Camping out with neighbors

Elise Gee

COSTA MESA -- For one day a year, the courtyard in the Vendome

condominium complex turns into a tent city.

Fathers grill burgers while children melt S’mores over a fire pit, all

within a mile of the Costa Mesa Freeway. The event has become a tradition

among the families in the Vendome complex near Lions Park as a last

hurrah before children go back to school.

“Camping doesn’t get easier than being able to walk back into your

house,” said Ross Pfautz, a father of three.

The tradition began informally enough when two families set out a

couple tents on the lawn to air after a camping trip. Soon, the tents had

multiplied, said resident Steve Burgess.

“Before we knew it we had a dozen tents out there,” Pfautz said.

For some of the parents, it’s a resurrection of something from their

own childhoods. Vito Vento remembers throwing sheets over the

clotheslines in his backyard in Michigan and sleeping under them with

flashlights.

It was a time and place where neighbors knew each other, he said.

Vento likes to think that the people at Vendome are creating a little

bit of that in their modern and urban neighborhood.

“It’s kind of brought us closer together as a community,” Vento said.

Parents stand around the barbecue or sit in lawn chairs talking while

their children run and chase one another ,building friendships that may

last a lifetime.

For Caleb Burgess, 10, the highlights of the evening are flashlight

tag, telling camp stories and playing pranks on parents after they fall

asleep.

For Mitchell Pfautz, 7, it’s the S’mores.

“The kids have been talking about it for weeks,” Burgess said. “You’d

think we were going to Yosemite of something.”