There is a campground off Highway 50 past the town of Placerville, about twenty-five or thirty miles from Lake Tahoe called Icehouse Lake.

For many years we made our annual camping trek from San Francisco up to Icehouse Lake for one or two weeks during the summertime.   At first we took the white valiant station wagon loaded down with all sorts of camping gear, Mom and Dad, and all six of us kids all packed up and squeezed in, filling the car until it practically burst at the seams.  Always on the night before we were to go, we would load up the car.    Dad would make sure that everything was in order, and he had it down to a science and to the smallest detail. Coleman stove, lanterns, sleeping bags, tent and accessories all accounted for and ready. 

Our journey began around three or four in the early morning, in the darkness before dawn silent except for our furtive movements and the banter of last minute details that had to be taken care of. Then, we would go.  My first marker was always the Oil Refinery in Hercules, standing there like silent sentinels guarding the hillsides in the darkness.  The smell of the Refinery was all around, permeating the pre dawn air with the pungent odor of the oil refining process.  Past them we went on.  When Dad would switch from I-80 to Hwy 50 at Sacramento would be my second marker, and I knew we were really on the way.  We were putting more space and distance from the house, and were getting further away from home.  Then there was Sam’s on Hwy 50, with the sawdust on the floor and the gold rush motif where we’d stop for breakfast. Sam’s seemed like it was there forever and was a permanent Sierra place.  It was also our first encounter as kids with a breakfast buffet.  The next stop was the town of Placerville where Dad stopped at a supermarket so Mom could buy most of the perishable food supply for our camp stay.  By then the sun was getting up slowly and the landscape started to take shape.  The last stage was the drive from Hwy 50 up to Icehouse Lake itself, and on the sides of the road and well into the distance we were told that this area was the last remaining remnants of an ancient Petrified Forest.  I can recall straining my eyes to see if the trees were really stone.

When we finally arrived at Icehouse Lake it was time to set up camp, and I’ll always remember starting with the tent…

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"You Made Your Bed" (Ray 2006)

 Lessons to live by… The aphorisms were, and still are time worn and seemingly clichéd; yet in each and every one the message rings as clear as a bell for all to hear. As kids when we were coming up, we would often hear all the old adages that Dad had stored up in his memory banks and dispensed to us on a regular basis. Deeply embedded into each of our collective psyches, the wisdom of Dad is still in effect.

Call it experience, longevity or just plain knowledge of living. He was really old school in thought and deed, and the nuggets of truth he gave us mean much more now than they did back then, and either consciously or subconsciously I think we still conduct ourselves on a daily basis with his old sayings subliminally back there in the recesses, still hearing his voice from when we were small and then tall.

I don’t think any of us ever sleep in late even now; “Get Up! Half the day is gone,” he would say, rousting us out of bed even on weekends. Sometimes we would watch him working on the car in the garage doing routine maintenance, changing the sparkplugs or draining the oil, and he would say to us, “If you don’t take care of your car, it won’t take care of you”.  

In an email Joe recalled him quiet and deliberate; “What did your mother say?”  was his reply when he didn’t want to be the one to say yes, and “If you get arrested, don’t call me” (When we got older, of course). And we can’t forget “Pretty soon patay” when he had advanced in age to his later years. (In Filipino language patay means ‘to die’) and also “Always cook more food than there are people”. 

To this very day I can’t put my hands in my pockets, because I can still hear him clearly; “Get your hands out of your pockets. It makes you look lazy!”  After Mom passed away he and I would sit every morning before I went to work at the table in his apartment and have coffee, talk, and I heard over and over, “Save your money for a rainy day” almost every day between bites of his apple turnover.

Just recently George reminded me of what is probably the oldest and the best quote ever, and it’s regarding the after effect in certain decision making processes, mostly when the outcome turned out less than desirable; “You made your bed, now lay in it”.  Yet how many times has each us heard it echoing in our own mind somewhere along the line when the decisions we made ourselves turned out to be wrong?

“You’re going to quarter me to death!”  Ralph recalled him saying, when we would pester him for twenty-five cents, and if anyone asked him for a bigger denomination he would utter; “Let me look in my little black book.” That little black book contained every amount of money anybody owed him, and when he died I put it in the same shirt pocket he always had it in before anyone noticed, when he was in the casket.

When our Grandmother frequently put down Grampa, and he meekly took it without any defiance Dad used to say “That’s a poor excuse for a man!” and Dad was always coming to Dave’s defense, and he would admonish us; “He’s still your brother.” even though we were at times utterly frustrated with Dave’s antics. When we wore a dirty shirt he would say, “Go change that shirt, you can grow potatoes on it!”

Just plain common sense he picked up along his way? Many of those old quotes are as old as there are people, keeping it real then, now, and in the future, and just plain old common sense. “You made your bed, now lay in it.”  Simple and straightforward, either it is or it isn’t. It can’t get any better said than that…

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