So as a child, we lived under this 'tent' during the summer, which was most excellent, it was an adventure, the river was only a few steps away.
We had water (there was a well, with a hand pump) a large outhouse came later, so for the most part we just waded out into the water and 'did our business'
Then because of weather, and our families desire to remain out of the city (although Claxton was very small in the late 1950's, it remains small today) daddy had this cabin built a few yards upriver from the tent/sandbar

But there were disadvantages to this, mainly the floods, when we'd have to come and go by boat to where the vehicles could be parked above the waterline

We lived there more or less for a couple of years, especially while and until the house I grew up in was built, which was about ¼ mi away and up the hill.

This was right after we moved into the new home, I was 6 yrs old. Many things happened in that house, most of them good. 
Daddy, however was carrying a LOT of baggage mentally and emotionally, and too often drink, not so much as to be a staggering drunk (though that too happened a few times I can remember).
Daddy was not violent nor abusive, but he was rather distant much of the time, and when he drank, he became much more open and talkative, but even as I child I shied away from him when he became this way. He resented that, and the rift began to widen.
My parents were born into an entirely different world than I knew. They grew up almost totally without automobiles, definitely without electricity.
During their lives, they saw two world wars, the 'Great Depression', airplanes, satellites, rockets to the moon, the curing of many diseases, the Korean "conflict", the Vietnam War (I lost a brother there in 1966) and so much more... so that when I began to grow into a teenage hippy, my daddy had no concept of what I was becoming, nor really how to even communicate with me.
And the Rift widened even farther

I began to sneak his Bourbon from the bathroom and the kitchen, where he always kept pint bottles, and at 16, I began to smoke pot.
They say that marijuana is a 'Gate way drug', but I don't consider it such, only in that when you bought pot, the guy you bought from likely had other substances.
So I began trying other substances.
This has grown long enough and my day is passing by, so I will continue this later, in another installment