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| Mirro Aluminum Camp Cookware Set Wisconsin State Historical Society |
This late 1960's vintage camp cookware set obviously dates sufficiently back in time to be an antique, after all it is now part of the collection at the Wisconsin State Historical Society. I guess that makes my wife (and me), who is older than the cook set, also an antique. While we try to do many of our evening meals on the camp fire, we still use the cookware set a great deal. The plates are used for pretty much every meal, but oatmeal, and lunch when we have sandwiches. We heat water for tea and oatmeal in the coffee pot, cook eggs and bacon in the fry pan. With the two of us, the large fry pan is now often used to hold items we have already cooked over the fire, on a grill or in foil packets. The provided coffee cup handles have broken over time, and one pot cover is missing, but other than those items, the set is in tact. Who would have thought this set would make history?
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| Part of WI Historical Society Facebook Post on Mirro Aluminum Camp Cookware For a second I thought the two in the photo were Jerry and Shirley Goff |
Funny, until my wife mentioned the Wisconsin State Historical Society post it never before occurred to me that the set was specifically made for camping. I thought it was a nice set of pots and pans repurposed for camping with plastic plates and cups being added. It is quite a handy set, and fairly lightweight. The set occupies just under a quarter of our kitchen box, which too was a hand-me down from her parents. With just the two of us, the cabinet food box can handle most all of our non-perishable food needs for a near four or five day long camping trip. When you think about the then young baby boomer children and the parents going camping back in the day (1960's and 70's), it was probably a good seller. One person commented that every boy scout troop used the same cookware, and it could well stand their use. I think the stuff we used when I was a boy scout was probably older than this set. My troop (64) was small and did not have the resources of troop 43. Maybe we used the 43 hand me downs when they got the Mirro set. Selling a cookware set like that made sense to meet a demographic demand. Today the rage is not only cookware that can nest, like this set, but have some items that can also collapse. Light weight and less space is a good thing when car camping, and even better when backpacking.
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| Our Camp Cookware Set, July 2020 |
When we camped with the kids, the cookware set received a great deal of use as we made many meals with that cook set. Many more eggs were made for a large morning breakfast, testing Land Girl's (ie, the Wife) ability to scramble the eggs within the fry pan. She would cook pancakes in the fry pan too, and we would often eat in stages based on when the pancakes were done. It is not like a griddle on which one can do several pancakes and all could eat at once. My wife would cook pasta in the large pot on our Coleman stove, it took a while to get the water heated. I am not sure if in between her almost death producing stunts camping as a young girl, my wife would help her mom do the cooking or not. Let me just say that when our oldest down fell down 18 foot falls in Marinette County (which had my wife's heart racing when it took what seemed like five minutes for him to surface) he was probably imitating my wife who fell head first as a toddler in the baby pool, and about a decade later fell in the water at the Dells of the Eau Claire in Marathon County.
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| Wife's Comment on WI Historical Society Facebook Page |
This is the same woman who scuba dived at a younger age. When we were at Council Grounds this year, I suggested that we should canoe the Wisconsin River in segments. Her response: "I am a Land Girl, not a Water Girl." She assisted a great deal with younger cousins and siblings when she camped with her family. I guess having a person who was prone to near disaster in water adventures was not a deterrent to baby sitting.
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| Land Girl using cook stove and vintage Mirro Cookware Sept 2019 |
Part of camping is you never know what will occur. There have been times we had issues with our Coleman Stove, but we trudged through. Coleman stoves are more a staple of camping than the Mirro Aluminum cookware, and are just as iconic for campers as the campfire. We still use a 25 year old white gas Coleman Stove. The newer ones, we are told, are made overseas and their durability, functioning, and reliability are not as good as the older models, such as we have, when they were made in the USA. Their design is lighter and more modern looking. We bought a second, older Coleman Stove at a garage sale to have as a backup which our son now uses. Newer is not always better. So, perhaps with the cookware.
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| Cooking on Coleman Stove, using our Food box Sept 2019 |
History is comprised of more than just large or iconic events, or buildings. It is made up of the every day decisions and items that we all make. For example, the 1930 US census asked the question of whether or not the household had a radio. The radio, is probably in decline due to the internet, but for a few generations it was a major source of information. The Mirro Aluminum camp set may not have been on any ones radar about its importance, but to Manitowoc, and the many campers that used or use it, it helps cook the camp food, but more important camp memories. Although camp memories with the Land Girl often are more related to water. I think of 2018 when white water rafting, and she found a wave knock her on to my lap. Or, the six plus inches of rain on our first major camp trip at Pattison in the mid 1990's. The camp cookware set is part of my wife's family history and that of our family. Just when I think I may not have much material for a post, the Land Girl comes through once again. As my antique-aged Land Girl and I go on our next camping adventure, this cookware set will likely have a little bit more meaning for us. After all, it is not everyday an item we have and still use makes state history.
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