How I Spent My (Very First) Summer Vacation

by Rick Brown

It was late August 1972 and my third summer at a Lutheran camp named Frederick about 25 miles south of Youngstown, Ohio. Hardly the garden spot of the U.S. but pleasant enough. And for about the last month or so I had pressed my buddy Steve to take a trip with me. Considering I was pulling in about 400 bucks for the summer…he even less…this was not an easy sell. But I finally convinced him…and his father…that my 1963 Chrysler Newport…affectionately named Smiley…was up to the task. I also conned my brother Don into coming along for the adventure. The fact that at the ripe old age of 20, I was taking two minors across state lines never occurred to me…until I sat down to spin this yarn.

Smiley was the largest car I’ve ever owned…and that includes a couple Jeep Cherokees and a 1964 VW microbus. The 4 door, big white whale was so spacious I could literally open a back door and toss my bicycle in the backseat without hitting the door on the other side of the vehicle. The car I drive now…a Miata…would have fit into the trunk. And I don’t remember…but it probably got 8 miles to the gallon. But in 1972 the price of gas was probably 30 cents a gallon or so. The speed limit…at least in Ohio…was 70 mph. This was in that blissfully ignorant time of gas guzzling monsters that abruptly came to an end not soon afterward. So I had all the confidence in the world in my big boat with the push button transmission on the dashboard. At least I convinced Steve and Don I did.

In preparation for our very first vacation sans parents I approached my Uncle Andy…who really wasn’t my uncle at all but a very good friend of my family and fishing buddy to my dad and crazy brother Jim. I figured him being an outdoorsman and all…well…he could give me some valuable pointers. And this is what he told me to do. Buy a big cooked ham…say 5 or 7 pounds…put it in a cooler with some ice. And whenever the three of us got hungry…and I’m quoting here…just “rip off a big ole piece!!!” Amazingly this sounded like a good plan to me. That’s exactly what I did. Besides a camp stove for making breakfast…usually consisting of one HUGE pancake (for some reason I thought this quite hilarious)…we banked on our ham for daily sustenance. It’s incredible how moronic you can be when you’re young.

So bright and early on Thursday, August 24, 1972 Don, Steve and I piled into Smiley…me behind the wheel. “Uh…where exactly are we going” Steve inquired. It hadn’t dawned on any of us to plan a destination. Assuming the “adult in charge” role I stammered, “Mmmmmmmmmm…the BASEBALL HALL OF FAME!!!!” This was the first thing to pop into my head and I’d always wanted to go there. Don and Steve didn’t protest. And of course being the purist that I am, I decided we should properly “see America” and take only back roads. Soon a ’63 Chrysler Newport filled with camping equipment, three long haired hippy types and a big ass ham on ice began venturing across northern Pennsylvania into New York. The adventure had begun!!

After a hasty tour of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown we ended up some 560 miles from our start, camping in the Catskill Mountains. Except for the quick tour and a few stops at gas stations to ask about the hissing power steering unit (we got opinions ranging from a broken head gasket to a guy who said not to worry about it after he squeezed a small rock into the bracket…we went with his diagnosis) we had spent all day in the car. We got up the next morning determined to drive some more. “Now where are we going?” Don asked. “Mmmmmmmmmm…Cape Cod!!” I exclaimed once again striving to sound somewhat authoritative. And after the 560 miles on the back roads we’d all seen enough of America to take the freeway now. Yet before we hit the highway we managed to stop for lunch in Woodstock, New York. And while it wasn’t the scene of the rock festival…it IS where Dylan once lived and was a lovely artists’ community.

Coming in to the Boston area we witnessed a sobering sight. Across the highway a convertible…with its top down…heading the opposite direction careened into the median and flipped over crushing the windshield flat. I assumed the passengers had a similar fate and I caught myself hoping no one survived…for their sake. All three of us were stunned and drove the rest of the way to the western end of Cape Cod in silence. I still have vivid flashbacks of that scene occasionally…especially when driving with my top down. We had plenty of time to ponder it too once we got in the huge traffic jam. It was rush hour on a Friday in August and people were headed to the cape just like us…except most of them probably had a place to stay.

After sitting in traffic for what seemed like eternity we spent the good part of the early evening trying to find a campground. But everywhere was booked solid. While looking out over the Atlantic at a tourist welcome center, throwing back pop (don’t you mean sodas?), while savoring a “big ole piece a ham” a stranger gave us advice.

“You got sleepin’ bags right? Just sleep in the dunes!!! God’s country! It’s the beach and it’s FREE boys!!” Something like that. It wasn’t good advice. We took it because…well…we really had no recourse. And that night was a classic case of romance meets reality. First there was a foghorn from hell…followed by Don freaking out because he thought he heard a rattlesnake (While I reassured him there were no such reptiles in Massachusetts I really had no clue.)…followed by sand flees and mosquitoes. All that with the horrible accident fresh in our minds.

We did manage to score a camp site the next day in Provincetown. It was a piece of ground barely large enough for a pup tent…picnic table…1963 Chrysler Newport…and the scruffiest white pine I’d ever seen. It felt like the Hilton after the previous night of freedom in the dunes. And cruising around Provincetown…on foot of course…was an eye opening experience. Gay people…were everywhere!! Or so it seemed to the three long hairs from oh so sophisticated Ohio. And they were pleasant…normal even. Epiphanies like this happened every time I ventured out of my little Lutheran college/little Lutheran camp bubble. It was quite exhilarating really. People were reveling in their secularism…seemingly without a care.

After a couple nights on the cape we headed toward Boston. And we must have enjoyed driving through the city. We did it four times!!! Boston is a horrible place to drive. At least back then I had a tank of a car to defend myself with. So to calm our nerves…mine in particular…we decided to take in some history. So we stopped to look at Plymouth Rock. And gazing down at it I thought, “It’s just a frikkin’ ROCK!!! Might not even be the right goddamned ROCK!!!” Being a history major in college I took this presumptuous “landmark” personally. At least…like sleeping in the sand dune…it was free. Looking at a rock should always be free of charge. I don’t care what the hell rock it is.

So the three of us just headed north…seemed like as good a direction as any. And we stumbled upon another cape…this one called Ann. What a lovely discovery Cape Ann was…and still is I suppose. Rockport…with its artist colony…is located there. And for a little more salt of the earth local color there’s Gloucester, where fishing boats bring their catch in daily during the season. I fell in love with Cape Ann. This is where Don, Steve and I all finally relaxed. We celebrated by ditching the now tiresome…and greening…big ass ham…for a much more joyous feast. Quart bottles of pop and a box of fudgsicles!!! After three days of big ole hunks a ham this was quite the feast indeed. Hey…we were in the land of the first Thanksgiving and we could think of no better way to show our respect!!

And there was…and still is…a beautiful campground where we could chill out in spacious campsites. Cape Ann Campground (but of course) is a place I have returned to on at least three occasions. The beaches…especially Good Harbor…are beautiful. This was indeed heaven compared to the frantic frazzled pace of the previous days. We reveled as long as time and our limited resources allowed. I made the biggest pancake yet for breakfast!! We swam in the Atlantic. Reclined in the sun. Recharged our friendships with each other.

We thought the drive home would take us two days. But that was because of the “backroads” tedium of day one. So after we stopped at a god awful place called Nu-Look Campground…something like that…somewhere in New York I think…we decided nothing could be better than what we had left behind on Cape Ann. So we repacked Smiley and drove home…dumping what was left of our now green big ass ham along the way. What a great trip it was. Comradely…adventure…sun…sea and a banquet of pop and fudgesicles!!! And my apologies to Uncle Andy…who wasn’t really my uncle at all. But it will be a cold day in hell the next time I “rip off a big ole piece” of ham from a cooler.