Camping With Willie

By kiki

Sometime in the early 1970s, my brother-in-law, Willie, my sister, Annie, their kids, Connie, our kids, and I were camping at Independence, Ca. Gray Meadows campgrounds. We had arrived early in the week, and before we knew it was Saturday, the day before we were heading back home, and to Willie's dismay, we had run out of beer, Willie puts his arm around me and said: “Brother-in-law, how 'bout we go into town and get some more beer?”

The campgrounds are seven miles west of town up a steep grade up the side of a mountain, so I said to Willie, “Let’s wait till tomorrow; we’ll stop and get some beers on our way home.”

Willie was dying for a beer, so he wasn’t too happy about having to wait until the following day for a cold tallboy. So I decided to go for a walk around the campground. During my walk, I met a couple of guys, and after talking for a few minutes, they invited me to have a beer with them; I accepted and sat down around their campfire with them to talk and drink the beer with them. Soon Willie saw me, and he started walking back and forth in front of the guy's campsite, hoping, I guess, that they would also invite him to a beer, they never did.

Every time Willie walked in front of the campsite, I would take a drink of my beer and smile at him; it was easy to see that was he was getting pissed off. So after I drank the beer with the guys, I got up and thank them, I then walked up to Willie and put my arm around him and said to him, “c'mon Willie, let’s go to town and buy some cold ones.”