Randy Eggert

In 2015, I found our camp kitchen through the classifieds. When it’s packed up, the kitchen looks like a big enameled steel box, and then it opens into a horseshoe shape. On the left is the three-burner propane stove. In the middle is a counter, cupboards, microwave (which I removed), and fridge. And on the right is sink, a counter, and a cutting board.

The kitchen was designed for tailgating, the idea being that you could fit it in the back of a full-sized pickup. It comes in two pieces: the base, which is light enough for two people to lift with ease, and the top, which takes two very strong people or four normal people to lift. At the parking lot, you’re supposed to lift the base out of the truck and wheel it to the edge of the tailgate, and then the top slides on rollers right off the truck bed onto the base. It all latches together and you wheel it where you want it, open it up, plug it in, and the party’s on.

My truck wasn’t full-sized, so I could only fit the top in its bed. I put the base on my little Harbor Freight trailer. The other problem I had is there’s no asphalt on our land, which means we weren’t wheeling the kitchen anywhere. We set the base where we wanted it, backed up against a juniper tree, and then four of us muscled the top across twenty feet of uneven ground and heaved it on top of the base. We latched the two parts together, and there it sits. I have no intention of moving it again.

The top doesn’t fold up as tight as I thought it did, and mice set up housekeeping in it. They chewed up my salt and pepper shakers, and shredded a matchbox, which sucked because the matches were safety matches, meaning I couldn’t light them without the box. Frankly, mice are terrible at housekeeping. They piss and shit where they sleep, where they eat. And I really didn’t like cleaning up after them. After two times, I figured out where they were getting in, and I now plug the gaps with scraps of tarp and orchard netting whenever I close up the kitchen.