Not a Happy Camper

by Mindy Schneider

  Stoner Stacie Hofheimer looked over at me. “You toke?”

  I’d never even smoked a cigarette.

  “Uh... what flavor is it?” I asked.

  “Acapulco Gold.”

  The first time I’d seen those words was on a black t-shirt at the mall. I thought it was a vacation resort, the kind of place other families went to while mine went to Pennsylvania to look at Amish people. Stacie handed me the joint and I pretended unconvincingly to know how to hold it. I may as well have been handling a power tool or a pork chop.

  “Just suck it in and hold it,” she instructed me, as if it was the natural thing to do.

  I held onto the joint and stared at it as it burned down closer to my index finger.

  “Um, actually, I’m going to Katahdin and, um, I need to borrow some pants. If anybody has a pair...”

  Stacie took back the joint. “Katahdin, eh?” (She was from Canada.) “Pretty clever plan.”

  “Why’d you say that?” I asked, panicked she could see through me, right to my heart.

  “Just got a boyfriend and now you’re going away. Good way to make him miss you. Pretty sneaky.”

  Stacie had a brand new pair of Levi’s. We wore the same waist size, but she was tall and thin and the pants were five inches too long for me.

  “So cuff them,” she suggested.

  “These are brand new,” I reminded her. “You don’t mind? They might get dirty if I’m climbing a mountain.”

  “That’s the whole point. I want you to break them in for me.”

  I was thrilled. New pants meant Judy Horowitz had not worn them before and, better still, it meant that no one with impetigo had worn them either. I thanked Stacie and even thought about hugging her (something people seemed to do a lot around here), but refrained when she reached around to scratch her rear.

  I was ready for the trip.

  to the tune of

  Tzena, Tzena

  “Peanut butter, peanut butter,

  Peanut butter, peanut butter

  Peeee-nut butter, peanut butter

  Peanut butter, peanut butter,

  Peanut butter, peanut butter

  Peeee-nut butter, peanut butter

  Jelly! Jelly! Jelly, peanut butter

  Peanut buuu-ter, peanut bu-u-u-ter

  Jelly! Jelly! Jelly, peanut butter

  Peanut buuu-ter, peanut bu-u-u-ter

  Peach nectar, peach nectar, peanut butter peanut butter

  Peeee-nut butter, peanut butter

  Peach nectar, peach nectar, peanut butter peanut butter

  Peeee-nut butter, peanut butter

  Grapes! Grapes! Grapes, peanut butter

  Peanut buuu-ter, peanut bu-u-u-ter

  Grapes! Grapes! Grapes, peanut butter

  Peanut buuu-ter, peanut bu-u-u-ter

  Peanut butter, peanut butter,

  Peanut butter, peanut butter

  Peeee-nut butter, peanut butter

  Peanut butter, peanut butter,

  Peanut butter, peanut butter

  Peeee-nut butter, SANDWICH DAY!”

  8

  WE WOULD BE RIDING TO MT. KATAHDIN IN THE GOOD TAN VAN. IT was our one relatively safe and modern vehicle, purchased by Saul from a local mental hospital that went out of business and a point of contention between the girls’ and boys’ Head Counselors. Boys’ Side already had the bigger waterfront, the less-buckled tennis courts and the hotter bad food, so Jacques believed it was only right that they should also have the only decent transportation. And Wendy thought that that was just plain wrong. In the beginning of the summer, in an attempt to prove who needed it more, the two Head Counselors duked it out, each planning as many out-of-camp trips as possible necessitating the use of the van. For the boys, this meant canoeing through freshly sawn logs floating down the Kennebec River or trips to the newly modernized “air-cooled” bowling alley. For the girls it meant rides into Skowhegan where we could buy bandanas at Cut Price Clothing before heading into Woolworth’s to fantasize about the percolators and placemats we’d purchase one day when we had our own kitchens.

  The battle over the Good Tan Van grew so intense that Wendy and Jacques took to stealing it away from each other in the middle of the night. Ultimately, Jacques won the war simply because Wendy had no great desire to keep sending us out all the time. Her idea of a perfect day was one where everyone was together and busy. And on the rare occasion when it was sunny, she would declare a Beach Day and we’d spend the whole morning and afternoon down at the lake. Jacques, on the other hand, liked Boys’ Side best when it was empty and he could stay behind planning the next batch of activities, or whatever it was he and my counselor did in that back room.

  Today, however, we’d be sharing the van as we set off to go climb a rock. The counselor on the trip was upstairs dining hall moaner Julie Printz, a dyed-in-the-wool Manhattanite whose closest experience to mountain climbing thus far was a class field trip to the Statue of Liberty in the early 1960s, when they still let you up into the torch. Used to taking taxis, she wasn’t much of a driver either, and spent at least five minutes adjusting the seat and muttering things like, “What’s this knob do?” before the rest of us boarded.

  Kenny, the one experienced climber, rode shotgun, second in command. He took this trip and his position of authority very seriously, even more so than captaining the inter-camp basketball team, and he’d brought along enough charts and maps to rival Magellan.

  “So, you’re really into mountain climbing?” I asked, not really interested but hoping to make conversation.

  “Yup, climbing’s the best” was his reply, which of course would have to change if I had my way, married him in a few years and we bought a house in the suburbs where I’d learn to play Mah Jongg and make onion dip from a bag of Lipton soup mix.

  The rest of us were seated in tighter quarters, squeezed together in the rear two rows of the van, crushed by all of the equipment. Our group included Mindy Plotke and a couple of boys from the now-burnt-down Wolverines’ bunk. One of them, Keith Fernbach, lived in London, a wealthy kid whose parents thought it might be nice for him to get away from rainy London and spend eight weeks in sunny America. Oh well. Keith spent a lot of time complaining about the girl back home he’d recently broken up with, a “jolly hockey sticks what-ho” type. I had no idea if that was a good or bad type, I just liked listening to his accent. Marc Gross, from Rhode Island, was better known as “El Mosquito” because, well, he looked like one. The only boy I ever met who slept with his glasses on, Marc never had a nickname before he came to camp and was honored to go by the new moniker.

  We’d driven about one hundred feet off the property when Julie realized she’d forgotten to get directions to the mountain, and Kenny’s maps and charts were no good to us for another eighty-one miles. “Bloody hell!” Keith Fernbach yelled out. Another thing that was great about having a Brit at camp was learning all of his swear words. Julie dropped us off at O’Boyle’s while she went back for a map.

  Everyone loved O’Boyle’s. While most summer camps have a building designated as the Canteen, a place for socializing and buying snacks, Saul was too cheap to stock his own snack bar and staff it. Instead we shopped at the general store across the street, run by three family members whom we knew only as Ma, Pa and Son O’Boyle. They dressed like we did, in overalls with bandanas, but they were serious. This little building was our oasis of candy and soda in Saul’s desert of dreadful food. Rumor had it that the locals shopped here, too, which might explain who was buying the Schlitz beer and dented cans of pumpkin pie filling, but we rarely saw anyone from outside camp. In the summer it was like we owned the place and I couldn’t fathom how the O’Boyles survived the winter without our patronage.

  Mindy Plotke wondered about that, too.

  “I’ll bet they love us and they hate us,” she stated.

  “Why would they hate us?” I asked.

  “Everyone hates it when the nouveau-riche invade.”

  Mindy Plotke was n
ot only pretty and petite, she was also really, really smart in a dark sort of way, the kind of person I thought my bunkmate Betty Gilbert could be friends with, if Betty ever looked up from her books while she was awake.

  A few minutes and numerous junk food purchases later, Julie came back with a map—and Dana Bleckman. For the first time all summer, I wasn’t pleased to see her.

  “Changed my mind again,” Dana announced as she held up her guitar. “You guys can squeeze me in, right?”

  I wanted to say, “No, there’s no room for you in the van and no room for you in Kenny’s heart. Today it’s all about me, me, me.” But that would have made me look bad.

  Dana tossed her gear on top of the rest of ours, squeezing into the back row. Kenny appeared more than a little annoyed, too, and I found that temporarily comforting.

  Julie’s lack of driving skills, coupled with our cramped circumstances, made the trip up the I-95 as uncomfortable as any ride in the Green Truck. In order to make it to the mountain and set up camp before nightfall, we didn’t stop until we’d reached the town of Millinocket, home of The Great Northern Paper Company and the last vestige of civilization. The telephone and power lines ended here, so while refueling the van at Last Chance Gas, Julie decided to phone the camp and let them know we’d arrived safely. She placed a collect call, which the Main Office refused to accept.

  As we headed down The Park Road, Katahdin came into view. Henry David Thoreau, whose masterpiece Walden would bore me to distraction in my sophomore year English class at Brandeis University, wrote an essay on this mountain in which he described it as an example of “primeval, untamed and forever untamable nature”. While everyone else in the van oohed and aahed, it was at this moment I knew it was not in my nature to enjoy nature. Forget Thoreau. As I looked up at this purple mountain’s majesty, I recalled the legendary words of my great-grandmother Malka, as she wrapped her good candlesticks in an apron on the eve of her journey from Pinsk to Ellis Island: “Oy, such a schlep. Remind me why we’re doing this again?”

  Of course, one glance at Kenny and my heart flooded with the promise of the new world that lay ahead—if I could just survive the trip. The last six and a half miles of the van ride took us down a gravel road to Togue Pond Gate and the Rangers’ Station. It was around four o’clock when we checked in and headed for the Roaring Brook Campground.

  “I think it’s time for a nap,” Dana announced and then yawned.

  “How can you climb a mountain if you can’t even ride in a car?” Kenny snapped. “Don’t you think we should set up our tents and build a fire?”

  “Well, okay, if I had any idea how to do that,” she replied.

  “I’m an Eagle Scout. I can do it,” Kenny said.

  “You’re an Eagle Scout?” El Mosquito was surprised.

  “Well, close,” Kenny backpedaled. “Had a little run-in with the Scoutmaster.”

  “How was that?” Keith laughed. “He ran into you smoking pot?”

  Kenny reddened. “Wish my dad laughed that hard when he found out.”

  As it turned out, disqualified scout Kenny was the only one who knew how to do anything. I wanted to help, as an excuse to stay close by, but the best thing we could all do was keep out of the way. I joined the group over by the van where we broke open a bag of Chips Ahoy! Cookies and watched the sun set over a mountain I prayed would disappear by morning.

  “Girls, stop eating!” Kenny called over, once the fire was going. “I need you to come make dinner.”

  Now I’d always thought camping out meant cooking hot dogs and hamburgers, but the Kin-A-Hurra kitchen staff had supplied us with nothing but chicken parts and raw carrots, to be washed down with ten more industrial-size cans of peach nectar. I planned on filling my canteen from the lake.

  Keith volunteered to cook, but right in the middle of the barbecue it started to rain. As each batch of poultry was freshly burnt, it was brought inside the girls’ tent, which became our makeshift picnic ground. After we’d chowed down and strewn little wish-bones all across our living space, it stopped raining and was time to go outside again, to build another fire and to do the thing I most couldn’t do, sing.

  Dana started us off with the requisite Blowin’ in the Wind. Taxed by the pressure of trying to look like I was singing when I was not, I decided to take a break after the first song.

  “I need to go brush my teeth,” I told Julie. “And maybe, if I have to,” I gulped, “use the outhouse.”

  Julie the urbanite was as grossed out as I was. “They never show you that part on Bonanza,” she complained. “They make it look like the Ponderosa was one big party.”

  Julie suggested I go with a buddy, “In case a moose or something attacked us.”

  “So if a moose attacks one of us, the other’s supposed to save them?” I asked.

  “Okay, never mind,” said Julie. “Just go.”

  “I’ll go with you,” said Mindy Plotke. “In case a moose attacks you, I want to see that.”

  Now I am proud to say that I have never had a cavity, though it’s not for lack of eating sugar. I simply brush my teeth. A lot. Though not as much as those people with the hand washing issues. My buddy of the moment, Mindy Plotke, had that covered.

  I spat out a mouthful of Colgate then swished a sip from my canteen.

  “How can you drink that?” she asked me, then produced a bottle of clear liquid featuring a picture of a mountain peak.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Bottled water. I had my parents ship me a case.”

  “Bottled water? You paid for water?”

  It was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard.

  “It’s so much purer,” she explained as she unwrapped a cake of soap.

  “Just seems a little weird.”

  “No, I’ll tell you what’s weird,” Mindy Plotke said. “Those songs around the campfire. Don’t you wonder why we always sing folk songs at camp?”

  “Not really. We’re at camp. This is what you sing.”

  “Yes, but why? Why these songs of longing and desperation? I smell fraud, don’t you? I mean, aren’t we essentially a bunch of rich, spoiled kids whose greatest worries in life are being picked last in gym class or wait-listed at Tufts?”

  Mindy Plotke was the youngest captain in the history of her high school debate team and I was finding out why.

  “American folk songs hearken back to the days of slavery,” she went on, “but haven’t we as Jews managed to avoid that since fleeing the Pharaoh in favor of desk jobs? Where did we come off singing, ‘All my trials, Lord, soon be over’? How do we identify with that?”

  “Um. Uh...”

  “Exactly,” Mindy Plotke broke in, and then I think she had an epiphany or some other brain malfunction.

  “Or wait a minute,” she said. “On second thought, this is about the religion. At Jewish weddings, when the groom crushes a wine glass with his shoe, it’s to commemorate the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem because even in our greatest moments of joy, we must remember tragedy.

  My mother told me the tragedy was breaking a perfectly good glass.

  “Perhaps,” she went on, “we sing folk songs at camp because even though things seem perfectly fine, as Jews, we’re trained to anticipate disaster at any moment and then cling to some fleeting hope-”

  “And sing about it?” I asked. “I don’t know...”

  “But these songs aren’t just for Jewish summer camps,” she noted, “so maybe it’s more of a widespread adolescent cry, a plea for a different kind of change, internal as opposed to external. With hormones raging out of control, coupled with an inability to understand what is happening to us, perhaps the only way to release the pent-up frustration and anxiety is by shaking our fists in the air and boldly screaming out, ‘Yes! Someone’s crying, Lord! KumBa-Yah, dammit!’”

  She was sure she was onto something.

  “That must be it, right? Tell me I’m right. There is no other explanation.”

 
I could think of one.

  “Or maybe it’s just because the words are easy to learn?”

  Mindy Plotke was rendered speechless.

  “You know my bunkmate, Betty Gilbert?” I asked. “You two might be good as friends.”

  “That sleepwalking, book-reading freak?” Mindy P. exclaimed. “She hates camp. She doesn’t get it.”

  “I just thought, y’know, you’re both sort of afraid of germs and-”

  But I never got to finish. Mindy Plotke washed her hands of me and walked away.

  Upon my return to the campfire, I found Dana leading the group in You’ve Got a Friend. Standing apart from the others, listening and watching, I discovered I was pleased she’d brought along her guitar, regretting I’d been annoyed when she first showed up. I was out in the middle of nowhere with everything in my life in flux, but as one song segued into another, finally ending with Goodnight Irene, all I could think was, This is what camp is supposed to be like, and I wanted the night to last forever.

  It almost did last forever. I couldn’t sleep. The ground was hard and uneven and no matter which way I turned it felt like rocks were growing under my sleeping bag. Around two AM, I sat up straight when I heard the piercing cries of what sounded like victims in a bad Japanese monster movie. Had the prowlers followed us here?

  “Relax, it’s just loons,” Dana said in the dark.

  “Loons? You mean crazy people?”

  “No. I mean loons.”

  Loons. Black-and-white-checked web-footed birds found in northern waters during the summer months. The wailing sounds were their method of communicating across long distances, much the way my mother would call to me when she was watching TV in the den and I was upstairs in my bedroom and she wanted a piece of rye bread from the kitchen.