by Grant McGee
It’s Labor Day weekend. Summer is coming to a close. How I miss those long summer vacations when I
was a kid and didn’t have to do a damn thing.
I suppose it could’ve been that my
parents…particularly my dad…got tired of seeing me do nothing so there were
times I was put on a bus to go spend a week or two with my Aunt Becky and Uncle
Bud in North Carolina or shipped off to summer camp.
I don’t
recall asking to go to summer camp when I was little, my folks would just ship
me off. It just occurred to me recently
that if I was approaching my 50th birthday like both my folks were back
then and I had an 8 year old I’d probably ship him off to summer camp or some
relative’s place or military school too.
It was long
ago and far away at a place called Camp Pocahontas tucked away back in the high
Appalachians of western Virginia. The camp
counselors weren’t a happy lot. Being a
kid I had no idea why the only thing that seemed to amuse them was scaring us
by making weird noises at night outside our cabin.
I did get
to take a trail ride on a horse. But craftmaking,
the rowboats, the campfires and horses were put away when four days worth of
rain came. The camp chiefs thought what else
was there to do but have the camp kids build more horseback riding trails, so
we did. In the rain.
And then there was the cattle prod.
We didn’t
get stuck by a cattle prod while we were trail building. The cattle prod came out during the
“initiation ceremony.” This was at the
end of the week when the kids who had been a real pain the ass were lined up,
blindfolded and subjected to various “initiation rites.” For instance there was “The Mystery
Box.” A kid would have to choose a box
to stick their finger in, pull it out, smell their finger and say what was in
the box. Maybe it was cake, maybe melted
ice cream or maybe cow manure. If you
didn’t smell your finger or if you wouldn’t participate you got the cattle prod.
Over time
folks have doubted me on this, but it was a different time, no one had invented
political correctness yet and kids back then didn’t have a lawyer on
retainer.
At first I didn’t know what kids
were being jabbed with. All I knew was
when the “jabber” stuck the “jabee” the kid shot straight up with a yelp. The thing was yellow, about as long as a
yardstick, filled with batteries with two steely nubs on the end. I told my dad, he laughed and said, ‘That was
a cattle prod. Probably make a man out
of you.’” My dad was always trying to
make a man out of me. It started when I
was about 6. I think that was so he
didn’t have to worry about raising a kid as he approached his 50th
birthday.
There were
other years at other summer camps featuring fun stuff like the big snake in the
outhouse or the time I was rushed home with something called hemolytic strep
throat.
Summer camp
wasn’t all grumpy counselors, cattle prods and snakes in the john.
As I got older and looked forward to Boy Scout summer camp I
got excited by the fishing, the canoeing, hiking to the tops of mountains,
taking in the cool night air while whippoorwills sang off in the distance and
“Taps” being played over the camp loudspeakers to tell everyone it was time to
hit the hay.
I highly
recommend summer camp to any kid, even if you’re parents don’t want you out of
the house.
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