Kampgrounded

Life in the Winnebago

Had its own routines. The milk,

As it suited their mother,

Was Carnation powdered mix,

An awful, grainy slurry,

Supposedly saving space

In the tiny fridge unit,

Plus money for traveling.

They will realize later

That’s just part of their mother’s

Nostalgia for her childhood,

Which rules so much of the trip—

Stops to the family farm,

Now subdivided and sold,

Visits to far-flung siblings,

Great aunts, and second cousins,

Most of whom they’ve never met

Before and won’t meet again.

During the Great Depression,

As a small girl on that farm,

Mom had milk when the cow did,

Powdered milk when it didn’t.

Good enough for her must mean

Good enough for her kids, too,

A rule she always follows

When in doubt, rule that has lead

To odd anachronisms

And strange juxtapositions,

Such as McGuffey’s Readers

Surrounding the TV set

And gulping down powdered milk

While roaming in an RV.

Nostalgia and religion

Are indistinguishable.

They say grace crowded around

Each campsite picnic table

And sing The Little Brown Church

In the Vale passing through woods

And meadows cut by highways.

This too, the children later

Will realize, is just part

Of a kind of reaction

Formation long preceding

Their mother’s birth, extending

Past her death, to changing times.

A half-century later,

Weirder anachronisms

Will obtain—like slick websites

Aimed at evangelicals

With lyrics and sheet music

For old gospel hymns and boxed

McGuffey’s Readers reprints

Re-edited by Christian

Publishers, for homeschooling.

But that’s another future

For now, while the oldest child

Dreams of living on spaceships

By then, and the younger kids

Join their mother in singing

A Mighty Fortress, rolling

Through the Plains States and reading

Little House on the Prairie,

Bedtimes at the KOA.