To our fellow Coleman collectors:
We are enjoying the web site as well as the newsletters that
we have received since joining the ICCC. As many have included with their
profiles, our family camped each summer all around the country with Coleman
products. I don’t know where the old Coleman metal sided cooler or
200a lantern ended up, but the 426D stove resides with my many others, has a
new paint job, and is ready to work any time we need it. As many
have said, they were built bullet proof.
My dad tells a story of our camping trip to Yellowstone when
I was 10. We had a neighbor with a Coleman stove who obviously had no
experience with one and disregarded the information that came with it. We
watched him try to cook on it with tall yellow flames coming up around the pan
and inappropriate comments concerning it. Dad said “son go over
there and show him how to operate his stove.” I went over and asked
him if I could help him get his stove working correctly and with his permission
and the look in his eye of “kid, what can you do”, I turned the
lever up, unscrewed the pump a couple turns, and pumped it about 30
times. In just a few seconds, we had a blue flame, turned the lever down,
and finished her off with a few more pumps. My Dad, now 89, still smiles
when he tells that the man said, “ I’m an engineer for a large firm
and it takes a 10 year old kid to show me how to operate a camp stove.”
I am attaching a picture of last summer when we took a group
camping from our church, as well as a couple extras. The pop-up, portable
kitchen, picnic shelter, and tent are all fairly recent model Coleman but we
did cook on, made coffee with, and baked our dessert in our vintage
Coleman oven on a 425c, and light up our camp site with a 200a, 242b, and a
321c.
It’s great to belong to an organization with common
interests world wide as the Coleman collectors club has. Keep up the good
work to the officers and volunteers investing their time in getting out great
information for a great hobby.
Dan and Abbie Bennett
Good Hope, GA
