Time for tents is in the past

This is the tale of seven tents.

That seems appropriate for camping season.

The first was an army surplus canvas pup tent, one of the thousands that made their way back to the U.S. in the wake of World War II.

Nearly every Baby Boomer in America slept beneath one of those in the safety of their own backyards at some point in the 1950s.

The tents were heavy. The canvas was smelly. And they tended to leak if you happened to touch them from the inside when it was raining.

In my case, that pup tent also provided shelter for backyard campouts with my big brother, occasions when he would teach me the words to Kingston Trio songs like “Three Jolly Coachmen,” “Tom Dooley” and the one about the guy getting lost forever ’neath the streets of Boston on the subway.

Numbers two and three came together.

My parents caught the camping bug mostly to save a little money. Motel rooms for a family of six got a little pricey.

So sometime about 1957, the folks purchased a Heilite camping trailer that would sleep four and a “pop-up” tent for my brother Steve and me. Both would qualify as being “state of the art” — for 1957.

In other words, there were a few glitches.

The camping trailer, which stayed in the family for a couple of generations, was great, until its single wheel fell off. Or until one of the hitches to the family car disintegrated. Both happened — multiple times — about three years after it was purchased.

The “pop-up” shared many of the design elements of today’s inexpensive two-man tents, but they didn’t work so well back in the day.

Specifically, the interior framework was insufficient. Once the tent had “popped up,” it sill had a way to go. It was necessary to insert some additional metal wiring to complete the process.

And my brother and I managed to lose that particular piece of additional metal wiring, not once but twice. How? I can only imagine.

Tent four is one I bought in London in 1969.

I’d been studying as a college student in London and was setting out for three months on the open road, hitchhiking across Europe. That meant — on a very limited budget left over from my earnings as a paperboy — purchasing a rucksack, a sleeping bag and a tent.

Only the rucksack turned out to be a good buy.

The sleeping bag was a mess after a month or two. And the tent was better suited for a daycare play group than actual camping. It had a plastic floor and wooden tent poles, but it had no mosquito netting.

Not exactly the Ritz, but I think it may still be in the attic of our garage. I know the rucksack’s still there.

Tent number five was a loaner. We’d been up in New Hampshire at my wife’s family’s cabin and were planning a camping trip up to Maine. Before we could set out, Connie’s parents suggested — mercifully — that we ditch the play tent from my European adventures and use one of the Sears tents they’d stored in the closet.

Sold. It was a great trade and a significant upgrade.

Tent six came only a few years later when we were camping with toddler twins. The Sears tent was no longer big enough, so we rented a larger tent. (Yes, it is possible to rent a tent.)

The rental was perfect, except for one moment when I was taking it down at a campsite right on the Maine coast and felt a strong gust of wind behind me. For a moment, I thought I was heading out to sea, parasailing over the Atlantic as I held on for dear life to a rental tent that had suddenly decided to become a kite.

Tent seven was a honey. It was expensive, and it was a manufacturer’s second. But it was a honey.

I’d fallen in love with designs of Moss Tent Works, which was then in Camden, Maine.

Many of the tent designs you see today can trace their roots to Moss.

But that was, I suspect, our last tent.

It was retired several years ago. And we’ve noticed that these days the ground seems harder than it used to be, even with an air mattress.

So maybe it’s time to revisit those motel prices my dad balked at all those decades ago.