Camp

by Michael D. Eisner

  And when Q Spratley successfully pulls off his knee-dribbling move en route to a killer crossover basket past a bewildered defender, the rest of the kids in the game shake their heads, and any staffman watching shakes his head as well.

  Another kind of reaction, not as dazzling perhaps, but in some ways just as neat to watch, is prompted when another camper in the game, a boy under four feet and no heavier than fifty pounds, finally gets the ball. Each time up and down the court, he screams for it—“I’m open, I’m OPEN! Hey, here! Hey, HERE! Yo yo yo YO!”—desperately pleading with skeptical teammates to share the ball with him. He could be trailing a fast break with his four teammates up ahead, all undefended, and he’d still be calling for the ball.

  When he does get it, the same thing tends to happen time and again. He sets his feet, wherever he is—usually no farther than ten or twelve feet from the basket—and uncorks a one-and-a-half-handed jump shot, in a style akin to an adult shot-putting a bowling ball. And more often than not, the ball rattles through the net. With each of these successful shots, Pepe Molina’s confidence grows.

  It’s a beautiful day at Keewaydin, and the sun is shining down on the Waramaug dirt court during morning free time, the very same court where I played, with the same glare, making it a bit tough to shoot from the left side on the far basket. Q has just penetrated through the lane, dribbling behind his back, nearly losing the ball, then getting it back and laying it in underhand. A few minutes before, Pepe—today, they happen to be playing on the same team—sank his third basket of the game, a moon-shot jumper from out near where the free-throw line would be if the court were painted.

  These are happy moments for Q and Pepe, and if you asked them what their favorite activities are at camp, basketball would certainly be at the top of the list. Yet if you look a little more closely at the game, you might see some potential problems.

  You’ll see Q, the star player in the game, show little patience for the kids on his team who aren’t blessed with his skills. He hogs the ball, and on one or two occasions, he even steals the ball from them—his own teammates!—when they’re not looking.

  You’ll hear Pepe’s nonstop soprano chatter and realize that his irresistible smile belies some pretty heavy-duty trash talking for an eleven-year-old. Another boy encourages him to pass more; Pepe criticizes the boy’s lack of shooting ability with a snicker. Another camper plays some tough defense on him, stealing the ball; Pepe fakes a fall onto the dirt, claiming a foul where there was none.

  In truth, some observers might applaud the behavior of the two boys; after all, they’re really just doing everything they can to win. If they were playing in a high school game, their coach might even instruct them to be doing some of the things they’re doing—foul if you can get away with it, intimidate the other team—to give their team a better chance to win.

  At Keewaydin, it’s never been about winning and losing. It’s about something more.

  Sports have long been part of Keewaydin and Keewaydin culture. There’s also something of an athletic legacy that Keewaydin campers have created throughout the years. Dick Harter, a longtime assistant coach in the NBA, was a Keewaydin camper in the 1940s, the son of Doc Harter, the camp doctor before Dr. McPhee, John McPhee’s father. Jim Fullerton, head of Moosalamoo in my day, was the hockey coach at Brown. Also, as I mentioned earlier, Alex Wolff, the Sports Illustrated writer and author of Big Game, Small World, a smart book about the globalization of basketball, also spent his summers on the dirt court shooting baskets. Scores of other Keewaydin campers have gone on to big-time college play.

  That said, while sports compose a pretty significant chunk of Keewaydin life, the camp is by no means a sports camp. Where else but at Keewaydin could I be head of tennis instruction? I was a decent player, but certainly not a great one at sixteen, and definitely without teaching credentials.

  Returning to Keewaydin this summer, a few things strike me about the value of sports at Keewaydin. Sports help campers make friends. As much as tripping forges close bonds between campers and staffmen, initial friendship making at the beginning of camp often takes place on the basketball court or the soccer field. In addition, thanks to Keewaydin’s small size, everyone can play the sports they want at camp without spending much time on the bench (as they might at school).

  Of course, along with these potential benefits, there are also risks, risks on display on the Waramaug basketball court. Although Q and Pepe’s team won, not all the campers left the court feeling too great about the pickup game. Toward the end, Pepe’s trash talking escalated to a confrontation, in which a much larger kid pegged the ball at Pepe’s feet. Leaving for lunch after the gong sounded, a few other kids seemed to walk off dejected; maybe they didn’t get the ball enough, or perhaps were upset by the tone of the game.

  The featured afternoon activity today is a baseball game on Waramaug ball field. The Nasty North, Pepe’s team, is pitted against the Wild West, Q’s team. Each team has about fifteen campers, who will rotate positions in the field, including that of pitcher. By the end of the third inning, the North has a huge lead, the score now eleven to four. Pepe, not as skilled in baseball as he is in basketball and hockey, has struck out on his trip to the plate, as Q has done, after hitting two sharp foul balls that came within a few feet of being extra-base hits.

  Staffman Al Black umpires the game and lays out the rules for the campers before the first pitch: no arguing with the umpire; no walking on and off the field (you have to hustle out to your position); and no booing. Cheer on your teammates as much as you’d like, but don’t boo or taunt the other team.

  In the fifth inning, a camper named Sam, one of Pepe’s tent mates and also one of the few kids in Waramaug almost as small as Pepe, steps to the plate. Sam is an American but lives in South Africa; thus, he has not played much baseball except during his summers at Keewaydin. Staffmen have taken time during free time to pitch to him and work on his techniques, and little by little, he’s starting to show some improvement.

  And now, as he steps to the plate, with his team losing by nine runs and the game ostensibly out of reach, his teammates creep closer to the third-base line to start cheering him on, with Pepe, the champion trash talker this morning, acting as Sam’s loudest fan. Sam stands in a carefully rehearsed batting stance: feet spread slightly apart, knees bent, butt sticking out, back elbow up, front elbow in, head locked in on the pitcher. After two strikes, the third pitch is over his head, and Sam ducks out of the way, ball one.

  It’s suddenly pretty loud on Waramaug ball field. The office staff way out past center field is probably wondering what all the ruckus is about. Down the left-field line, in his cottage, surely Waboos has heard these cheers before. Many years earlier, Waboos was the heart and soul of the staff team that played once a summer against the Moose campers in baseball.

  The ten-year-old pitcher winds up in that exaggerated way, imitative of whatever pitcher he’s seen on television, and grooves a pitch across the plate. Sam swings, and an unexpected soft ping of the bat is heard. The ball rolls out about two feet in front of the plate and settles in the dirt. There’s about a tenth of a second of complete silence and stillness, forty campers and staff, Sam included, all staring at the ball, which is sitting no more than twenty-five inches in front of the plate. Then, chaos: campers yelling at Sam to drop the bat and run, the other team yelling at their catcher to pick up the ball. Sam is thrown out at first by about three steps, and the inning is over. He stops at first base, standing on top of the bag, probably not entirely sure what has just happened, and probably also relishing the feeling of standing on the base with a batting helmet on. He’s out. The teams are jogging off and on to change sides, but Sam stands for another second on first base, smiling widely.

  If Help the Other Fellow is motto number one at Camp Keewaydin, then Be a Fair Winner and a Good Loser is motto number two. Both mottoes hang on pennants in Waboos’s office.

  Granted, messages are hard to communicate to kids, espec
ially youngsters the age of Waramaug campers. And Be a Fair Winner and a Good Loser is not as powerful as a message as Vince Lombardi’s “Winning isn’t everything—it’s the only thing.” Kids are brought up in a culture that emphasizes winning and losing, especially with regard to sports. Pepe is a seasoned trash talker because he’s been watching professional athletes on television for years. There’s really nothing wrong with this, per se, as professional athletes are paid to win. And no one can argue that winning, in sports or anything in life, isn’t fun. Winning is in many ways the most powerful confirmation of hard work, dedication, focus, and desire.

  What is important, though, is that despite the many benefits of winning, knowing how to lose is also important. Winning is rare and elusive, while losing is painful and common. One must know how to deal with adversity, control oneself in times of discomfort, and value the elements of competition that are ultimately necessary for either fair winning or good losing.

  I learned all this not during my days in business but at Keewaydin.

  A sports team or a business could win on talent alone, but in truth it usually takes more than that. And these other, clichéd attributes—teamwork, dedication to a common goal, attitude—are the facets of competition that Keewaydin emphasizes most strongly. I have never seen such a close group of people as I did with the assembled group of hockey players in the locker room after the Mighty Ducks lost in the finals of the Stanley Cup in 2003. They had lost with honor, having been underdogs all season, and had gone much further than anybody expected. Winning is important, but so is losing if it brings the team together. Ultimately, losing can teach you how to win.

  After the baseball game, a similar Waramaug crew returns to the basketball court for a free-time game. Things are progressing pretty much as they did this morning, with some reckless play and disputed fouls and arguments, before one of the wigwam staffmen comes over to the game and decides that he’ll join.

  He refigures the teams to make them more evenly matched, and immediately institutes a “three passes before you can shoot” rule to ensure everyone gets involved in the action. Soon, the tide of the game has changed dramatically. Q still dominates, even sneaking by the staffman a few times for razzle-dazzle layups. Pepe continues to spot up shots from the outside, but he also plays a little defense when egged on by the staffman. By the end of the game, everyone’s gotten involved in the action, skilled and unskilled players alike, and, oddly enough, when the gong rings for dinner, the campers are having such a good time that no one remembers what the score is. Nobody knows which team has won, and nobody seems to care.

  Does this example mean that Q, Pepe, and their friends will never engage in trash talking again? Does it mean that they will know from now on to focus on being a fair winner and a good loser? I don’t think so. I think that is unrealistic, given their age and natural lack of maturity. When the boys are ready, the message will stick.

  A small start has been made.

  Chapter Ten

  License To Drive

  1958

  When I was sixteen years old, I got my driver’s license; I was free. I was off to my first job: going to work as a Keewaydin staffman. This time, I didn’t go to Grand Central Station with my parents to catch the train to camp. Instead, I just walked out of my father’s house in Bedford Hills, strolled around the front of the 1950 Chrysler that my grandparents were discarding, threw my bag full of camp shirts, underwear, and socks in the trunk, and headed for Keewaydin. It was the same drive I had first taken nine years earlier with my father.

  My mother, in typical fashion, had gotten detailed maps from the automobile club and had prepared a full three-course lunch, placed in a paper bag on the seat next to me for my survival. Clear instructions to call when I arrived had been hammered into my head. I was off.

  I drove fast; all sixteen-year-old males with two-week-old licenses drive too fast. In Chappaqua, just ten miles from my house, I was pulled over by a police officer. He yelled at me, and gave me a ticket. He never asked my age, which was at once exhilarating and a little humiliating. He didn’t question whether I was old enough to drive. After threatening to “take me in,” he let me go on, confident for some reason that he had convinced me to “slow down.” And come to think of it, he had . . . until I got to Bridgeport.

  Sometimes people in pickup trucks drive too slowly, I convinced myself as I changed radio stations and loped along on Route 7, stuck behind one of those pickups. I wanted to get on with it, to move on, to push to Keewaydin, and so I passed him. Now I was singing Buddy Holly songs, the June wind was blowing through my grandmother’s coupe, and then someone passed me. It struck me as the insult of all time, being passed when you’re sixteen and driving to your job. I gave up the music and returned to concentrating on the road. I approached another truck that was going too slowly, and so I did what I had to do: I passed him, too. This was no four-lane highway, mind you, just two curvy lanes, driving under old-fashioned conditions, when zero to sixty had real meaning.

  The road continued as I moved from town to town, on occasion hitting those annoying red lights. Coming out of Bridgeport, I was passed again, but this time, eyes and ears on the road, I was ready, and I quickly remembered the pass, accelerating toward Hartford, all the while keeping one hand in the paper sack to my right, rummaging for the potato chips.

  As I came into the first stop sign in Hartford, I noticed in my rearview mirror (something I had rarely used in my vast experience of driving) a familiar truck, with the driver giving me an all-too-familiar middle finger. Seemed odd, yes, but understandable, since this was the truck I had passed back in Bridgeport. His door started to swing open just as I pulled away. Then it closed. I wondered what that was all about.

  Now, suddenly, this truck was inches behind me, inches at forty miles an hour. Now it was coming clear: I had passed this pickup truck three times—the same one. Suddenly, I was studying the rearview mirror, and I almost ran off the road and over a dog. Now I got it. In the truck was one mean-looking guy. A car in front of me stopped at a red light, leaving me no option but to brake as well. Behind me, a door swung open, the driver leaving his truck and approaching my grandmother’s suddenly stuffy green car. I think I stopped breathing. As he walked up to my car, I closed the window and locked the car. The light didn’t change and the car in front of me wouldn’t move.

  I kept from gazing to my left. All I could hear was muffled expletives—and words like kid, brat, punk, and then the alarming sound of one of my windows shattering. Then the light turned green and I was moving forward, my shaking foot somehow finding the gas pedal. He turned away, having spent his anger, and as he became a vision in the rearview mirror, I took a breath.

  I drove five more hours, never more than five miles over the speed limit. I arrived at camp about 10:00 P.M. with a broken window, an injured sense of maturity, and a story that I wouldn’t tell my parents for at least five years.

  I hadn’t seen Waboos in a long time, having taken a break from Keewaydin when I was too old to be a camper and too young to be a staffman. When he approached me, it wasn’t as the young kid I felt like, but as a staffman. “Hey, Mike, glad you’re with us,” and then, walking away, he added, “Oh, by the way, you’re in Moose. I think Jim Fullerton is up the mountain.”

  I was in Moose! I was in Moose? After a long day, I was stunned and speechless. The Moosalamoo wigwam was for the oldest kids, the fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds, up on Mount Moosalamoo, across Keewaydin Road. I was uneasy, even a little confused, but also honored to be put in with the most senior trippers.

  Waboos had vanished into the night. I took it that I had been instructed to go up the mountain to find Jim Fullerton, the head of Moosalamoo. Jim effortlessly ran Moose in the summer and the Brown University hockey team in the winter. He was a winner in both places.

  I was about to start my first job; I had worked in a hospital the summer before, but without pay. This was my first real earning position. Firsts are hard. You can spend yo
ur entire life walking into new situations, from the first day of kindergarten to the first day of college, a first toast at a wedding to a first funeral, first kiss to the first day of your child’s life. We learn to deal with firsts. Each is hard, some easier than the ones before. Climbing Mount Moosalamoo in the dark to meet my boss for the first time after a long drive remains up there as a hard first.

  I started the climb, a weak flashlight from my car in hand. Four times, I was convinced I had lost the trail and would soon come across some unknown cave that held the bones of a missing hiker. Behind every tree, I imagined some wild animal lurked. Chipmunks became rats; roots became snakes.

  I arrived. Jim was sleeping. There were a few other bodies sleeping in the bunks, other staffmen who had already arrived. I lay down and studied what I could see of the bunk over my head. Suddenly being sixteen didn’t seem so old, and being a staffman for kids almost my own age seemed overwhelming. I didn’t remember Jim Fullerton snoring so loud a couple summers earlier. Meanwhile, his German shepherd kept rolling over, and I heard every grunt from both ends of that dog. I wondered where that truck driver was now, and where that angry policeman might be. I then started worrying about the rest of the staff being hundreds of years older than I was, and I was quickly getting less and less excited about the hike up that mountain every day for eight weeks.