I had a very small circle of friends growing up so it wasn't until high school, or maybe college, that I realized that the way my family lived wasn't exactly normal. For instance, I knew that most Americans don’t live in teepees but I'd never lived any other way so I didn't have anything to compare it to. Never mind that the teepee was designed by the plains Indians, who lived in that great arid middle part of what is now our country (after all, they are mostly dead, how are they going to contest ownership-and when they do, whose courts do the deciding?). My parents (more precisely, my mom and my then-stepdad) decided to pitch their teepees in the temperate rainforest of the Northwest. I don’t think they spent too much time thinking about the wickiups the Pomo built in our part of California
We didn’t really have a kitchen the way other people understand the term. We had “Darkest Africa.” In “Darkest Africa,” there was a table, made from one of those industrial spools telephone crews roll telephone cable off of. A refrigerator, or more properly, an icebox. It was an old Frigidaire, not plugged into anything of course, into which we would put big 5 pound blocks of ice in the summer, which kept our food cold. There was a real gas stove, hooked up to a propane tank. There were some counters around the outside. I can’t remember how they were made, but I think the top was bare plywood. We had plastic tubs into which we poured water to wash dishes. We had to collect the water from a hose spigot some 50 feet away, and heat it on the stove if we wanted to wash out dishes in hot water. The floor wasn’t qute dirt, it was a mixture of soil and concrete. You see my parents (I am just going to use this somewhat imprecise term, unless it is critical to the story) didn't want to leave a mark on the land when they left. I went back years later to look and they were right. There is only a flat spot where I used to live.
My memory is a little fuzzy about the exact size of the teepees, blurred by the years and the fact that the things around us get smaller as we get bigger. I think they were about 20 feet across at the bottom. My step brother (who we will cal Ari) and I had one. Our parents had another about 100 feet away through the woods. I described the kitchen already. Our living room was a fire pit with a brick grill built next to it for cooking my step-dad's specialty, "Chicken Goo-La-Lee." In the summer, part of our dinner was usually cooked on this grill, and we would often eat around the fire. In the winter we sat on the floor and ate on a low table in the teepee I shared with Ari. During the day we would play outside. Somehow in my memory it was always summer, so I honestly don't know what we did in the winter. I remember a lot of Uno. Maybe we played Uno all day.
There is, of course, another room in most modern homes. That room we euphemistically call the restroom, W.C., powder room, or bathroom. That room really has two separate purposes, and in teepee land, we separated those purposes in two different places. Baths were taken in the bathhouse (think cowboys, not the Bowery or the Castro). It was one of two permanent buildings on the property that had not only running water, but that pinnacle of modernism, hot running water. Of course, it didn't have a regular bathtub and certainly nothing like a shower. I used to take baths in one of those big galvanized metal tubs they use to water horses and cattle. I remember the fitting they used to plug the hole in the side had a hard, square, plastic piece on it that stuck into the tub. You had to be careful to watch out for that.
There was also a toilet in the bathhouse for any citified visitors. We hardier folk used the outhouse, which was literally a wooden structure over a hole in the ground. I have developed extensive experience of outhouses in my life, and this was the most primitive. Not even a seat to sit on, you had to squat over the hole and hope your legs didn't cramp up before you were done.
Looking back, I wonder what my life would have been like in a regular house, with 4 walls, plumbing, and central heating. I think about raising my own kids and how different their lives are than mine was. I like to say that I have experienced the industrial revolution in my life time. I've gone from kerosene lamps and wood-fired cookstoves to iphones, wireless internet (I refuse to call it wi fi), and blogging. Sometimes I think I would fit better in an earlier, simpler time. But that isn't the time I live in. I live in a world of exponential technological change. Of fast international travel, instant communication, information saturation, and catastrophic oil spills. If it ever comes crashing down around our ears, I'm ready to go back to the wood-burning stove. Until then, I'm off to update my Facebook status.
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