The big green tent

And there we were desolute for something to do on summer vacation. Long days of weeding the garden were not satisfying a teenager's soul for excitement. My sister and I planned the whole thing and took it to our mother for approval. We wanted to invite two girlfriends each for a backyard camp out. We had a tent the family used each summer. It was large enough for six to sleep comfortably. My parents always slept in a pup tent. When we reached our teens, the boys also got a separate tent. Anyway, we took the plan to our mother and she approved. We were ecstatic and called all our friends.

She pulled out the tent from the summer before and it had been chewed up by moths. So what to do now everyone has been invited. She had a bolt of green denim her aunt had sent to make us dungarees (that is what we called blue jeans back then! lol) but we wouldn't be caught dead in green jeans. My aunt's pecadillos will make up another blog post! So she finds the bolt of green denim and designs a tent - with screened windows and a zippered door. My mom sewed all our clothes so a tent was nothing, just straight lines. While she was busily making the tent, my sister and I took care of all the household chores. My sister's girlfriend Sandy (who seemed to live at our house) helped my mother by holding the growing tent. Mom's sewing machine was a big professional Bernina so it could handle the heavy fabric. Sandy would 'walk' the material from the front porch where my mom had the machine into the living room and back. The tent became a big green monster! When it was finished we needed ropes wrapped around tree branches at each end of the roof to hold it up. We staked the corners at the floor. It was a massive tent that all of us could stand up in and not have to bend over.

Before long, my brothers were involved and we pulled out the other tent and it was in great shape. So my brothers invited their friends. We had four boys and six girls in the back yard all under 14 not including my younger siblings. We cooked outside. My mom charged everyone a dollar a day for food but we went through that by breakfast. We played in the pool and chased each other. I still had to weed the garden every day but it wasn't so bad with all my friends helping. One of my girlfriends had a transistor radio (pre-iPod days lol) so we got to sing along to great songs while we worked. And we figured if we got up early and got the weeding done by 9am, we'd miss the heat of the day. Maybe that's when I became an early bird. I"m up at the crack of dawn every day.

I wrote a story about that week and submitted it to a couple of magazines. It never went anywhere, but Sandy told us years later that our home saved her. She laughs when we get together to reminisce and she'll ask every time, "How many mothers make tents?" I'm not sure, but mine did. And it was a BIG green tent!