Let's Talk Tents!!!!

From as far back as I can remember, tents have been there. All shapes, all sizes, in the craziest places, tents have been a part of some of my favorite memories.

There was the baby blanket over the knee hole of my Mom's desk. My babies and I fit in there just perfect! I could watch TV from there, especially Captain Kangaroo (the original one). What about the porch... when Mom would shake out the rugs and hang them over the porch rails to air, we (Marcia and I) would put a blanket across the top of them and hook it to the porch chairs. Aha! a great tent! We lived on 8th street in Manitowoc. It was one of the main ways for the high school kids to walk to school. Our porch tent was the perfect cover if we played spies. We would "spy" on the kids as they walked by. Sometimes we'd yell something like boo, believing we were scaring them. Some played along and said "What was that! Ohhh it must be a ghost!" or things like that. We thought we were so sneaky. On Hoyt Dr. we had bunk beds. Now that was just a tent waiting to happen. All it took was a blanket down the side and "voila", an instant tent!

On Appleton Ave. in Menomonee Falls we had clothes lines in the back yard. Mom was pregnant with Tammy or Candy, I can't be sure. We put up the swimming pool under the clothes lines. Then we hung sheets and blankets all around the pool. Being Mom was pregnant, she didn't really want to be seen in a bathing suit, but we convinced her to sit in the pool, in the tent, in her clothes so she could cool off in the summer heat. Man we were slick. She cooled off, we built the tent, and we all got to swim in a tent. How many people can say that?

Auntie Suzie loved to build tents when she watched the kids, nieces, or nephews. (It was my trademark.) The living room quickly became a mass of blankets over the furniture. We always set it up so you could be in the tent and watch TV. The kids usually took their naps in the tent! If the parents wouldn't catch us, we would have snacks like popcorn, juice, or apple bits while we laid in the tent watching cartoons. I loved watching the kids come up with how to add on more blankets to make the tents bigger. The bigger the better.

The biggest tent I ever made was in England. We built it in the backyard. Yep, the backyard!

It started out over the clotheslines, like when I was a kid. But hey, I grew up, so shouldn't the tent grow too? At first it was just our girls and the kids right next door. We added the swing set... we covered the whole thing with sheets and blankets. We made rooms inside of it!

When more kids from the neighborhood joined in, we even added bikes and wagons to make it huge. Then I got out the radio and we sang and danced inside and outside the tent. I'm adding a photo to this where the kids were outside a "part" of the tent singing and dancing to "Walk Like an Egyptian", a popular song at the time. That had to be the biggest tent I can remember. At the end we had our 2 girls, the next door neighbors 3, the other neighbors 2, another neighbors 2, and most of the parents involved. I'll never forget Dan's face when he came out the patio door and saw the backyard covered as a tent! I guess living with me he knew nothing was a surprise, it was just me...

It doesn't matter what size the tent is, or even where it is. It was time having fun with the kids and making great memories. Now admit it, you are remembering some tents from your past right now. I guess I was a pretty weird sister, mom, neighbor, aunt and now Zamma. Oh well...! I think Kenzie and I need to make a mini tent right now!