Have you ever been camping?
I learned nothing,
Staying in a tent is different than having a family cabin to go to in Chipquamigan National Forest,
The piece property my granddad bought for back taxes in the thirties he named Cub Lake,
Cub Lake sits in the Chipquamigan National Forest in northern Wisconsin Sawyer County,
Grandad Paul John Andrew Heike,
Grew up to manhood and Butternut Wisconsin,
In Sawyer County is where I’m planning to die,
Not now in approximately thirty years!
At a campsite the outhouse is chemical, looks the same except for a cement floor and toxic odor,
At the cabin the outhouse is a two-holder about 75 ft from the back of the cabin,
The National Forest an outhouse is grandfathered in,
If an outhouse is sat on the property of seventy-five years ago then you can have an outhouse,
Which is silly on so many levels Northern Wisconsin is sand red sand exactly like South Carolina,
The filter system before it gets to the lake is God made. purification is accomplished through the trickling through the layers of sand no chemicals needed,
If a lot of relatives have been staying at the cabin a bag or two of lime or handy near the outhouse a scoop of lime in each hole will decompose the feces faster as well as make the aroma less pungent!
I did enjoy the camaraderie with my young friend and her family her family was totally different than mine,
Other than that I never ever wanted to do it again camping with friends family no thank you,
I wanted to serve my country,
Nineteen seventy-six I graduated from Waukon,Iowa High School in Allamakee County the most northeastern County in the state of Iowa,
In August of that year I entered William Penn College,Oskaloosa,Iowa,
My family dynamic is a unique one was!
I knew that if I had stayed there got my degree I would hear till I died for my mother that I was the only one who went to college and she gave up everything so I could!
No child should ever have to have that weight on their head!
So since I wanted to go into the military in November or 1977 I signed my paperwork for delayed enlistment,
I signed for 6 years in Germany as a computer programmer,
In my senior year computers landed in schools ,
Computer weren’t laptops they were desk tops ,
My recruiter fella named ledbetter was great at recruiting individuals not so much do jobs that existed,
I enter the corp May nineteen seventy-eight,
Training had taken us to bivouac I was in the second cycle to graduate and to train with males into the United States Army,
We were destined to have a two-week bivouac,
We carried our tents in our the whole entire works with us except for food there was a mess so we always had food with us with the company,
During the week we entered the gas chamber that was freaky scary,
Had not at that time researched my grandma’s heritage lineage,
My grandma Heike died when I was too,
It’s amazing what you assume,
I’m from such a small town in Iowa a mixed marriage is a Lutheran marrying a Catholic,
My granddad was a son of a Lutheran pastor and he married a Yiddish girl,
She’s one of those people I look forward to meeting one day,
My grandmother’s family lost three cousins in Dachau,
Nazi concentration camp that eliminated humans,
I enjoyed disassembling and reassembling an M16,
Shooting log which was a qualification,
Won a sharp shooting metal for M16,
What I really learned and carried with me to this day is the fact that if you’re going on two week in the South Carolina woods do not carry a book,
You were never awake long enough to read a line and it rains all the time in June,
That book swelled four times bigger than it was,
I never did read that book!
Another thing I do recall running with a full backpack to beat the clock back to camp after the two week biwac
Val Whitewolf 