Pixie Sticks and Burning Sneakers

Phil and I grew up camping in family-size tents with two parents and a dog and six packs of beer. When Mrs. Hoffstetler sold her 1970s Pace Arrow to us, we were riding in style. We were the owners of a used RV, complete with bathroom, kitchenette, pull-out beds, and a worn out game of Yahtzee. A brown stripe ran down the length of it's 30 foot long sides. Inside, the shag rug was brown and yellow and by the time we abandoned family trips altogether, sand lay in the worn out areas.
We took the dog. Lady. She was a black and tan English Cocker Spaniel, although when my mom told that to her English Grandmother and English friends they laughed at us. "Preposterous," they said, "You have a mutt, there." Lady followed the streams of white from flashlights and chased shadows of the kites that we flew. She was dumb and beautiful and I called her my puppy until the morning we had to put her to sleep because her heart got too big.
I learned how to ride a bike then. The campground roads went around endless circles, trashcans in the center. My brother learned at the same time and the buddy system allowed us to take off without our parents. There was one store in particular, down half a mile from a campsite we visited often. The bike path road along the bluffs of the beach. Two lanes of concrete and wet air. We procured money from our parents with nice voices and sweet smiles and went for high fructose corn sugar sustenance. I can't remember what the inside of that store looked like, not a bit. But my brother and I would leave with two-foot long pixie sticks, riding back to camp with them hanging from our mouths.