Telegram to the tent

Telegram to the tent

     It is easy to remember the exact date since it was one day before my 5th birthday. August 26, 1952 to be exact. One of the most delightful vacations for my family was to visit Yosemite and stay in a sort of glamping setup with a deluxe tent in Curry Village where we could all smell the pine trees and witness the  amazing fire fall in the evening. It is not like we hiked up El Capitan or rode rapids but we did drive out to the dump and watch clueless bears rummage through human trash to find something to eat while clueless humans took photos from their Kodak brownie cameras that would show a speck that was a bear in a blured background of redwood trees. It was thrilling nevertheless and despite the ecologically wrong thing to do we watched happily as some ranger started a huge mound of bark on fire and got a team to push the thing off the edge of Glacier point. Actually it was bark  from older trees but we accepted the fact like it was like a flaming tree hurtling down 3,000 feet to the forest floor. This was a family tradition and the first I remember since I was technically 4 years old. There were big voices that made the call

Camp Curry: Hello, Glacier Point.

Glacier Point: Hello, Camp Curry.

Camp Curry: Is the fire ready?

Glacier Point: The fire is ready.

Camp Curry: Let the fire fall.

Glacier Point: The fire falls.

    Over the years we visited Yosemite and loved the place where we swam in the ice cold Yosemite creek, rode horseback through the legendary trails and then went to dinner at the Awahnee dining room instead of gnawing at hardtack back in camp. I was so excited I awoke at sunrise and wandered about camp wanting to eat breakfast but the only thing around was a bunch of bananas. I devoured several and felt pretty good about my choice. Everything was wonderful but slightly later in the morning a man in a Western Union uniform came to our tent and asked to see Ben Creason. Now, there was an old unwanted tradition that my grandfather would always tell my Dad when we left on vacations that he would probably not be there when we returned. This time he was rigfht and Grandpa Creason had died of "hardening of the arteries" which was also called "old age" and now known as heart disease. It was the first time I ever saw my father cry. The entire family was loaded into our car and we set off toward Fresno on winding mountain roads at high speeds. At one point we fishtailed a bit and Stephen cried out a Catholic prayer he had learned at St. Helen called the Act of Contrition. What happened next would not save him as the jerking and jostling turned my little stomach into a mass of heaving bananas and I began hurling that breakfast out the window where the wind and turns caused it to literally paint the rear windows with puke.Stephen and Cheryl were not sympathetic and cried helplessly while they watched my spew creep across their line of sight for 280 miles and 5 full hours of horror. My Dad was expectedly stressed out and had little patience for us but from that day and for decades more I could not look at a banana.

                                                  Camp Curry

                                Awahnee dining rom