Mom forgotten the cake pan in the oven, but she had forgotten that there was still rhubarb cake in it. Ooh, it had gotten all moldy. Not only was it moldy, but the acid from the rhubarb had actually eaten holes in the metal cake pan.

This next part I will never be able to describe accurately; you would have to actually see it to picture it. When we had the pickup camper, Dad always parked it in the sixteen-foot-wide spot between the garage and the house. The area wasn't long enough for the fifth wheel, so for the first year, Dad parked it next to the garden in front of the house.

It soon became apparent that that was not going to work. When he retired, Dad had built a large pole barn behind the house and the garage. The mastery came when Dad backed the fifth wheel between the house and the garage and then angled it into the red barn.

(See the red barn in the back and that narrow space between the garage and the house? Yikes, is all can say.)

The best part was the clothesline poles along that route. People who had never been to the house could not fathom how he could not only back the trailer between the buildings but also navigate it past the clothesline poles, which were directly in his path. Little did they know that the poles easily pulled out of sleeves buried in the ground.  

The year after buying the fifth wheel, Mom and Dad decided they needed a new truck to pull it. The teal pickup that had come with the original camper had been replaced years earlier with a forest-green Chevy. Now, it was time to replace that one.

Mom and Dad went to Wausau and ordered the new pickup from the Ford dealer downtown. I even got to go with them, though my input was not taken into consideration. They picked out a bright orange truck to match the orange strip running down the side of the fifth wheel. The new truck also had an extended cab, so that there was room for someone to sit in the back seat. That was usually me, as the dog sat in the front seat between Mom and Dad.

Remember, this was 1976, when few pickup trucks had an extended cab, and hardly any had four doors.

(The AMC Matador was one of the ugliset cars built.)

        We named the new truck Big Red, and believe it or not, it is the vehicle I learned to drive on. Sure, I practiced on Mom's white AMC Matador and used it when I took my driver's test. But I drove Big Red as much as the car. Dad even would occasionally let me drive it while pulling the fifth wheel, only on back roads, though, at a slow speed, such as our road, which was fraught with ninety-degree turns.  

Other Aunts and Uncles - Weepy Wednesday, episode 7

On this depressing series of the deaths of loved ones, today I planned on revisiting the night my mom died. But yesterday, Hubby and I went to the funeral of one of his aunts; the funeral for another one of his mom’s sisters had been exactly two months ago.

Naturally, I wasn’t as close to either of these aunts as I was to my own, but they were still sweet ladies who lived full lives and loved their families.

And their numbers are dwindling. I believe that my generation of relatives – me, my husband, his brothers and sisters-in-law, and cousins – are the ones who soon will be all who are left to carry on.

We’ve had quite a few picnics at our house with these relatives, so that’s where the pictures are from. 

 2014 - Susie, Lois, Louise, cousin John, mother-in-law Trink, Joyce, Bill and Gerald (5 are gone)

2018 - Bill, his wife Pat, Joyce, Lois, her husband Larry, Suzie, Louise, and Trink (3 are gone)

2021 - Linda, Lois, Louise, Suzie, and Joyce (2 are gone)

Anyone from his family interested in coming for another picnic this summer?

Jesus is the Way, the Truth, the Light

         I’d still been having a hard time coming up with a theme for my blog posts during Lent this year. The only thing that kept running through my head was, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” from the book of John, chapter 14.

         So, I thought, what else does that chapter say? And is it all worthwhile to share?

"Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. 2 There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? 3 When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am. 4 And you know the way to where I am going.”

5 “No, we don’t know, Lord,” Thomas said. “We have no idea where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. 7 If you had really known me, you would know who my Father is. From now on, you do know him and have seen him!” (John 14:1-7, New Living Translation)

My favorite place within driving distance

Journal of our Journeys

Chapter 16 - Up North to the UP

Many weekend mornings throughout my childhood, we woke up early, and Mom packed us and a picnic lunch into the car. With Dad at the wheel, we'd drive to Copper Falls, Potato Falls, Saxon Harbor, and Ashland in Wisconsin. Just over the border in Michigan, we'd go to Ironwood with its statue of the world's tallest Indian, Black River Harbor, the Porcupine Mountains, and the Lake of the Clouds. I am indeed blessed that I was raised within a three-hour drive of all of these wonderful places.

We had camped at some of these places on weekends before, but in 1975, we took a few more days and drove further north. All the way north, as a matter of fact, to the tip of the peninsula.

The first night, however, was spent at McLain State Park just outside of Hancock, Michigan. I don't know what it is about this state park, but it has always fascinated me. I think it's the amazing sunrises and breathtaking sunsets you can view from the beach or your campsite, if you're lucky enough to get a spot on the lake. Even campsites that are not on Lake Superior (the sites Mom always picked) have a view of the lake through the trees. And late in the evening, when all is still, you can hear the water lapping at the shore.

A couple that Mom and Dad knew from church set up their trailer at McLain for the entire summer, so it was nice to stop in and visit them. Mrs. Kleinfeldt even took her organ camping with her – a real, though small organ, not one of the keyboards of the late twentieth century. She would play hymns on it for the rest of the campers on Sunday mornings.

From McLain State Park, it is just a hop, skip, and jump to another State Park, Fort Wilkins. Fort Wilkins is a restored 19th-century military fort. Settlers in the area feared trouble with the local Indians, so they wanted a military presence nearby. As it turned out, there were no problems with any Native Americans, and the base was only in operation for a few years. The buildings had decayed over the years but have been painstakingly restored and tell a fascinating story of pioneer life, where winters were frigid, and the snow could reach the tops of roofs.

Somewhere along the highway, along Lake Superior, there was a small gift shop on a bluff above the water. The proprietor sold pieces of driftwood with paintings of birds on them, rocks with paintings of birds on them, and framed paintings of birds, along with lots of polished stones from along the shore.

The building had a small tower. Up two flights of stairs, there was a little windowed room with fantastic views of the lake. Occasionally, an iron ore freighter could be seen slowly moving along the horizon. Only five months later, one of those freighters, the Edmond Fitzgerald, along with its 29-man crew, would succumb to the will of the Great Lake during a November storm.

Further inland and far to the east is another state park, which hosts one of the largest waterfalls in the eastern United States. The campground at Tahquamenon Falls is as nice as any of the state parks in the UP; they all have modern amenities, such as flush toilets, hot showers, and electrical hookups. However, instead, we stayed at a small, private campground that we rated an "ugh" in the camping log.

We had a reason, though, for not staying at the state park. We left the camper at Soo Junction, just north of the burg of Newberry, and rode the Toonerville Trolley through the tranquil woods and swamps to the Tahquamenon River. The small train rocked and rattled along its narrow track for an hour or so.

Then, we boarded a riverboat, which took us within walking distance of the waterfalls. It was an interesting trip, unconventional for us. We got to see a lot of the countryside, and the scenery was fantastic. But then, it always is in the UP of Michigan.  

Over the years, I would return to all of those places, and the magic never got old. Unfortunately, the Toonerville Trolley and Riverboat Tour closed in the fall of 2024 after 96 seasons in operation. It's a shame I never got to take my husband and our kids on this excursion.

(This is the only picture I have from that camping trip in 1975. The rest of the pictures in this blog are from the many other, more recent trips we've taken to the UP.)

How It Ends – Weepy Wednesday, episode 6

I know you’ve heard this story; maybe you’ve even read it in the book I wrote about my sister Pat. But here it is again, coz this is the weepy theme I’ve chosen for Wednesdays for now.

Chapter 13 - How it Ends (from the book "Holding All the Aces")

           “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,” I read from her Bible at the side of her bed several nights later. Pat was unresponsive, her breathing labored but steady.

           “Keep reading,” Mom whispered to me. “They say that your hearing is the last thing to go.”

          We were keeping vigil, something I never in a million years thought I would be doing, there at Pat’s bedside in the nursing home. Just being in the nursing home was beyond anything I could fathom. My sister Pat? Bubbly, full of life, a pistol who never stopped moving, never stopped working. How could she be lying in that nursing home bed, pale and gaunt, unable to speak or move on her own?

           “He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.”

           Why would God do this to my sister, my best friend? Why did she have to suffer so much and so long? If He wanted her in heaven, why didn’t He take her suddenly, painlessly? And why can’t He send a miracle? Right here and right now?

           The doctors said that it had been a miracle that she had lived for six years with this kind of an aggressive cancer. Really? Because I didn’t see it as a miracle, I saw it as six years of my sister dying when she should have been living.

           “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.”

           But she had lived those six years. She and I had gone on camping trips, sometimes with Judy, sometimes with my kids. She had stood up at the wedding of her best friend from college. She had been the photographer for my second wedding. She and her husband, along with me and mine, had flown to Las Vegas for a long weekend. She had continued working as long as she could.

          “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; My cup runs over.”

           I looked up at Mom, and she gestured that I should keep reading. But I was out of ideas. Sure, there were many more chapters in the book of Psalms, David’s outpouring of belief in his God and that all things would turn out right through Him. But I just could not do it.

           The following day, my sister Judy joined the vigil. When the nurse checked on Pat, she nodded toward her bed as she left the room. I don’t remember if she actually said it or not, but the words that came into my head were, “It’s time.”

           We gathered around Pat and watched her lungs fill for the last time. Then, the air slowly ebbed from her, as if the oxygen was leaving not only her lungs but her fingers and toes and even her pores.

           A sob escaped from Mom, and Judy probably reacted as well. All I did was watch that frail chest, waiting for it to rise again, willing it to rise. Not taking my eyes from that slight lump under the sheet.

           “Come on, Pat, come on, you can do it. Take another breath.”

           It never happened.

           “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Where My Heart Is

It's the first Sunday in Lent, and if you've been following my blog over the years, you know I like to write a series of blog posts for these six weeks in remembrance of Jesus last days as a man on this earth. I haven't come up with any new ideas this year. And if God is sending me some ideas, I'm not hearing Him. 

But I guess that's because something else is on my mind and in my heart. Today is the six-month anniversary, and that is where my mind and my heart should probably be. I think that's what God wants for me today. 

(These were pictures from different road trips that we went on after the kids were grown.)

Let’s take a break and have a Funday Friday

Two weeks ago, I wrote about trips around Wisconsin that my family took one year when I was a kid. I talked about picking cherries in Algoma and that I couldn’t find the picture I was thinking of.

Guess what? I found it; here it is. But looking at that picture reminded me of a hysterical and inappropriate story. 

Back in the sixties and seventies, Ajax Powdered Cleanser advertised that the white powder was sprinkled with blue dots which were more effective cleaning agents, instilled with bleach. At the time, Mom had a shirt which had blue dots on it, which she is shown wearing in this picture.

The thing is there were two blue dots on the front of her shirt which were – how should I say it? Improperly placed, or if you have a juvenile sense of humor, they were in just the right spots.

For years, my sister Pat and I called it Mom’s Ajax Blue Dot shirt, and then we’d giggle. And Mom never got it. Hee hee hee.