Live Oak Blues What happens.

Our shelter was to be 125 lbs. of WW2-era canvas and wood, large enough to house an army patrol. It claimed nearly all the trunk space in our blue ’69 Impala, smelled sweetly of ancient mildew, and took Daddy the better part of an hour to erect–with marginal help from little brother Thomas and me. 

We were inside the tent all of ten minutes when a ranger appeared to tell us about a tornado warning in the area and that we needed to find some shelter that wasn’t a tent. Somehow we ended up in one of those tin-roof camp chapels that doubles as an auditorium.

In the dark, we chose a place for our sleeping bags onstage against the back wall and right next to a bookshelf full of vintage (1927-1959) Hardy Boy Mystery Stories that I did not have in my collection at home. I don’t recall any protracted struggle with my conscience before ordering Thomas to shove the entire Hardy Boys mother lode into his backpack while Daddy went out to get the rest of our camping gear.

Gusting rain hammered the tin roof all night, but we were warm and quiet in our sleeping bags, watching the shadows of whipped tree branches play on the oak stage floor. It was one of the only times in my life when I have felt completely content. 

The next morning, my dad could not get the hell of there quick enough. He shoved the wet, battered tent into the trunk and yelled for us to bring our stuff out. Thomas’s backpack, substantially heavier, did not make it to car before disgorging its payload of books at Daddy’s feet. 

As I recall, we both received the standard three licks with my dad’s hand-tooled leather hippy belt and, of course, returned the books, most likely never to be read.

Nursing inflamed buttocks and disappointment, I could not have known that this night of rain and shelter with my father and my brother next to me would become a “wet cement” moment for me. To this day, when it rains at night, I always raise the window a little so I can reproduce even a little bit of the contentment I felt that night in 1972 when absolutely everything was well and at peace.