When I was in high school in Pauls Valley ,Oklahoma the main thing we did during the summer months was go camping at Lake Murray near Ardmore Oklahoma. This is about 50 miles from the Texas state line . It never gets cold until late December that far south . This particular year we decided to have one last HOO-RAH on camping over Thanksgiving weekend . Of course my eighty eight year Grandma Beavers wanted to go along . She never wanted to stay cooped up inside much . ( and I don’t blame her) My dad had went and picked her up earlier during the week since she lived 50 miles the opposite direction we were going to be going and when the weekend came we loaded up the car with the tent ; the cot’s ; the camp stove ; oh yes the fishing gear . and of course the groceries and took off . f course the I guess the weather men wasn’t able to forecast too far in advance or at least no one believed them any way . We arrived picked out a good spot and set up camp . The next thing you know the wind started to change direction and the temperature started to drop . It must have got down to 40 degrees . All I remember is before the weekend was over we found an abandoned two story rock building that looked like it had once been a water well house of some kind . It had a door way with no door a big window with no window. My dad and I scoured the woods to find enough lumber to board up the window and used a tarp to cover the door way and we built a fire in the corner of that old rock building for heat that night . It’s a good thing we did because the next morning we woke up to two inches of snow on the ground .
Lucky for us , in that part of the country a snowfall is short lived at that time of year . But it got awful cold that night and it is a camping trip that I will never forget . Grandma Beavers and all.