Fizzies & Fartless Baked Beans - Treasured Summer Memories
It was a ritual of my summers in the 1960s:
Dad, up in the rafters of our one-car garage on Glendale Street in Saginaw, rummaging for tent poles and stakes. Teenage brother Jim balancing on a ladder, helping Dad attach his homemade wooden storage box to the roof of our steel-gray Chevy Impala station wagon.
Mom in the kitchen, cooking up a big batch of her famous fartless baked beans. Brother Bobby, 18 months older than me - being his typically bratty self – teasing and taunting me, the solo sister.
Ronnie, four years younger than me, just trying to stay out of everybody’s way.
Me? Ready to go. Wishing we would just get in the car and GO!
Dad had three weeks of vacation from his job at Michigan Bell Telephone. We’d almost always be heading west, toward the mountains. Dad loved his mountains. We’d head south out of mid-Michigan, skirt the northwest corner of Indiana, traverse the width of Illinois, then Iowa or Missouri, on to Nebraska, South Dakota, or Kansas - enduring endless hours of boring plains, prairies, and cornfields. Finally, we’d reach our destination: Mt. Rushmore, the Rocky Mountains, Yellowstone, or the Grand Canyon.
Our car was not air-conditioned. Dad always drove with his window rolled down, his left arm resting on the window frame. We had no sunscreen back in those days. I remember the time he got a blistering sunburn on his arm and had to drive with his forearm swaddled in a towel.
Jim squeezed between my parents in the front seat, playing navigator. We should have known he’d be an engineer one day, as he dutifully followed the roadmap from place to place and neatly logged our progress in a notebook.
The back seat folded flat to make space for us three younger kids so we could squirm, lie down, or play games. No seat belts or car seats back then!
Mom frequently scolded me and Bobby for bickering. (“But Mom, he started it!”)
My brother, Jim (a future engineer) made these signs as titles for the movies shot with Dad’s movie camera.
Sometimes, as we passed a big truck, we’d roll down the window and furiously pump our arm, encouraging the driver to blast his air horn. Always enjoyed a laugh when the trucker responded!
At lunchtime, Dad would pull into a roadside rest area. Never a restaurant. Mom would retrieve the flowered tin breadbox, unfold a gingham oilcloth tablecloth, generously slather Miracle Whip on Spatz’s white bread, and add a piece of ham. We tried to wolf down the sandwich before the bread dried out from blast furnace of roadside heat. (Saginawians: Is Spatz’s Bakery still in business?)
Our beverage was always a “Fizzie,” a lozenge that frothed and hissed like Alka-Seltzer and flavored the water like KoolAid. Sometimes Mom let us have potato chips. But there were always homemade cookies. Dad loved his cookies! (So did we!)
Basic pantry items for our camping trips
On travel days, we’d pull into a campground late in the day after driving for 8-10 hours. Bobby and I always lobbied for a campground with a pool, but that almost never happened because Jim had calculated exactly where we would stop. Once at the campground, we searched for the perfect campsite – one that had trees spaced the proper distance apart from which to hang Dad’s canvas hammock. I kept a lookout for the closest water spigot – I was water girl.
We’d set up camp – with a monstrous, green, smelly canvas tent in the early years – upgrading to a Reliart (that’s “trailer” spelled backwards) pop-up tent camper after a few frustrating years of wrestling with tent poles and stakes. A canvas tarp provided cover and shade for our al fresco kitchen, dining room, and living area.
Required gear (clockwise from top left): Chevy station wagon, metal breadbox, “Reliart” camper trailer,and Coleman 2-burner cook stove.
Dad would attach the tank to the green Coleman stove, pump it a bunch of times, and light the burners with his Zippo lighter. I was sent off in search of water and Bob would find kindling for the campfire. Dad and Jim hauled out the heavy aluminum cooler with the almost-melted block of ice. I set the table with our plastic camping dishes, stored in a homemade plywood cupboard. And Dad would settle into his hammock, smoking a cigarette.
Within an hour of pulling into the campground, ham slices were sizzling in the cast iron skillet alongside a pan simmering with Mom’s famous fartless baked beans.
I can hear it, smell it … taste it – like it was yesterday!
Our campsite from the early years - with our big green canvas tent.
Then we graduated to a camper trailer - this one barrowed from an uncle.
1964 - Photo from the Petrified Forest in Arizona.
Mom and our first dog, Penny. She (the dog!) delivered a litter of puppies on one of our camping trips - right underneath my cot!
1964 - Squinting into the sun with the Grand Canyon in the background.
At Niagara Falls
Colorado Springs
One summer we broke tradition and headed east - to the coast of Maine
This would have been the year after Madras plaid was in fashion. (We were never “on trend”, but rather a year or two behind, when trendy things would be discounted.)
My daddy was always the man behind the movie camera (and, later, the video camera). Would he have adapted to filming with a cellular phone…?
Always my favorite memory from those camping trips: s’mores in our jammies!
Aaaahhhh . . . memories! What were summertime vacation rituals in your family? Please share!
pssst: Wanna know Mrs. Murphy’s secret recipe for fartless beans? Just leave a comment and I’ll send it to you!