FORESTRY SUMMER CAMP II

Mom had her first heart attack. She was a diagnosed (probably) but untreated diabetic. She loved cooking and food. She had cooked so many meals for so many children and boys/men for so many years, that I guess she wouldn't or couldn't break the habit of "Farmer John" meals. It was a treat and a gustatory experience to eat at her table—her roast pork was to die for; her roast beef fairly melted off the fork; and her pies, cakes and pastries—oh, my!

I had been working on a contract basis for another consultant who was shorthanded in the face of a large job in Mississippi, when I got word of her attack. I rushed back to Fairhope (Alabama), then to the small country hospital in Foley, where she was being treated. She had her attack on vacation at Gulf Shores and was taken by ambulance to the nearest hospital. She had been there for several weeks.

The most memorable day of my life—the best day if it hadn’t already been the worst day—was spent visiting my mother in the hospital, along with my eight brothers and sisters. None of us had been together under the same roof in years. The look on my mother’s face (she was unable to speak) as she eloquently and silently expressed her love for all her children is a treasure passed on to me that I don’t even know how to value.

That is not what this story is about, but even after ten years, I miss my mother terribly. I have learned to live with it, but that's about all. Anyway, my story starts after that visit.

On the way back to Savannah, I stopped at the old forestry summer camp site. The chain link fence was still there, but only the concrete fondations of the barracks and the brick footings of the chow hall and cook shack remained. The University, in it's wisdom (and practical sense of NEVER turning down an extremely large donation) had moved it's summer camp (practicum) to a new facility near Andalusia. The campus facilities include two dormitories, a dining hall, staff quarters, recreation/laundry facility, maintenance shop, and the new administration building, along with 5,300 acres of forest. The only thing the old camp had was 20 or 30 hard-tailed country boys cooped up in non-bugproof barracks in the South Alabama heat.

The place captured my heart and remains in my memory. Will so until I no longer have memories. Spending ten weeks in the company of men only may not be a religious experience, but it is by no means a forgettable one.

As I stood under the huge oak which had shaded the chow hall, I remembered the man-size meals we had consumed there. I remember the black cooks, who had barbequed a goat for a party, but drew the line at cooking rattlesnake when it was brought to them. One of them also drew a pearl-handled .38, as he stood out on the porch, arms crossed, the pistol gripped competently in his right hand.

"Git that damned thing outa here, bo, or I'se put a hole clean through you!"

We did not have rattlesnake for dinner.

A five-foot circular saw blade hung from a frame near the prof's shack, which in years past had served as reveille and call to food and class. It had not been rung for the first two weeks we were at camp; the camp administrator, Prof W, had a lax and laid-back attitude about schedules, just so long as his boys made the classes and field trips they were supposed to. He treated us like grownups, and it was appreciated. We seldom acted that way, but it was still appreciated.

Dr. J—newly Dr. J (he had just received his doctorate at Syracuse, a damnyankee school)—was a taskmaster par extraordinaire. He arrived at the camp, fresh from completing his doctorate, determined to make up for lost time. He believed in a strict schedule, stern discipline and exercising both the mind and body. He took no crap from anyone, nor did he mete out any favors. At 6 AM in the morning, he took an ax handle to the saw blade.

The reverbrations echoed through the barracks, through the woods, up and down the highway. Deer were startled miles away in their beds and bounded away like Bambi, running from the fire. Jacky P, who had broken his leg on his motorcycle trying to pop a wheelie, leapt from his bunk and ran out the bunkhouse, only to collapse, writhing in pain in the dirt. The Bad Boys woke to cries of, "It wasn't me, It wasn't me, I didn't do it!" To me it was the knell of doom, everything bad I had ever done was now found out, I was finished!

Dr. J's booming damnyankee voice echoed through the stricken barracks, "Rise and shine, it's daylight in the swamps!"

The sawblade disappeared that night, not to be seen again, until several days later. No one knew what had happened to it. Prof W passed on the word to us that the saw had better be back the next morning if we expected to pass Dr. J's course. It was back the next morning.

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I walked out from under the oak tree to where the showers used to be, separate from the bunkhouse. Right THERE was where we painted Billy S, in preparation for his wedding. It took four strong boy/men to hold him down while we poured colored india ink on the lower half of his writhing and naked body. That was a bit over the top—he really never took it that well, and I regretted my part in it. It seemed like a really funny idea at the time, but it wasn't, it truly wasn't.

I walked to where the back door of the bunkhouse used to be, my shoe soles echoing quietly on the bare concrete. Weeds were coming up in the cracks. Right THERE is where Dave G used to sit and play Spanish music on his guitar in the warm twilight. I would sit and listen quietly. When he finished, I felt like applauding, but I never did. It would have embarrassed him.

I left some of my heart at Summer Camp, and a good bit of my youth. I will never forget.

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