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Recollections of Camping at Cook Forest State Park in the Early-Mid 1950s

Driving in to the campground we would circle to the left, and we would always take one of the first few campsites to the left, which backed up to the forest which surrounded the campground. It was an advantage to be in one of these campsites because this placed you nearest to the toilets and the water supply.

My father would, of course, not let us do anything else until the camp had been set up, so we would help to set up the tent, blow up the canvas air mattresses that we slept on, put up a tarp over the picnic table to keep off the rain when necessary, and set up the icebox, stove, lantern, etc. When everything was in place, we were then allowed to run off and start exploring. Invariably the first thing that we wanted to do was to run back into the woods where we would pick up a trail that went behind our campsite and follow it to the water pumping station, which was off some distance to the right from where we hit the trail. At several points along the trail were little wooden boxes in the ground with covers that could be removed, revealing sections of the pipes that carried the water from the pumping station to the campground, and possibly to other locations in the park. We would always stop at each of these and put our hands on the pipe – if the pump was operating, we could feel the vibration on the pipe, and this would spur us to run faster. There was also a cinderblock cistern built into the ground with a wooden roof covering it that we would peer into.

I have no idea why we were so fascinated by the pumping station. It was located at the intersection of this trail and a little forest road. It was a tiny little building with a gasoline-powered pump that had a large flywheel, probably about four or five feet in diameter. If we were lucky, we got to be there when the ranger (or whoever it was who operated the pump) would be getting ready to start the engine up. He would start the engine by kicking the flywheel, putting one of his feet on one of the flywheel’s spokes and pushing down on it violently. One year when we arrived, we found that the ranger was sporting a large cast from his hip to his ankle – in the process of kick-starting the engine a week or so earlier, he had gotten his leg caught in the wheel, badly fracturing it. We loved to stand there and chat with the ranger, watching as the engine loudly chugged along, the flywheel spinning dangerously – and thrillingly – close to us.

Camping was not the popular pastime in those days that it has subsequently become. Most people who went camping wanted to really rough it, and almost everyone stayed in tents – camping trailers were quite rare, although we greatly envied those who had them. Tents were hot in the daytime, damp and cold at night, and were often subject to flooding if there were heavy rains – on more than one occasion I remember being awakened in the middle of the night as I was carried by my father to the car to escape the rising water in the tent. I can still conjure up in my mind the smell of damp canvas that was such a part of the camping experience in those days.

Cook Forest had a set of regular campers who could be depended upon to be there every year, so we would always have some families to re-acquaint ourselves with. The most reliable of these was someone who would always set up at a large campsite at the far end of the campground, opposite from the entrance. This campsite was astonishing to my young eyes, because whoever it was – their name might have been Shannon - would construct a crazy-quilt of overlapping tarps, held up with long poles, that seemed to go on forever – it was almost like a small circus tent. My brother David actually remembers it as being an old sideshow tent, which it may have been. I think that there were one or more actual tents incorporated into the interior, and a kitchen area had been created with a linoleum floor and a refrigerator - you felt like you had entered the abode of the Sheik of Araby when you walked in. It was my impression that whoever set up this camp did so at the beginning of the summer camping season and stayed until autumn arrived – I know that it was always there, no matter which month we made our visit.

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