these are pics of me in vermont. one of them i had just caught a huge bullfrog. the one of the house was taken recently. the house was sold so i had to drive by and snap a shot from the car. kind of sad. the new owners drive an SUV. something about that annoys me, my dad got cadillacs and lincolns, with re-tread tires, out of that drive way in a foot of snow like a champ. SUVs are for sissies.
If the recession is hitting you hard, and you need to find ways to save money. whatever you do, don't try to save on your child's summer camp experience.
I was lucky enough to have parents that, despite pinching pennies, knew that to have a country house in Vermont, or a cheap rental on the beach, would be of great benefit to growing city kids. one thing i have neglected to mention about myself, is that i am not entirely of the concrete jungle. i spent most of my summers in childhood either in Vermont or Martha's Vineyard. places where i could run free through the woods, armed with a bow and arrow, and a passion for D&D and Tolkein. so, i guess i am like 25% rural country boy. i could pitch a tent and catch a snake with ease at an early age.
my sister and i managed to become quite comfortable with the idea of stepping on mysterious creatures in the dark, and coming across the occasional dear or rabid bat while hiking to our favorite climbing tree. we knew the woods around our house so well, we often ran through them in the pitch dark without scratching our faces on unseen branches. we had summer friends who lived in the same woods, with whom we shared these experiences. i remember waiting anxiously for the end of school so i could be reunited with them, and with the wilds of the woods. it was a great break from the city and a wondrous way to spend 2 to 3 months a year, with totally different scenery.
my sister speaks of the same memories with much more eloquence:
when i was a kid, walking around near our house in vermont, my brother and i knew the land around there so well, that instead of walking home when night fell, we'd wait for the light to fade, that bleak energy and light, and then go deeper into the woods. there was a beautiful sense of protection in those woods, i think there were spirits and old patterns, certainly not celtic, but i think those kind of things have differing names in different places, colloquial, maybe specific to the particular earth. it was later that i did some research, tried to find examples of the things we'd felt and talked about and seen. why did we go to that particular tree? why was our sense of peace or well being, our vitality different in different parts of the woods? if you concentrated an extra-human reality would present itself, would change as you walked. your emotions would become magnified, you'd think or act in peculiar and deeply familiar ways.
my dad was an avid collector of water toys. his wondrously creative methods of saving money were incredible and usually meant more fun for us. at some point, he had figured out that if he pretended to own a sports store, he could look through catalogs and find the latest windsurfer/ice sailboat/two person kayak/sunfish, then he could claim to need a floor model and buy one at wholesale cost. he also had a local vermont welder, a man with no teeth and 10 dogs, rig a car trailer that he could stack multiple water devices on. this made us the family that showed up to the lake with the equivalent of a rental shop worth of equipment. people actually would ask if some of our stuff was for rent. we called ourselves camp run-a-muck.
so why, in 1983, did he and my mom listen to my friend's parents, and decide that a 2 week 4H camp was a good idea? i will NEVER know.
i remember the brochure had nice pictures of kids canoeing, and playing sports, and generally looking happy and well fed. so, with the prospect of going with my friend Russ (a very skinny, very jewish looking boy with the sharpest wit you ever encountered), and my older sister ( a very protective, very dominating and tough young girl), everything seemed like it would be fine.
what we actually experienced was quite unlike the pictures in the brochure. it was a VERY basic place. the "cabins" we were put into were basically just a leaning roof with four poles holding it up over a wooden platform. there were no walls, and plenty of storms. getting rained on in my science experiment of a cot was NOT my idea of fun. my sister ended up with older kids and was placed kind of far from Russ and I. so our protection was removed, and these country kids, if you can call them kids, were both mean and violent. plus they were dirt poor and had a predisposition to hating city kids, and of course, jews. i didn't look obviously jewish, but unfortunately for both of us, Russ did.
basically, we had no chance. it was lord of the flies, and Russ and i were the really little kids in the book. i remember that right off the bat I became the only person that could save Russ from his own smart mouth. naturally, there was a LOT for his ultra intelligent wit to bite into. like the kids wore overalls, without shirts. they thought that reaching into the outhouse and grabbing out shit to throw at each other was good clean fun. so when Russ made a remark to a large country fried bovine kid about his "aroma" it was war immediately. the kid, or i should say guy, called Russ a "fucking hebe" and Russ didn't hesitate to remark on how the guy's parents were no doubt siblings. within a heart beat of his second quip, Russ was grabbed into some kind of yoke hold meant for a calf in heat, and then unceremoniously thrown off the platformed cabin into the woods.
i was used to defending Russ from his older brother Paul. Paul was a huge fan of the band Rush, loved Stevie Nicks in a way that i wasn't quite ready for yet at that age, and was a great Dungeon Master. but he was a lousy older brother to my friend, and often he would get rough with Russ, who was much smaller. at that point, i would usually move in to protect Russ, or at least piss off Paul to get his attention. then my sister would step in and stop Paul in his tracks. it was a great system we had. only when i pushed this kid, i suddenly realized that the situation was not the same.
the "kid" then turned his attention to me. it was like a mini version of what i think a first day in prison might be like. i knew that if i didn't stand up immediately, my life would be HELL for the next two weeks. especially since this guy, despite being a foot and a half taller then us, was supposedly our age and slept a few feet from where we did.
This moment, for me, was a very important lesson about courage. i knew that my protective sister was far off somewhere in the gloom of the dense woods and i knew that i was going to get hurt, or worse, no matter what i did.
at that age, i had already started taking karate at the YMCA on 63rd street after school, in an attempt to either channel my endless energy or to give it a more protective quality. it was something that i considered useless because i wasn't using num-chucks or throwing stars and couldn't image what learning Kata (choreographed punch and step combinations) would ever do for me. but i found out that day that i did get something out of it. i knew exactly how to punch and i knew WHERE to punch.
so there we were, face to face. the sounds of Russ trying to climb out of some bushes somewhere down below was the only sound outside of my heavy breathing. the guy started towards me and i reacted instantly by punching him in the stomach with a loud "kiyaaa!". then, as he lurched forward to grab his belly, i unleashed the tucked fist and punched him in the face.
now, these were the punches of a 10 year old, so power was minimal. but the psychological effect it had was great. the kid's face went beet red and he backed up well out of my reach. i didn't say anything to him. i was way too scared and way to much in shock to mock the boy, or even scream for an adult's help. but i think, in retrospect, it was my silence after dealing the blows, and his inaction that really made the point. it was over after that. he backed down and after that incident he stayed away from both of us. plus, if i remember correctly, the only people that still fucked with us were much older. and they fucked with all the younger kids, so it wasn't anything to do with us being different, just small.
the rest of the experience was something i will never forget. there was a bugle player to wake us up every morning much like those old army movies i had watched on WPIX channel 11 on sundays after abbot and costello and before kung-fu and godzilla. we would then line up for the pledge of allegiance in front of a flag near the mess hall, which to me, was very alien. in my whole life, i had never pledged allegiance before. the upper west side wasn't exactly a place for patriotism back then. it was every man/family for itself, and nobody trusted the police or the government at all. as a matter of fact, i was always told to NEVER speak to cops, and if i was lost, to NEVER go to them. i was told to find a fireman or a store owner or even a bus driver. never somebody from the US government with a gun.
I have noticed a sharp change in this distrust for police in NYC. i am guessing that they are much more "lawful" and controlled then they used to be. as a matter of fact, the other day i was watching NY1, just to digress for a moment. NY1 was talking about the Diallo case when a man who was holding his cell phone was shot in the projects by police 41 times. when that happened, people were not trusting cops at all. cops operated much like a gang, and they were a bit out of control in there quest to tame the wild city under Guiliani's excessively forceful eye.
thankfully, there was a HUGE public outcry which ended up forcing the police to really reign themselves in. if people had just thought that it was ok for the police to behave like that then nothing would have improved to the way it is today.
well there i was, reminiscing about that crazy moment in excessive deadly force, when two young, very liberal friends of mine basically were like, "what was that guy doing reaching for a cell phone?!" . if somebody had said that 10 years ago when it happened, they would be asked to leave the room and go sign up for some fascsist racist group of skinheads. but now, that's the normal reaction for liberals in the city. and just today, on the radio i heard a radio person talking about how there were riots in a poor neighborhood that was , as they stated, "mostly black and minority", where the people "alleged" police misconduct in the 80's. now, anybody in a poor neighborhood in the 80's is well aware already that there might be minorities, that was unnecessary information and i was confused as to why it was stated, also to use the word "alleged" is tantamount to spreading doubt over the whole thing and was clearly said, with a certain tone as to be like, "hey we both know that that's bullshit and these people were just rioting for no reason". well, of course in bad neighborhoods there are dangerous criminals and people who would riot for any reason, but OF COURSE there will also be police misconduct. you can fucking count on it and anybody who uses the word "alleged" needs to be pistol whipped by a cop in a dark alley. wake up. people with guns and badges aren't always going to do the right thing, despite popular opinion.
so anyways, back to being young and not trusting authority. so this pledging allegiance thing in the mornings went against everything i knew. but it certainly agreed with these kids because if you didn't say the words right, you might end up getting jumped in the woods and thrown into an out house. for real. happened several times. but thankfully not to me.
but, I DID get lice, which ended up getting me put through some crazy hosing off in the woods and then covered with some powder and then isolated for a two days in a farm. i remember doing chores in a barn, like racking hay, and feeding animals. but it wasn't the good, educational kind of farm experience. it was like some kind of work to earn my keep situation. i got out of there and was almost relieved to join the shit flingers again. just in time for another shit fight too.
I don't even remember if there were sports or any kind of activity besides the predator/prey stuff going on between the cabins. like instead of dodge ball there was "hey lets go chase the skinny jew kid with sticks!" and "rocks are fun to throw at people, yay!". the one thing that i remember not sucking to high hell was some lunatic at the camp. a guy who was probably 20 years old, since i think he was the first camper i had ever seen with a beard and his own pick-up truck named billy-bob or ricky-bill. well, he liked to build miniature rockets. the kind that take actually dynamite laced batteries to launch into the sky. i remember him being somewhat nice to Russ and I, maybe he liked my sister or something. either way, he allowed us to watch him launch these things from the parking lot. that was kind of cool.
i guess it was a fast crazy experience in the end. the lice was temporary, the suffering was quick, and the sideways rain hitting me at night was almost something i got used to. the lesson learned by standing up for Russ and myself i have always carried with me. and the memories of such a "anthropological" and almost cultural experience have merit on their own. but my advice is to seriously consider spending good money on a child's summer camp. it will probably be something they won't forget about.
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