“I did? You think?”
“You’re a good climber. And you stayed really calm. You know, at the end there.”
“Yeah, well and you...” I stopped myself.
Kenny looked sheepish. “Guess the pressure of the responsibility got to me a little.”
Kenny Uber was confiding in me, admitting he wasn’t perfect. This could be progress. This could be promising.
I had to ask. “You still mad Dana came along? You still like her?”
“That witch with a B? No way. You wish Philip had come?”
“Philip?”
“He’s your boyfriend, isn’t he?”
“For like a day. It’s nothing. It doesn’t count,” I told him, then worried that maybe I should have stuck with the hard-to-get routine.
“So, can you believe Jim called this ‘a fine little hike’?” Kenny laughed. “I’ll have to have a talk with him.”
“Yeah.”
“Hey, could you do me a favor?” Kenny asked.
“Okay.”
“About what happened back there? You don’t have to tell anyone. I’m sure Dana will, but you could deny it.”
Of course I would, because he still had his pride and I still had my hopes up. I was head over heels, though not literally like Mindy Plotke, and Kenny was starting to see me as a friend. Climbing the mountain had not been a waste of time, for in the process, I had jumped a small hurdle.
Oh, and I got to sing.
to the tune of Oom-pah-pah
from the musical Oliver!
“
That’s how it goes,
When you hear the Green Truck
Go down the road
Carbon monoxide goes right up your nose
When you hear
9
A FEW DAYS AFTER THE RETURN FROM KATAHDIN, SAUL RATTNER showed up for breakfast on Girls’ Side. Standing in the middle of the dining room, puffing on his pipe, Saul slowly waved his right hand in a downward motion, to shush us. Betty Gilbert helped him out.
“Shut up! Saul wants to talk.”
“Thank you, sweetie,” he smiled at her. Saul had a habit of calling all the campers “Honey” or “Sweetie” which I suspected was less a term of endearment than an excuse not to learn anybody’s name.
“I have a wonderful announcement to make,” our camp director told us, “the prowlers have been captured and sent to jail.”
I think he was expecting joy and jubilation, but for the most part, no one seemed to care. The acts of prowling had become something of a letdown, as the intruders shied away from throwing rocks and shouting into bunk windows, settling instead for late night swims and occasionally stealing a towel off the clothesline. The prowlers had no real impact on us any more. They were just another part of camp, one we rarely saw. Kind of like Saul.
For me, the bigger news was that there were no little boxes of Kellogg’s Sugar Frosted Flakes on the table this morning. In their place were simpler, old-fashioned-looking packages, some wheat flake cereal called Pep.
“Vhat happened to our cereal?” Borscha Belyavsky called out. She had adapted well to American junk food.
“Glad you asked,” said Saul. “Has anyone here been following the national news?”
The only news we’d been following was who got a package in the mail, who got a hickey and who had the scabbiest mosquito bites. Nothing fit to print.
“There was an article,” Saul continued, “stating that sugary breakfast cereals are not very healthy. So we’re not going to have them any more.”
No more sugarcoated cereal? I nearly lost my will to live but then I remembered about Kenny.
“We’re going to try something new,” he explained.
“This is new?” Dana questioned. “It looks antique.”
“Autumn Evening,” I said, nudging her, “do you remember eating this cereal in a past life?”
“Yes, in the 1800s, when I was shipwrecked in the Caribbean and it was all we had aboard,” she answered. “Arghh, matey, shiver ye Pep.”
“Really?”
“No. Why are you asking?”
I was asking because it clicked in my head why this unfamiliar cereal looked so familiar. I’d seen a carton of Pep in the closet under the stairs over on Boys’ Side. Was Saul serving us breakfast cereal from the 1940s?
“They’re just like Wheaties,” Saul explained as he released a plume of smoke. “Very good for you.”
While I debated revealing to my bunkmates that this cold cereal might pre-date the Cold War, Saul informed us of current world events. He had a habit of making everything he said sound like a sermon, which meant most of us stopped paying attention around the third or fourth sentence.
During a particularly lengthy diatribe on the high price of eggs, the pay phone at the front of the dining room rang. It was Mindy Plotke calling from her bedroom in Florida with an update on her broken ankle and the gash in her head that had required fifteen stitches. “It’s so agonizingly boring!” was what she had to say, and the information was relayed to the rest of us. “I’ve been lying in bed for three days, staring out the window and watching the heat rise on the driveway.”
Mindy Plotke came from substantial wealth. Her parents had picked her up from the hospital in Millinocket and flown her home in a private jet, back to their house in the hideous southern summer heat. I thought the wealth and jet parts were pretty cool, but her current situation was as anti-climactic as the prowlers’ capture. “I can’t tolerate it anymore,” she went on. “And my parents say I’m driving them berserk, so I’m coming back.”
Rather than refund Mr. and Mrs. Plotke’s money, Saul assured them that the camp nurse could take care of their daughter in the well-equipped girls’ infirmary. Her parents had never seen the camp, so they acquiesced to Mindy P.’s wishes. With a cast on her leg, stitches in her head and instructions that neither could get wet, Mindy Plotke returned via commercial jet. Junior counselor Connie Pechman picked her up at Bangor International Airport in Connie’s yellow 1968 VW Beetle. Connie had spent a good deal of the summer extremely itchy because she was allergic to the seaweed in the lake. To combat a full body rash, she was given a prescription for a medication which made her extremely groggy. To counteract the grogginess, she was given a prescription for speed, which made her extremely popular with the rest of the staff.
Security was somewhat lax at the Bangor hangar and no one noticed that after loading her convalescent charge into the VW, Connie hoisted the wheelchair—with its big Delta Airlines logo on the side—onto the roof of the Bug, strapped it down and drove off. The plan was to wheel Mindy Plotke around camp for the rest of the summer, but the dirt roads were rocky and bumpy when it wasn’t raining and pure mud when it was, so mostly people just carried her around. I hated how the boys fought over who’d get to give her a piggyback ride, noting that she “barely weighed a pound,” but on the plus side, this freed up the wheelchair for other purposes.
Camp was not at full capacity and Bunk Six was empty. It was used as storage for trunks, many of which were filled with campers’ and counselors’ stashes of junk food from O’Boyle’s and care packages from generous parents. My trunk contained stationery with envelopes pre-addressed to relatives and a sewing kit, in case my nametags came loose. Mindy Plotke’s bunkmates arranged the trunks into a maze and created a game called “Obstacle Course.” A camper, blindfolded with a bandana, would sit in the chair and be pushed at high speeds through the labyrinth. It was a stupid game that was especially popular when the boys came over to visit because it somehow led to people having to touch each other.
For true daredevils, there was “Roller Coaster.” Norit BenSorek, a camper from Jerusalem and a future sergeant in the Israeli Defense Force, dreamed up this one. The wheelchair was brought to the top of the rocky road leading to the Havens where a brave camper would take the seat.
“I will count to three,” Norit explain
ed, “and then I will let go.”
“I’ll do it,” Autumn Evening volunteered and sat down. “Count away!”
“Echad, shtayim, shalosh!” Norit counted off in Hebrew, then she pushed with her foot, sending Autumn Evening crashing out of control, down the dirt road and into the sticker bushes.
“That was incredible! I have to do that again,” my bunkmate announced, climbing out of the brush and back up the hill.
I didn’t particularly enjoy Roller Coaster, but I didn’t want anyone to know I was afraid so I did it three times.
Mindy Plotke got special treatment on the day we went to Rummel’s in Waterville. Home of a miniature golf course and the Icky Orgy, a concoction you created at the make-your-own-sundae bar, an evening at Rummel’s was a much-anticipated annual event. Three bunks’ worth of male and female campers and counselors—about fifty of us in all—crowded into the back of the Green Truck. Mindy Plotke, unable to climb up, got to ride in the cab with barely-English-speaking counselor Lars Snorth. Lars, who wore glasses comprised of one thick lens and one blacked out lens, loved to drive Saul’s vehicles as a means of proving it didn’t matter that he was born missing his left eye and had only limited vision in the right. He especially enjoyed the challenge of changing lanes with the truck.
“Ugh, golf,” Dana whined. “More exercise. Wasn’t Katahdin enough? Will it never end?” Uninterested in the planned festivities, songstress Dana had brought along her guitar, planning to serenade us through the nine holes of fake golf. It didn’t take much to convince her to also play on the way there. As passing motorists stared at our cargo of campers, we mooed along to Take Me Home, Country Roads.
Every year, right around Rummel’s time, someone would come up with the ingenious notion of covering the floor of the truck with some of the old cotton-covered blue-and-white-ticking mattresses.
“Again? Who put the mattresses in?” Maddy wanted to know.
“The boys did it. Why? It’s not a good idea?” Hallie asked. “Won’t it make the ride softer?”
“Softer—and wetter.”
Because every year the rain would blow in through the slatted sides of the truck, soaking them. So tonight, this country road took us to Rummel’s on soggy mattresses and we arrived with wet backsides, but not even that could dampen my spirits when I was in the vicinity of hot fudge sauce.
After polishing off my Icky Orgy, with just enough restraint to keep from licking the bowl in front of people, I should have felt sick. Instead, I felt ready for golf. As Philip’s perceived girlfriend, I couldn’t avoid partnering with him, but there was also nothing stopping me from inviting Autumn Evening and Kenny to join us.
“I’m really good at miniature golf,” Philip informed me.
“That’s too bad,” I said. “I stink.”
Even so, Autumn Evening, Philip, Kenny and I seemed like the ideal foursome. Autumn Evening wasn’t interested in Kenny, I wasn’t interested in Philip and Dana wasn’t interested in participating. She sat on the sidelines, next to Mindy Plotke who was having her cast signed, and performed the entire Carole King album Tapestry, except for Smackwater Jack, which nobody really likes.
By the fourth hole, Kenny was two under par. “This is how a man plays,” he gloated. I knew this was a shot at Philip who had not yet had his Bar Mitzvah and was still, technically, a boy.
Autumn Evening and I fell farther and farther behind and drifted into a conversation about how they made those mini golf mini pencils.
“Do you think they start out regular size then break them in two and sharpen both?” she asked. “Or do they just start out smaller?”
“These are just like the pencils at my house,” I told her. “Except ours start out bigger and with erasers, until my brother Mark bites them off.”
“Your brother eats pencil erasers?”
“All of them. It’s so frustrating. It’s like, you can never make a mistake in our house.”
The competition intensified between Philip and Kenny and they were tied going into the final hole.
“It all comes down to this last shot,” Philip whispered, like a TV golf announcer. “Ladies and gentlemen, if either player can putt into the hippo’s mouth, he will secure his place in history.”
“Shut up, I’m trying to concentrate,” Kenny snapped.
But Kenny and Philip both missed.
Autumn Evening skipped the hole. “I played so much golf in my last life,” she said. “Who needs this?”
I went with my usual strategy, closed my eyes and smacked the ball. Somehow, it went in.
“Lucky shot,” Kenny snorted.
“You just won a free game,” Philip informed me, and for the first time I think I heard slight irritation in his voice.
Thankfully, there was no time to play another round. We turned in our equipment and headed back to the Green Truck just as a strong wind was picking up.
“I don’t feel good,” one camper moaned five minutes after we hit the road.
“Maybe you had too much ice cream,” a counselor suggested.
But it was not the dessert in his belly that was doing the damage. It was the wind outside the truck which posed the problem. Per its design, the truck gave out massive amounts of carbon monoxide, which ordinarily blew out the tailpipe and affected only the unfortunate souls riding behind us. Tonight, however, the wind was blowing in the same direction we were traveling, whipping the noxious fumes back into the truck and into our lungs. It didn’t take long for many other campers to grow nauseous. A couple even passed out.
Mindy Plotke, resting her cast on the cab dashboard, noticed we’d stopped singing Great Big Globs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts and peeked around into the back. Seeing something was horribly wrong, she grabbed Lars’s arm, causing the truck to swerve. He regained control and pulled over.
By this time, Kenny was among the unconscious. It’s like a dream come true, I thought to myself. If I gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, I could bring him back to life. Except that I didn’t know mouth-to-mouth. But even if I screw up and he dies, he’ll still be the first boy I ever kissed. I began crawling over towards Kenny until Autumn Evening foiled my plan, getting to him first.
My bunkmate had told us weeks ago that she wasn’t looking for a boyfriend this summer, but she had been spending a lot of time with Kenny ever since the play. I assumed they were just friends, that she was probably consoling him on losing Dana to Aaron. And she was doing mouth-to-mouth because she learned it in Junior Lifesaving. Advanced Beginners like myself never got to that.
The easiest thing would have been to find a pay phone, call the camp office and have them send some other vehicles and maybe a nurse. But there were no pay phones around and the high winds had already knocked out the lines anyway.
Watching Autumn Evening attempt to breathe life back into Kenny gave my faux beau an idea and the once-robust Philip suddenly passed out by my side. “Cut it out,” I said. “I know you’re faking.” But if he wasn’t, I was still the closest person to him who wasn’t unconscious. I had to give him mouth-to-mouth even though I didn’t know what I was doing. And if I couldn’t do it right, I was still obligated to make it look like I cared.
I leaned in close, to put my lips on his, worried that if I did manage to save him there was still the risk our braces might lock in some weird Chang and Eng Siamese dental horror show.
“A-choo!” The perfectly healthy Philip accidentally sneezed in my face. It was the most disgusting thing that had ever happened to me, but the timing couldn’t have been better.
“Sorry,” he whispered, truly remorseful as I wiped my face on my sleeve.
“It’s okay,” I replied, totally meaning it.
Lars swung open the back gates. “Everybody out!” he screamed into the wind.
Those who were able climbed out while the rest were assisted and we huddled by the side of the road, too cold to sing, and waited for someone to come up with a plan. No one did, but half an hour later everyone was able to breathe
and the truck was poison-free.
This became the way to get home. Lars drove the truck as fast and as far as he could, fifteen minutes at a stretch, and then he’d pull over again. Bingeing and purging on carbon monoxide, the half-hour trip back to camp took four hours and twenty minutes. It was the second-worst road trip I’d been on so far this year.
Six months earlier, in January of 1974, my father had a convention to attend in Orlando, Florida and decided to bring the whole family along, turning it into a trip to Disney World. It was hard to believe this was really happening. We even got to miss school. My parents had been to Disneyland in 1967, when my father attended a convention in Los Angeles, but while they rode the Matterhorn and the Teacups, Mark, Jay and I (David wasn’t born yet) stayed in New Jersey with our grandmother. As a souvenir, my mother brought me back a colorful map of the park, which I took to school for Show & Tell, regaling my classmates with stories of what a wonderful time my parents had had without me.
No matter that January 1974 was the height of the Arab oil embargo. We loaded up the Custom Cruiser with suitcases and barf bags and drove from the Garden State to the Sunshine State. Heading south on the I-95, you can’t miss the miles and miles of signs for Mexican-themed South of the Border, an attraction in Dillon, South Carolina open twenty-four hours a day, every day of the year. I knew of South of the Border from our neighbors, the Zemels, who had bumper stickers on their Buick Electra advertising the restaurants, attractions, stores and campgrounds. The utopia that is South of the Border. They stopped there every year and stayed overnight in the 300–room motel. Taking a cue from old-time Burma-Shave signs, the one hundred-twenty clever billboard ads (“You’re always a wiener at Pedro’s!” “You’ll love us—even at Chanukkah!”) began cropping up a hundred miles north, building anticipation and nearly brainwashing motorists into forgetting that South of the Border was not the final destination. My parents, however, were not fooled.
“We’re not stopping?” I asked in dismay.
Not a Happy Camper Page 12
