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The Complete Book of Practical Camping
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276 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1974
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
September 14, 2018
It was a rainy summer day when the power went out at my workplace. I was going camping that weekend and didn't have any work projects I could do without electricity, so I looked at our bookshelves. Complete Book of Practical Camping? Well, I already have my tent packed, but this book looks old and interesting, I wonder if there are any old-timey camping tricks I can try......
Instead there were weeks of dramatic readings, post-it notes labeled "Pompous pontificating," "TENT HEATERS?" and "bussing Miss Universe," and the decision to remove it from the office library. It's simply not relevant to modern camping, except perhaps as a sneak peak into the bygone era (1974? the thing reads like it was written in the 50s....)
"...camping can be more fun and more convenient than ever before. I constantly seek new and worthwhile items and techniques of horse-canoe-backpack camping and wilderness survival with the tenacity and dedicated enthusiasm that a pal of mine used (before he got married) to discover honey blondes who were 5'2" tall and weighed 110 pounds. But I never forget that a lot of worthwhile wilderness camping techniques, styles, and procedures stem directly from the mountain man, who got it from the Indian. So the pompous pontificating of some "experts" occasionally gives me the fantods."
Me too, John Jobson. Me too. After I looked up 'fantods,' a word that autocorrect is not happy with.
Unfortunately, this book has not aged well, and advice offered ranges from the comedic and sexist ("have your wife add two eyelets on the brim [of a hat] for a chin thong") to the worrying (cutting branches to support tent structures, bringing dogs everywhere with you) to the potentially very harmful.
"[Petroleum jelly] is an excellent means of painlessly removing ticks which have submerged their dratted heads in your tender epidermis. Put a glob over the tick. This cuts off his air, or something- in any case, he backs out, head and all, and then you can properly stomp the little s.o.b."
Mr. Jobson, this cuts off his air, or something, indeed, and makes him vomit the contents of his stomach, which may include Lyme disease, Alpha Gal molecule, etc, directly into your bloodstream. I promise you can still properly stomp the little s.o.b. after removing him safely with tweezers.
At the end of the day, while this was an entertaining read, the dangerous and outdated advice forces me to give only two stars. Sadly, over time Jobson has become one of the pompously pontificating experts who gave him the fantods back in the day.
Instead there were weeks of dramatic readings, post-it notes labeled "Pompous pontificating," "TENT HEATERS?" and "bussing Miss Universe," and the decision to remove it from the office library. It's simply not relevant to modern camping, except perhaps as a sneak peak into the bygone era (1974? the thing reads like it was written in the 50s....)
"...camping can be more fun and more convenient than ever before. I constantly seek new and worthwhile items and techniques of horse-canoe-backpack camping and wilderness survival with the tenacity and dedicated enthusiasm that a pal of mine used (before he got married) to discover honey blondes who were 5'2" tall and weighed 110 pounds. But I never forget that a lot of worthwhile wilderness camping techniques, styles, and procedures stem directly from the mountain man, who got it from the Indian. So the pompous pontificating of some "experts" occasionally gives me the fantods."
Me too, John Jobson. Me too. After I looked up 'fantods,' a word that autocorrect is not happy with.
Unfortunately, this book has not aged well, and advice offered ranges from the comedic and sexist ("have your wife add two eyelets on the brim [of a hat] for a chin thong") to the worrying (cutting branches to support tent structures, bringing dogs everywhere with you) to the potentially very harmful.
"[Petroleum jelly] is an excellent means of painlessly removing ticks which have submerged their dratted heads in your tender epidermis. Put a glob over the tick. This cuts off his air, or something- in any case, he backs out, head and all, and then you can properly stomp the little s.o.b."
Mr. Jobson, this cuts off his air, or something, indeed, and makes him vomit the contents of his stomach, which may include Lyme disease, Alpha Gal molecule, etc, directly into your bloodstream. I promise you can still properly stomp the little s.o.b. after removing him safely with tweezers.
At the end of the day, while this was an entertaining read, the dangerous and outdated advice forces me to give only two stars. Sadly, over time Jobson has become one of the pompously pontificating experts who gave him the fantods back in the day.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review