Tippecanoe and Maverick, too!

One of my most (im)memorable vacations was back in 1973. My father decided that we would go camping for our summer vacation. My father had never been camping before, so this was destined to be quite an adventure!

My parents had been divorced about two years by then, but my father always exercised his visitation rights. I always enjoyed spending time with my father because he always asked me what I wanted to do together. And he usually accepted my suggestions But not until after he had completed all his errands such as going to the bank, paying his utility bills either at the bank or the local hardware store. Then, we would either eat at a restaurant or buy food at the Supermercado to eat on the way to our destination.

My father worked at Curtiss Candies, located near lower Wacker Drive near downtown Chicago. I remember because both my parents worked there at one time. Curtiss Candies made Butterfinger and Baby Ruth candy bars, among other candies that I don’t recall. Oh, yes, they also made these saftey lolly pops with the looped handle. That job had its perks. For example, the employees could take home any of the damaged candy that wasn’t visually pleasing for sale. So my father worked as a mechanic mostly in the Butterfinger section of the factory. He brought home Butterfingers that were too short, too long, with too much chocolate, not enough chocolate, mangled, or doubledecked. Now matter how deformed they looked, they still tasted great.

When my father wasn’t working, he would come pick up my brothers and me so we could spend time together. Sometimes my brothers didn’t want to go, so I would go alone with him. My father and I spent a lot of time talking. He was always interested in what I was doing. When I told him about my wrestling matches or chess tournaments, he insisted on going. The wrestling meets were usually walking distance to Davis Square Park, or to another nearby park to which the wrestling coach drove us. My father would always be at my wrestling meets.

For the chess tournaments, we would just meet in downtown Chicago at the La Salle Hotel Grand Ballroom. I took the bus early and my father would drive there later. My father started playing chess because of me, and then later we, my father, my brothers, and I, visited his brother, my Uncle Chucho, in Pilsen to play chess and eat pistachios. We would also go to the Chess Pavillion at North Avenue Beach to play chess in the summer.

Well, we didn’t just play chess! at the beach My father tried to pack in as many activities as possible in order to spend the whole day at the beach. That meant packing two bicycles, balls, baseball bats, baseball gloves, a barbecue grill, and that day’s newspapers. We would all squeeze into his lime green 1971 Ford Maverick for a full day of fun. Beleive me, we had fun after driving to the beach all scrunched up!

That car was the first car my father ever bought brand new. In fact, everyone who knew him was surprised he would consider buying new car, especially after recently getting divorced. Plus, he had to pay weekly child support of $60 for six children, $10 per child. This was 1972, so it was a lot of money back then. However, part of the divorce settlement included dividing the profit of the family house. (The family house is a story for another day.)

So my father was single again with a huge cash reserve after the sale of our house. So he decides to buy his first ever new car. Many people would have chosen any other color than lime green, but my father loved how the car looked in lime green! We learned to love it, too, after a while. My friends knew when my father would come to pick us up for visitation by the lime green color of the Ford Maverick.

I learned a lot about how not to handle my finances by watching how my father handled his finances. In fact, to this day, when I have a critical finanacial decision to make, I ask myself, “How would my father handle this situation?” And then, I do the exact opposite! So my father has this huge cash reserve from the sale of our house, and he has enough to pay cash for the car, but then he buys the car on credit. He explained why to me, but I didn’t understand at the time because I was only sixteen years old at the time. Looking back now, I still don’t understand why.

Anyway, my father often asked me about my life at Divine Heart Seminary and what we did and how we lived, and he would share stories from his childhood and his life at the seminary in Montezuma, New Mexico. My father was really interested in my stories, especially after visiting me at the seminary in Donaldson, Indiana.

What intrigued my father the most was the stories about our camping trips with the Exploreres group at the seminary. We went camping at Meyer’s Lake and Tippecanoe River State Park. We also went camping at the farm of our fellow seminarian Dan G. I told my father how we pitched tents, chopped wood, built campfires, and went canoeing. My father loved hearing my descriptions of roughing it in the woods.

Soon after the divorce, the sale of our house, and the purchase of the lime green 1973 Ford Maverick, my father comes to pick us up for his child visitation one July Saturday morning. He tells me to ask my mother if he could take us camping for the weekend. I’m dumbfounded because we had never gone camping as a family. We didn’t have any camping gear, either. Well, I had my own winter mummy sleeping bag, but that is also a story for another day. My mother immediately grants my father permission to take us away for the weekend, or longer if he wanted. And the farther away the better. Needless to say, my brothers and I were somethimes a bit too much for my mother endure.

“How are we going camping without a tent?” I asked my father as we drove away. My father had a plan! Now it’s about 8:00 AM on a Saturday morning, and my father had just finished working the Friday nightshift. He came straight from work to pick us up to go camping. Knowing him, he probably didn’t sleep much on Friday before going to work because he was so excited about his camping trip! And he wanted to go camping at Tippecanoe River State Park just like I had done with the Explorers!

But my father had a plan! First, we had to run his errands before we could camping. He had just gotten paid, so we had to go to Drovers Bank to cash his check and get a $60 money order for child support to give to my mother. Then we had to go to another bank so he could make his car payment. Then we had to go to the hardware store so he could pay his utilities. Then we had to back to my house to give my mother the child support money order before we left for Indiana.

By this time, we were hungry. Rather than eat in a restaurant, my father took us to the Supermercado where he bought carnitas and bolillos for our breakfast/brunch/lunch. As I recall, we never ate at a restaurant when we were children. My brothers and I didn’t complain because we were starving and we loved carnitas! Once we where sated, I asked my father, as the oldest of the brothers looking out for the welfare of his younger brothers, “How are we going camping without any camping gear?” My father said, “I’ll show you!”

And he drove us to the Goldblatt’s Department Store. He drove around the block twice until he found a parking space directly in front of one of the entrances. We go upstairs to the sporting department and they sell camping equipment. I had never noticed before that they sold tents and sleeping bags. I would only look at the baseball gloves and bats.

“What do we need to go camping?” my father asked.

“We need tents and sleeping bags,” I said. It was July, so I said we probably didn’t really need the sleeping bags. We could take our blankets and pillows. My father approved of the two two-man pup tents I chose. However, there five of us. One of us would have to sleep in the car. I said that we would need a lantern at night since we would be out in the woods in the dark. My father got really excited when I picked out a Coleman lantern like the one the Explorers used. I couldn’t think of anything else we would need for camping.

My father had enough cash to pay for everything, but he decided to go to the finance department and buy everything on credit. So he had to fill out an application since he didn’t have an account at Goldblatt’s. My brothers and I were getting rather antsy waiting for the credit approval, but it finally came. My father was very surprised that he was approved because usually my mother handled financial matters such as these, even though he had to be by her side to show she had her husband’s approval.

And then we were ready to depart to Tippecanoe River! Or so I thought! My father thought that he should take me back home to get my mummy sleeping bag. It must have been about two in the afternoon when we returned home. My mother asked me if the camping trip was cancelled. I said that we needed my mummy sleeping bag. And then we left.

But first my father needed to go to his house in Pilsen to get some things, which only took him about forty-minutes or so. And then we debated whether we should take our bicycles on the camping trip. By now the Maverick was pretty much loaded the tents, pillows, blankets, sporting equipment, my father’s tools, including a floorjack, because you just never know when you’ll have to jack up the car in the middle of nowhere.

By now, my father is getting sleepy because he hadn’t slept all night and the day before. But then I remembered that we needed to take food with us if we wanted to eat on our camping trip. So we go to to the Jewel on Ashland Avenue. We’re parked in the lot, so my father decides he needs to take a nap. And take a nap he does. for about an hour. My brothers and I entertain ourselves in the crowded car and we get so rambunctious that we finally end up disturbing my father’s sleep.

“I feel so refreshed now!” my father says. And we go into Jewel to buy our camping groceries. Looking back, I realize that we didn’t have a cooler to store our food. When I went camping with the Explorers we didn’t need a cooler because we didn’t take any perishable food items with us. We bought mostly non-perishable food until we walked past the freezer section and my father saw the Banquet frozen chicken. He took two boxes. I thought that was a very bad idea because the frozen chicken would spoil before we could eat it. Wow! Was I ever wrong! As you shall see.

So we take our brown bags of groceries to the car and place them in the trunk because there’s no more room in front- or backseat of the car. My father takes another “short nap” and then we take off for Indiana!

It must be about 5:00 PM and we still haven’t crossed the Illinois state line. Yes, my father is so tired that he has to take another nap. We finally got to U.S 3o East about 8:00 PM. About 11:00 PM, my father pulls over at a hotel parking lot in Valparaiso, Indiana. My father is sleeping so soundly that he is snoring. After a couple of hours, we start nudging him to wake him up. Unsuccessfully, I might add. My brothers and I are starving by this time. We open the hot trunk and start foraging for food. We ate the chips, pastries, and fruit, but we were still hungry. My brother Tato sees the two boxes of Banquet frozen chicken and suggests that we eat the chicken. As the oldest brother, I suggest that we shouldn’t because it has been in the hot trunk for hours. We refrain from eating it for a very short while, but then we feel very hungry again.

Much to our surprise, the chicken had thawed in the car trunk. So we ate the chicken right out of the box. I had not thought to bring any napkins or eating utensils, because when the Explorers went camping, someone else took of the little necesseties. However, the chicken was delicious! It had thawed completely and it was warm enough to taste good. Well, we finished all the chicken. And we finished all the other groceries we had bought earlier. And we were still hungry! Then my brother Danny reminded us that my father always had candy in the car. And sure enough! Hiidden away were some mutant Butterfingers!

When my father finally woke up, he managed to drive the rest of the way to the Tippecanoe River State Park. We arrived about 2:00 AM. Surprisingly, the park ranger at the gate was still awake. He assumed we had traveled from very far to be arriving so late. My father, being the show off that he is, said, “We’ve been driving all night to get here!” The ranger, genuinely impressed, asked, “Where did you drive from?” And my father said, boastfully, “Chicago!”

The ranger rolled his eyes. I was so embarassed because I knew that the drive was only one-and-a-half to two hours long. But my father felt so accomplished by his navigational feat. Of course, now that I look back, after having also worked the night shift, that is quite an accomplishment with so little sleep.

And I will never, ever forget that camping trip. No matter how hard I try!