By John Chandler

It was a matter of course that we would find the time in our busy schedules to go camping every summer. Camping as a family. All of us. Together. In tents. Tents for God's sake!

When I was a mere stripling, this meant fun and family adventure. Just being included in vacation plans with the folks was cause for a toast of Nehi Peach Soda (the finest soda pop ever invented, but it's gone, like so many of my cherished memories, cruelly tarred over by time, alcohol and a sputtering think-box that only fires on half its cylinders under ideal circumstances). Mainly it meant that Mom and Dad weren't going to saddle my two brothers and I with another in a long line of lunatics and fugitives from justice posing as baby sitters that they managed dig up from God-knows-where.

Around my 12th year on the planet, the luster of pulling our camper van into some crummy state park crammed with rednecks, mosquitoes and shrieking toddlers began to diminish. Have you been? These places are friggin' ridiculous!

You pull into a little slot of a camping space that is approximately a gnat's wing from the next slot. The whole park is comprised of these stupid little enclaves, like 300 of them. It's like trying to find elbowroom in a Japanese efficiency motel. Whether you want to or not, you're going to meet the neighbors.

After setting up camp, the tedium begins in earnest, crashing down on Young John like a pig-pile of upperclassmen. About two miles away, there might be a murky trickle of a river. If you really apply yourself, you can get wet. That is, if the sight of high school kids peeing upstream or a diaper floating by loaded with pungent cargo doesn't discourage your eagerness for the aquatic splendors at hand.

It's not like you can sit in the river all day, although I found that particular pursuit more satisfying than trying to pass the time elsewhere.

"This place is gorgeous," my Mom would periodically announce, doing her best by sheer force of will to repaint the dismal environs. "Four whole days with nothing to do!"

Uh, Mom when you're 12, this is NOT a good thing. The poor woman was clearly delusional.

The exact location of the park we camped at that particular summer has thankfully been lost to the sands of time. Some of us claim Eastern Oregon, others insist on Canada or Washington. With the way my brain functions it could have been the planet Mongo.

My brother Dave was 15 and surly. He never liked "car camping" and decided to spend his four days sitting in the camper reading Motley's "Rise of the Dutch Republic." My younger brother, Paul, was all of 10 and game for anything. Unfortunately, he stepped on a wasp's nest right off the bat and was destined to serve out his bucolic sentence having ointment periodically applied to the angry red bumps that coated his face and arms. Since he was clearly the injured party, my parents babied him with candy, soda and comic books. The little rat.

The one occasion I plopped down under a tree to re-read one of the three comics I had thought to bring, I got a royal lecture.

"Put that stupid comic book down and go enjoy the great outdoors," Mom instructed.

"Believe it or not Mom, I can do both at the same time," I replied, returning my attention to Spider-Man kicking the shit out of Doc Ock for the millionth time.

This bit of cheek earned me a fast passage out of camp and exile for the rest of the day. Mom even copped my comic.

The better part of an hour was spent playing catch with my dad. All-American fun, right? Except I had a weenie throwing arm and my Dad actually played minor league baseball. He could whistle the ball into my glove like a hot coal fired from a deer rifle. After a short while, my hand was red and swollen while my throwing arm felt like a strand of linguini. I realized this was crucial bonding time, but I was never, ever going to be much of a baseball player: Yet another childhood recollection for me to feel guilty and inadequate about.

Finally, it seemed I got lucky. I met a couple of older guys (15-16 or so) and they appeared willing to take me on as an apprentice mischief-maker. After pilfering a few cans of Oly from a cooler at a vacant campsite, Donnie and Dallas (brothers as it turns out) took me on a safari into the woods to check out an "old Indian trail."

Perhaps if there had been an old Indian nearby to give me some counsel, I wouldn't have fallen for such a transparent ruse. But I was young and flattered by the company of the older dudes.

Once we were a ways into the dense shade of the trees, the two ruffians pounced on me. I suppose I was fortunate these two hadn't seen "Deliverance," or things might have gotten really traumatic, and I would be telling this story to an expensive therapist instead of to my snickering BarFly readership.

I got "pantsed," and they threw my shorts and underwear up a tree. For all I know, my drawers are still up there, serving as a funky condominium for the avian community. I was forced to make my way back to camp with my shirt pulled down past my knees like a very masculine skirt.

I was hurt, bruised and disillusioned to a point that should have been unbearable to a lad my age. But this I vowed: I would never camp with my parents again.

My steely resolve lasted one whole year.