Picnic days are just around the corner
As the oldest of seven children, I could hardly ever have my friends over for a meal. There just wasn’t room at the table for an extra person, unless one of us was away. Not even for a picnic could I invite a guest because there were already too many of us crammed in the back seat of our Hillman.
But, I was fortunate in that my girlfriends had room in at their tables for an extra now and again. It was always so surprising to me that families could do things in such different ways.
Take the picnics, for example. Now, when my husband and I took the boys for a picnic, it was usually because we were driving so far away that we needed a meal but didn’t have enough money to eat at a restaurant. Remember the days when gas was cheaper than food? We had a Coleman camp stove and most often found a provincial picnic park where we could heat things like chili or hotdogs and—just as important—perk coffee.
The one time I spent the day before preparing a moveable feast, a roving dog chanced along and scoffed our butterscotch pie. Almost always, our excursions were spontaneous. We just flung whatever was handy into the picnic box, filled the big water jug and away we went.
When my brothers and sisters were growing up, we thought of a picnic as being more like a party than a stop along the way. Mum would bake and ice her fabulous chocolate layer cake and make three kinds of sandwiches. Some- times, we even filled two, huge Kool-Aid jars.
Dad would have quizzed his students about where might be a good place to take half dozen kids so they could run off their excess energy. Once Dad parked the car, we burst out of it in an explosion of surging arms and legs. The parents were left to spread the picnic blanket and have a quiet conversation.
The family of my friend, Brenda, had a different idea of what a picnic should be. When her parents finished work for the day, on a warm summer evening, they packed tins of salmon and ears of corn into their Volkswagen, settled Brenda and me into the back seat and beetled to a favourite crescent of red sand, where the cool breezes blew and the surf chiseled seams of agate from the basalt.
Brenda’s dad coaxed 70 miles an hour out of that little car . . . on the downhills! And found every thrill hill on the way. I’m sure our squeals streamed out the open windows like wisps of joy. Brenda and I gathered driftwood for the fire and shucked the corn. Never had anything tasted as delicious as that salmon and beach-boiled corn.
None of these meals was in the traditional Yogi Bear picnic basket. We used a laundry basket for our picnics and sometimes a taped down Dutch oven. Mum and Dad often used a cardboard carton. Brenda’s family put the picnic in a paper sack.
Ahhh. Picnic days are just around the corner!