LJ Idol Week 25- Cesspool
This week, I was fortunate enough to work with frecklestars in an intersection. I hope everyone enjoys our entries- hers can be found: (to be added)
For much of my life, I was raised by my maternal grandparents. It’s not that my parents abandoned us, or that they weren’t in the picture, but they were married straight out of high school, and still adjusting to their own adulthood when my brother and I were born. Luckily, my grandparents were happy to step in and care for us while mom took college classes and dad did whatever it is dad was doing. I have always been blessed to have my grandparents in my life, but it led to a skewing of my interests. While most little girls were listening to Madonna and Cindy Lauper, I was watching Cary Grant movies and learning the words to “Strangers in the Night” (a very inappropriate song for a six year old, but I digress).
Since my grandparents retired when Grandpa turned 65, it meant that they had plenty of time to devote to hobbies and activities, and one of the things they’d always loved was to travel the country in a motorhome. So, when Grandpa sold his business, one of the first things he looked into buying was a camper. We spent many summers driving around the country, visiting the sites. Usually, we’d have a main goal in mind, like “visiting Orlando”, but we’d take our time and stop along the way if we saw something interesting to visit. This was before the internet existed, so we didn’t do much in the way of researching destinations, we just packed up and hit the road.
It was in the early 1990s, that my grandparents started traveling with the Good Sam travel group, Samboree. Grandpa was a staunch supporter of Good Sam, which was an organization of camping enthusiasts. A few times a year, they would host these “Samboree” events, where a large group of campers would get together for a conference and have different tour opportunities and seminars included. So, when the weather got cold and my brother and I were busy with school, my Grandparents would take off for a couple of months, drive across the country for awhile and do one of these Samboree conferences along the way. They loved them! They visited New Orleans for Mardi Gras and went to Texas to explore the ranching lifestyle. They rode ferries and walked along cobblestone streets in the Carolinas. My grandparents had a few years of great fun, much like the senior citizens you see in retirement planning catalogs.
One summer though, they thought it would be a novel idea to take my brother and I along for an exciting Samboree in picturesque Duluth, Minnesota. It was the summer before my sixteenth birthday, and I was less than thrilled. Admittedly, I knew that the Samboree group was going to be full of senior citizens, I just didn’t realize exactly how many seniors we were talking about. It was a full convention of blue hair. Several times, other members of the group walked up to us and said something like “boy, you don’t look like you belong here,” to which my Grandfather would remark, “yeah, we’re from New York.” He was serious too. It never occurred to him that it was weird to have teenagers at the Samboree.
On the bright side, we spent some time getting to tour Duluth, which had beautiful gardens and a rich shipping history. We skipped most of the seminars, the most entertaining of which was entitled “What Happens if Your Spouse Dies on the Road?” The dying spouse seminar was wildly popular, so they held it at least once per day. There was only one seminar that was more popular than that, “Sewage Made Simple.” It’s not that the crowds were so interested in how to maintain their cesspools- that seminar was always packed because the announcer would throw free rolls of toilet paper into the crowd as he spoke. You should have seen these old ladies walking out of the conference room proudly displaying the TP they caught.
In actuality, waste maintenance was an issue at the Samboree. We were all staying at a campground that lacked regular sewer facilities, so in order to clean out our water waste, we had to schedule a visit from the “honey wagon.” I don’t remember ever seeing the honey wagon, but you could hear it lumbering around the campground beeping and chugging. I used this opportunity to creep out my younger brother, as older sisters are ought to do.
“Hey George,” I mentioned during one of our many games of Rummy 500 around the kitchenette table.
“Stop trying to distract me, I’m going to beat you this time.”
“Ok, ok” I mumbled, “just trying to save your life and all.”
“What?!” George’s head popped up from behind his carefully arranged hand of cards.
“You know what they tell you during that ‘Spouse Dies on the Road Seminar’?” I bit my lip to control my laughter.
“I don’t know, I didn’t sit through it,” he snarled.
“They tell you that you can just hand the body over to the honey wagon!” Grandma gave me a dirty look from her perch by the kitchen sink.
“They do not!”
“OK, don’t believe me, but if you hear the honey wagon moving around after hours, I’d be VERY careful to stay indoors. It might be one of those dead spouses rising up to take revenge!”
My brother peeked out the window at the row of campers. Years later, he admitted to me that he had recurring honey wagon nightmares, and barely slept for the rest of that vacation.
It wasn’t all a bad time though. We spent quite a few hours curled up around the table playing cards. We called my Grandmother “the vulture” because she was swoop in and grab up all the points. We made delicious pasta dinners together and shared ridiculous stories, and one night we went to one of the “Main Event” shows. The Samboree hosted a whole big band, with at least 25 musicians who played jazz and swing music. It was pretty crowded at the start of the night, but we danced and sang along, and when we were too tired to dance, we sat and hummed and watched the musicians. About 7:20, when the band was in full swing, we suddenly noticed the hall begin clearing of people in droves. It was so strange, because the band was mid-song, and it was as if the music had stopped. We listened closely to the mummer among the crowd as they filed out, and noticed a recurring theme. They were all talking about “Wheel of Fortune.” Apparently, even a big band doesn’t hold a candle to a senior citizen’s nightly routine. For the next half hour, the band played just for the four of us. Grandma got up on stage and sang, and Grandpa was never prouder. I think I smiled for the rest of the night, long after I’d fallen asleep. I didn’t even realize my brother peeking out the window for the honey wagon.
For much of my life, I was raised by my maternal grandparents. It’s not that my parents abandoned us, or that they weren’t in the picture, but they were married straight out of high school, and still adjusting to their own adulthood when my brother and I were born. Luckily, my grandparents were happy to step in and care for us while mom took college classes and dad did whatever it is dad was doing. I have always been blessed to have my grandparents in my life, but it led to a skewing of my interests. While most little girls were listening to Madonna and Cindy Lauper, I was watching Cary Grant movies and learning the words to “Strangers in the Night” (a very inappropriate song for a six year old, but I digress).
Since my grandparents retired when Grandpa turned 65, it meant that they had plenty of time to devote to hobbies and activities, and one of the things they’d always loved was to travel the country in a motorhome. So, when Grandpa sold his business, one of the first things he looked into buying was a camper. We spent many summers driving around the country, visiting the sites. Usually, we’d have a main goal in mind, like “visiting Orlando”, but we’d take our time and stop along the way if we saw something interesting to visit. This was before the internet existed, so we didn’t do much in the way of researching destinations, we just packed up and hit the road.
It was in the early 1990s, that my grandparents started traveling with the Good Sam travel group, Samboree. Grandpa was a staunch supporter of Good Sam, which was an organization of camping enthusiasts. A few times a year, they would host these “Samboree” events, where a large group of campers would get together for a conference and have different tour opportunities and seminars included. So, when the weather got cold and my brother and I were busy with school, my Grandparents would take off for a couple of months, drive across the country for awhile and do one of these Samboree conferences along the way. They loved them! They visited New Orleans for Mardi Gras and went to Texas to explore the ranching lifestyle. They rode ferries and walked along cobblestone streets in the Carolinas. My grandparents had a few years of great fun, much like the senior citizens you see in retirement planning catalogs.
One summer though, they thought it would be a novel idea to take my brother and I along for an exciting Samboree in picturesque Duluth, Minnesota. It was the summer before my sixteenth birthday, and I was less than thrilled. Admittedly, I knew that the Samboree group was going to be full of senior citizens, I just didn’t realize exactly how many seniors we were talking about. It was a full convention of blue hair. Several times, other members of the group walked up to us and said something like “boy, you don’t look like you belong here,” to which my Grandfather would remark, “yeah, we’re from New York.” He was serious too. It never occurred to him that it was weird to have teenagers at the Samboree.
On the bright side, we spent some time getting to tour Duluth, which had beautiful gardens and a rich shipping history. We skipped most of the seminars, the most entertaining of which was entitled “What Happens if Your Spouse Dies on the Road?” The dying spouse seminar was wildly popular, so they held it at least once per day. There was only one seminar that was more popular than that, “Sewage Made Simple.” It’s not that the crowds were so interested in how to maintain their cesspools- that seminar was always packed because the announcer would throw free rolls of toilet paper into the crowd as he spoke. You should have seen these old ladies walking out of the conference room proudly displaying the TP they caught.
In actuality, waste maintenance was an issue at the Samboree. We were all staying at a campground that lacked regular sewer facilities, so in order to clean out our water waste, we had to schedule a visit from the “honey wagon.” I don’t remember ever seeing the honey wagon, but you could hear it lumbering around the campground beeping and chugging. I used this opportunity to creep out my younger brother, as older sisters are ought to do.
“Hey George,” I mentioned during one of our many games of Rummy 500 around the kitchenette table.
“Stop trying to distract me, I’m going to beat you this time.”
“Ok, ok” I mumbled, “just trying to save your life and all.”
“What?!” George’s head popped up from behind his carefully arranged hand of cards.
“You know what they tell you during that ‘Spouse Dies on the Road Seminar’?” I bit my lip to control my laughter.
“I don’t know, I didn’t sit through it,” he snarled.
“They tell you that you can just hand the body over to the honey wagon!” Grandma gave me a dirty look from her perch by the kitchen sink.
“They do not!”
“OK, don’t believe me, but if you hear the honey wagon moving around after hours, I’d be VERY careful to stay indoors. It might be one of those dead spouses rising up to take revenge!”
My brother peeked out the window at the row of campers. Years later, he admitted to me that he had recurring honey wagon nightmares, and barely slept for the rest of that vacation.
It wasn’t all a bad time though. We spent quite a few hours curled up around the table playing cards. We called my Grandmother “the vulture” because she was swoop in and grab up all the points. We made delicious pasta dinners together and shared ridiculous stories, and one night we went to one of the “Main Event” shows. The Samboree hosted a whole big band, with at least 25 musicians who played jazz and swing music. It was pretty crowded at the start of the night, but we danced and sang along, and when we were too tired to dance, we sat and hummed and watched the musicians. About 7:20, when the band was in full swing, we suddenly noticed the hall begin clearing of people in droves. It was so strange, because the band was mid-song, and it was as if the music had stopped. We listened closely to the mummer among the crowd as they filed out, and noticed a recurring theme. They were all talking about “Wheel of Fortune.” Apparently, even a big band doesn’t hold a candle to a senior citizen’s nightly routine. For the next half hour, the band played just for the four of us. Grandma got up on stage and sang, and Grandpa was never prouder. I think I smiled for the rest of the night, long after I’d fallen asleep. I didn’t even realize my brother peeking out the window for the honey wagon.