Did you ever have a summer camp experience?

Several years ago, an artist friend of ours invited us to an art show of his work.  It was in Bandera, Texas. Off the highway through the woods we followed a winding road where gnarled mesquite trees leaned over the road. The thought occurred to me about how difficult it would be to find our way back to the highway if we left after dark.  Around a sharp turn, a long ago familiar cattle guard with a gate…..a For Sale sign hung by only one corner.  It had been for sale for a long time. Nailed neatly on the other side of the gate was a painted sign, now barely legible through the peeling paint, “K---- ----- Ca-- --- -irls.

My childhood friend, whose house was behind mine always got to go to a fancy camp, King  Ranch Camp for Girls, each summer.  She would come back, after 5 weeks, telling me of all her adventures.  She too, was an only child.  For those of us who were “only,” the chance at adventure meant getting away from our parents.  I wanted to go to that camp so badly.  Finally when I was in 6^th grade my parents agreed that I could go, provided I had all B’s or better in Arithmetic.  It was my most dreaded subject.  Mrs. Barnhill had scared me into “Arithmetic block” in 4^th grade.  Every time I thought about the subject my brain literally froze. So having B or better all year long was a big challenge.

When Christmas rolled around one of the boxes was wrapped up with a note, it said, “$200 credit towards camp”.  When my birthday came in January I got another present like that.  Finally by May all my holidays had been “infected” by camp credits I had “earned”, and the needed $500 for camp along with good grades in arithmetic.  I look back and think about how much money that was in 1962…it had to have been a whole month of my mother’s pay.

King’s Ranch Camp for Girls sent us a patch when they confirmed my registration. It was to be sewn on my white shirt. I was going for sure now.  I had my patch.  When school was out Mom and I went shopping for all the gear I had to have. A white shirt and white shorts, white Keds, riding boots, a cowboy hat, jeans (I had never owned a pair of jeans in my life), a .22 rifle, a bow as in “and arrow”, swimsuits, towels, sheets, pillow cases, a pillow, a trunk, a sleeping bag for camp outs, bug spray and a myriad of other stuff all with my name on the inside.   It was more stuff than I would take when I went off to college 6 years later. 

I had to memorize all the rules and routines so I would know where to be when.  I wasn’t really too concerned about all that because Susie would be there and she had gone for the past two summers. As I was packing to go, Susie came by to tell that she would not be going to the first session after all, her parents had planned a vacation.   I was in shock….I was going off to this God forsaken place in the wild and I would know no one.

As we left, I sat in the back of the Buick frozen with fear.  Susie waved as we passed her house.  I didn’t wave back, she was the one who had convinced me to go and what is an adventure without a friend?? I would be all alone.

Arriving on  Sunday all campers were wearing their bright white shorts, white shirts with the patch sewn on and perfectly clean white Keds.  Our parents signed us in, as the campers were herded into a big circle around the flag pole.  We were taught several camp songs and by the time we finished, there were no parents…or Buicks in sight.  I felt sick.  Everyone seemed to know each other from previous years.  Then came the time to be assigned to our “Tribe”.   Before long my name was called, I was a Tejas.  I had only met one person, and she was in the other tribe.

Next was our cabin assignments.  Our parents it seemed had snuck off while we were singing camp songs and dumped all our stuff in the cabin by the bunk we were assigned to.  The cabins were stark.  The building was closed in only where the bathrooms were.  The bunks were around the outside of the closed in part, which was a large screened in porch.  You could see out into the woods during the day but at night it was a large, dark and made lots of scary sounds.  There was only one small light inside, on each side of the cabin.  I flopped down on my bunk trying not to cry.  There above me scribbled on the bunk above my head was written, “HILLARY WAS HERE”.   Who was Hillary anyway?  I asked…but no one knew.  The light on our side was directly over the top bunk where the girl above me was assigned.  To turn it off, she pulled the string at “Lights out.”.  I buried my head in my pillow, this was a nightmare not an adventure! I finally fell asleep, wondering what horror the morning would bring.

It seemed like I had only fallen asleep when some idiot started clanging this bell on the outside of our cabin.  Our first activity was swimming.  So while everyone excitedly got ready, I was once again filled with dread.  I had never learned to swim.

I was blind as a bat and tried to avoid anything that required me doing without my glasses.  As I headed out the cabin door with my swimsuit and towel, the counselor swiped the glasses off my face, “No glasses at the pool!”  I was the last one to leave and being blind I could see people moving around but finding my cabin mates was almost impossible.  I ended up at the shooting range and had to be directed toward the pool.  The girls last comment was, “What’s wrong with you, can’t you see the pool?”  No as a matter of fact….ugh just no.  The only thing I hated worse than arithmetic…swimming…and being without my glasses.

We ate our meals in a big log cabin with a high ceiling.  The food was always good, the homemade rolls were the best.  The smell seemed to reach me long before it was time to eat.  We were so busy that I seemed to be hungry all the time. After we ate, the camp border collie, Ruby was always waiting on the porch to greet everyone.  She was black and white.  She thought all of us had come to see her.  Sometimes when we left she would follow us to our cabin.  I loved having her come, I felt so homesick and somehow she seemed to understand.  I was thrilled on the nights she decided to sleep outside by my bunk. From my lower bunk I could see the light that shown on the front of the horse barn down the hill, occasionally flickering  due to the tree limbs swaying in front of the light in the breeze.

There was also an old barn cat, named Cat that hung out with the horses.  She was really fat. One of the girls in another cabin told me Cat was about to have kittens.  I asked the girl, “Where will she have them.”  She said,

“Oh you never know, it won’t be in the barn for sure though…she likes to fool everyone.”

My favorite day was the day we had horseback riding.  I had ridden horses all my life.  Most of the horses were best described as nags.  The one I liked the best was General. Despite her name she was a mare and loved to run.  Most avoided her but I loved riding her.  Riding horses, I didn’t have to talk to anyone, I could just ride and enjoy the scenery.  After all, I was used to being alone and all this togetherness got to me after awhile.  I hoped Susie was as miserable on her vacation as I was at camp. Nothing was as wonderful as she had described it…. I just wanted to go home and have my privacy back.  That day we had been required to write a post card to our parents.  I wrote simply, “I am mizzerble come and get me.”

I awoke about 3 AM one night to Ruby’s fierce barking.  Before long everyone was up, faces pressed against the screen.  All we could see was Ruby’s flash of white on her face and another flash of white on something she was chasing.  Finally she started yelping and came running back to the cabin. Before anyone saw her in though….we smelled her.  There was no longer any doubt about what she had been chasing. She insisted on sleeping right outside our cabin, we all slept with wet washcloths over our noses.  By the time we got up Ruby had been hauled off to the main building for a bath.  She had killed the skunk but what we found out later was that she had killed a mother skunk…and the babies were under our cabin, two tiny little skunks whose eyes were yet to open.  We laid on our stomachs on the ground with a flashlight, peering under the cabin, but no one could get far enough under to reach the tiny creatures.

After all our activities and dinner that night we all ran as hard as we could back to the cabin to see if the baby skunks were still alive.  I knew exactly where they were, but when I looked no skunks.  Then another girl said she knew exactly where they were but no one could find them.  We lay in bed that night trying to figure out what had happened to them. One speculated a coyote ate them while we were gone, then someone else said coyotes slept all day.  Everyone suggested another kind of animal but the fact was they were gone and probably dead.  We were all heartbroken.  The next day when Ruby was standing by the door at lunch we all had decided not to pet her or even talk to her anymore.  She put her ears down and gave us such a sad look.  The fact was though, she had killed those babies’ mother.

After two weeks our parents all came to see us.  Mom and Dad took me out to dinner in Bandera.  I was so busy telling them about all the things that had happened that I forgot to tell them how miserable I was and that I wanted to go home.  When I remembered, I was waving as the Buick drove down the road toward the cattle guard.

Our cabins were inspected every day.  The cabin that had the most #1 inspections for the week got to go on a camp out on the weekend. I secretly hoped we never managed that award, but in the 4^th week of camp we had the most #1 inspections.  The one good thing was I would get to use my new sleeping bag.  Saturday we loaded up all our camping out stuff.  The cook had a little wagon full of hot dogs and delicacies for us to eat.  I never knew popcorn could be cooked on an open fire, or that marshmallows roasted black could taste so good.  My mother never bought hot dogs so I discovered another delicacy of childhood. We had a long day hiking to the river, eating and playing, so when it got dark I was exhausted.  Laying my glasses just inside my sleeping bag, I drifted off to sleep amid the talking and giggling of all the other girls.

I woke up rolling and rolling, I tried to grab something but all I got was my sleeping bag and it was rolling too. I finally found the zipper pull and as I ripped it down and rolled out I felt the pain of the rock I rolled over  as I slipped out of the bag, I heard a splash and then another and another, water was everywhere. I sat up sitting in the edge of the creek along with 3 other girls.  Everyone was screaming, it was dark, not just dark but so dark I couldn’t see anything. I could just hear people.  Finally one of the counselors turned on a flashlight. A herd of something had run right though our camp….someone said it was pigs and someone else said it was dogs. I was furious because not only was my sleeping bag a wet soggy mess… I had no idea where my glasses had ended up.  Everyone thought that was hilarious.  “You can’t see anyway since it is pitch dark Jan.”  Linda opened her sleeping bag up and laid it out flat, so I could have something soft to lay on.  After everyone had calmed down I lay there looking at the sky.  Tears rolling down my cheeks and into my ears, they did not know how serious it was that I had lost my glasses.  I really couldn’t see anything without them.  They laughed at me anyway. I decided I would just stay in the cabin for the last week of camp.  I couldn’t see to do anything anyway.

After what seemed like an eternity, the group finally started to stir.  Everyone was gathering their stuff that had been strewn around by the nights attack.  They, had  found all their stuff, but my glasses were nowhere to be found.  The counselor gave me my soggy sleeping bag to carry back to the cabin.  I fought back tears as I trudged back, being sure to stay really close to the person in front of me.  That didn’t keep me from stumbling and falling over rocks and holes I couldn’t see. 

The counselor tried to comfort me and assured me that the laundry could clean my sleeping bag as good as new.   She had forgotten about my lost glasses. Later as we headed for the pool, she said, “Oh I didn’t even have to remind you about your glasses today.”

I could see things up close so I could still do the things on our schedule.  We had leather tooling, which was close work.  We also had riflery.  It was the one thing I could do very well.   My dad had taught me how to use a .22 at my grandparents, shooting cans off the fence. I was on my way to earning a patch for the best shooting record.  But not today…I couldn’t even see the entire target!  

That night was laundry delivery.  My sleeping bag was clean and fluffy like new again.  Laundry was handed out to everyone and as the lady walked out of the cabin, I asked her if there had been glasses in that sleeping bag.  She said she didn’t know, she just delivered the laundry.

When we went to lunch the next day, everyone was talking about Cat. She had given birth to the kittens.  She had gone to the tack shed behind the barn to have the babies.  She had two orange kittens, two calicoes and…..two baby skunks.   They were several weeks old because they all had their eyes open.   We were so excited to learn they baby skunks hadn’t died after all.  Ruby must have killed their mother about the time Cat had her babies.  It was a long way from our cabin to the tack shed…but she had gotten them there somehow.  She must have thought they were kittens.  And then at the end of lunch, an announcement.  “A pair of glasses had been found by the laundry.  If anyone was missing their glasses……”

And then it was the last Sunday .  We all stood around the flag pole, in our dingy white shorts, shirts and muddy Keds, with the “King Ranch Camp for Girls” patches on our shirts. Tejas and Comanches, holding hands, some crying that the final day had come.  The Buicks, Oldsmobiles and Chevy station wagons were driving over the cattle guard to pick up their daughters.  We all filed in for one last lunch in the dining hall.  Ruby sat faithfully by the door, Cat was laying on the porch with a couple of unruly kittens.  This time we all sat with our cabin mates and friends who had become like sisters.  Our parents, sat at other tables wondering if we had forgotten them. As I got into the Buick I told my parents how much fun I had…and that I wanted to go back every summer.

There was only one girl from camp I wrote letters to after that summer.  It wasn’t long though until the camp memories faded and what we had in common was gone.  By the next summer I was on to other things and actually never thought about going back to King’s Ranch Camp for Girls. Susie’s parents had sent her off to boarding school so I had never saw her again. I didn’t realize until many years later what a huge sacrifice it had been for my parents to send me there that summer.  I never did find anyone who knew that “Hillary had been there”.

Brooks and Books

A large old Victorian house with a porch, sat on the hill outside of Prague, Oklahoma. The porch wrapped around three sides.  Stepping in the door she greeted her residents with a beautiful grand, curved stairway. This was where the Emerson's lived, Maggie, Delbert, their four children, Oren, Faye, Orbie (who they called Jiggs), and Dee.

The house had a door coming out of the basement to the backyard.  It had fabled stories of its own…….one being,  it had been a brothel.  The basement door opened into the backyard so, as the story went, when raided, everyone could run into the woods behind the house.  Most stories were dismissed like haunted house or ghost stories, and it was just the Emerson’s house on the Hill.

Maggie was an industrious young woman, saving package string to crochet into bedspreads and table coverings.  She also saved the bright calico cloth the flour and calf feed came in, to make dresses for herself and Maggie.  The darker fabrics she made into shirts for the boys. She always had a large garden to provide food for her family, and shared what they couldn’t use with others less fortunate than themselves. She was one of the first women to vote in Oklahoma, that state  giving women the right to vote a full year before the 19th Amendment was ratified. With Delbert running a dairy, if she needed something done, she did it herself, only asking his help if absolutely necessary.  Maggie had married Delbert when she was fifteen and he twenty, in 1917.  By the time she was twenty one, she had given birth to her four children, three boys and a girl.

Maggie never remembered a time when her daughter Faye, couldn’t read.  Faye was precocious, always in the middle of everything.  When her older brother, Oren, started to school, Faye devoured every printed word he brought home.  Maggie would be working  patiently with Oren on his reading when, peeking over the back of the chair, Faye would correct a word he had missed. Oren would leap over the chair and a fight would ensue, Maggie stepping in to break it up, sending Faye to her room.

When Faye was six she finally go to to the two-room school house down the road with Oren.  There was a bridge on the way to school which had slats that were widely spaced. While walking over it, looking down,  the long drop under the bridge was visible, to the water.  Faye had never walked over the bridge before.   She and Oren set our for school, clean and tidy, but when they returned home, Faye was in shambles, her dress torn, her shoes filthy with dirt, mud and socks missing.  Maggie didn’t expect her to come home like she had left for school, but every day another torn dress, more lost socks and wet shoes.  

Finally Maggie decided to wait for them on their way home from school.  She was horrified to find that while Oren was walking across the bridge on the way home, Faye was going into the brush down the banks, taking her shoes off, walking through the water in the brook and then scaling back up the steep rocky bank.  As Faye topped the bank, there stood Maggie, furious.  “What on earth are you doing???  Why didn’t you just go across the bridge??”
“She won’t do it Mom,” Oren said with a sly grin on his face.
“She is scared when she looks through the slats in the bridge, she thinks she is going to fall through the slats.”
Maggie looked again at Faye.  
“Is that why you won’t go over the bridge?”  Faye, now totally humiliated, tears making a trail down her dirty little face, slowly nodded her head.  Maggie took Faye’s hand and walked her to the bridge. Then putting her foot as far into the opening between the slats on the bridge as she could, said, “See even my foot won’t go through the slats.”  Faye nodded her head. “Faye there will be no more going under the bridge. Do you understand?  You will hold Oren’s hand and walk across the bridge with him."

The next morning Faye and Oren left for school holding hands.  When they got to the bridge though, Faye balked.  Oren begged pleaded and coaxed. Finally he had to take her hand and drag her screaming across the bridge.  

On the way home Faye was telling her brother about her day, as he took her hand, she didn’t notice, continuing in a rapt discussion as they crossed the bridge. She never realized she had walked over it.  From then on Oren was careful to engage her in conversation and hold her hand tightly until they got over the bridge.  If Faye looked through the slats, she still would freeze, so Oren worked his magic of conversation until they got over the bridge, then they dropped hands and took off running to meet their school buddies.   

At school there were two rooms, one with first through 4th grade and the other with 5th through 8th grade.  The year started with Faye in 1st grade and Oren in 3rd grade. 

It was only days until the teacher could see that Faye was going to be completely unmanageable, correcting other students mistakes and trying to take control.  She answered all the questions for the the first grade recitation and then wanted to participate in all the other grades as well.  Her brother Oren was horrified that his sister was such a know-it-all. The teacher realized Faye was going to be a major challenge.

There were many Czech immigrants in Prague, with quite a few children starting to school speaking only the Czech language.  Thoroughly flustered with Faye being so much ahead of the other first graders, the teacher decided to let her work with the first graders who needed help. Since most had yet to learn English, she told Faye teach them their letters. She was delighted and taught them talking non-stop.  In the middle of class one day Faye loudly proclaimed.  “I know what I want to do when I grow up!  I am going to be a teacher!”  As the year progressed and the other first graders started to read, Faye was allowed to recite with the other grades as well.  In her first four years of school she honed her teaching skills.  

Faye was 9 years old when the stock market crashed.  The Great Depression defined her childhood, but her memories were happy ones.  The Emerson’s still rented the house on the hill and the dairy.  Although they didn’t have much money, because of Maggie’s garden, and Delbert running the dairy, they had a place to live and plenty to eat.  

Maggie  was one of the oldest of a family of eleven children.  In the midst of the Depression, when her brothers started to lose their homes and farms, she insisted they come with their families and stay with them, until things got better. The upstairs of the old victorian house was one large room.  To give everyone a little room of their own, she strung wires across the upstairs ceilings both ways.  Then she took quilts and hung them from the wires making as many “rooms” as she needed for who was currently staying with them. Faye loved having relatives around, with three brothers having her girl cousins there, was a treat.

During the thirties, everyone was trying to etch out a living in any way they could.  The man up the road from the Emerson's had started making moonshine and selling it.  When Jiggs overheard, he wanted to know all about moonshine.  Maggie explained it to him, then told him to keep his mouth shut.  “It’s none of your business, I have a garden to make ends meet and he makes moonshine. It’s not the best thing to do but it is none of your business. And if anyone asks you about it, don’t answer!”  Maggie warned.
“But that’s a lie.”
“Not if you don’t say anything!” Maggie told him sternly. Jiggs nodded his head saying "Yes mam", the other three kids knowing full well he could never keep a secret.

A few days later, in a big cloud of dust, a big black car came rolling up.  It was long, shiny and amazingly clean.  A man dressed in a black, double breasted, pin striped suit stepped out. Seeing the kids playing, he walked casually across the street and asked, “You kids know anyone around here who sells moonshine.”  Faye’s head whirled around to see where Jiggs was, but before she could grab him he said,
“The 'ole man up the road makes it in his bathtub.” By then Faye had grabbed him, twisted him to the ground by the ear, looked up and said, 
“Can’t you see? He is just a little kid and doesn’t know anything!”  But before the words were out of her mouth, the man had gotten in the car, and rolled away, hardly visible through the dust from the road.  Faye took off running to tell her mom, with Jiggs running trying to elbow his way in front to stop her.

Each night before bed, the children would gather in the light of the fireplace, or a kerosene lamp, as Delbert would read classic literature to them, always finishing off with a couple of folk songs accompanied by his ukulele.  Delbert brought home books he had been given or had pinched pennies to buy. There never seemed to be enough new books.The little town of Prague had no library, only the little school.  The children used the books that had been bought for their older siblings or that had been passed down from other family members.

Maggie with only a 4th grade education, was determined her children were going to have more of an opportunity.  She decided that Prague needed a library, and that not seeming to be a possibility, she decided she would come up with another idea.  The colleges all had books in abundance.  She kept brainstorming about how some college could loan books to their community.   

Delbert had a friend in Kansas who was a college professor. Maggie convinced him to write his friend. With the help of the professor, the university agreed to loan the books to Maggie and the little town of Prague.  They suggested Maggie buy a wooden coffin and send it back to them on the train, in care of the professor.  The university library would fill it with books of all kinds, for all ages, and put them on the train and send it back.  The books could be borrowed for nine months. At the end of the time Maggie would need to inventory them, load them in the coffin, send them back and the process would start over again. She was thrilled with the idea!

Delbert built a nice sturdy coffin sized box, which was sent on its journey to Kansas for the books.  When they were notified that the books were in, Maggie, Delbert and  kids took the wagon to the train station to pick up their greatly anticipated books.  Faye was beside herself with excitement and wanted to open the box at the train station.  

The next day the books were taken to the school. Faye, her brothers, mom and some other ladies sorted though the books leaving some in the two classrooms for the children to use.  The others were made available for the townspeople to check out.  The program continued for several years until the little school gradually acquired enough books of its own, for a library.

Faye never quit loving teaching or books.   Her teaching career spanned 45 years, elementary to college and three states.  She organized the first engineering library at Amoco Oil Refinery in Texas City, Texas.  Later in her life she became librarian of the Bertie Hetherington Memorial Library, at First Baptist Church in Texas City, Texas.   On her tombstone is engraved;

“If I had another life, I would still be a teacher.”

Faye Emerson Greenlee

March 23, 1921-September 10, 2007

Happy 94th Birthday!

Perfect Parents

There are some days that just overwhelm me.  I read a very informative blog about parenting that my daughter had written.  It made so much sense.  It was fun practical advice about parenting.  The second time I read it though, I saw something that devastated me.  She said, “I grew up in a household of constant screaming, and I don’t want to do that to my kids.”  That was me she was talking about.   It wasn’t until I talked to my son that I was able to rationalize what she had said.  It was her way I saying, “ I am a better mother.  I didn’t make mistakes like YOU did.”  He also reminded me of how patient I had been the first five times I had asked them to do something……before I screamed.

My daughter’s and my circumstances are so different.  Her husband works a normal work day.  He doesn’t have to be at work terribly early. He can help her get the girls ready for school, she has a support system.  He also  doesn’t have to work late or work for hours on the computer once he is home.   When dinner is started, he can entertain the kids, or fix dinner while my daughter entertains the kids.  He helps her put them to bed, can read them stories, she is seldom alone in parenting. She gets that much needed break in her day when he gets home to relax a little and regroup.  She doesn’t have to parent when she is overtired from not having a break for five days.  He is home every night.

When my children were little my husband left early on Monday morning, if not on Sunday night.  He was out of town until usually midnight on Friday when he drove in.  My days started when the children awoke. I had no car some of those years, so I was their constant companion.  I fixed three meals, fed them played with them, took them for walks comforted them in the afternoon when nothing made them happy, then bathed them, read to them and put them to bed,then, only then did I get a break..until someone woke up crying in the night or morning when it started all over again.  It was that way for five days each week.  When Jim did get home, the kids were excited to see him.  They consumed his whole weekend.  They wanted to play with him, I still had three meals each day to cook, Jim’s laundry to get done and eight white dress shirts to wash, starch and iron in the two days before he left again.  My home time on the weekends was even busier than the weekdays. I had no time to regroup, rest or even visit with him because the kids needed him.  When he left on Monday morning I was usually in tears because I was so tired and lonely.  I lived for the twice a week he could call me and talk for 15 minutes.  When those 15 minutes were gone, I cried again from being lonely.  On the weeks when he could stay in town he left as early as 6 am drive to see clients 50 or 100 miles away.  He seldom was home before 7 pm and even then had several hours of work to do before going to bed.  I am not making excuses….just comparing the circumstances….it makes a difference when you can be rested and have daily support as a parent.

I did yell at my kids.  I did make mistakes. I wasn’t the perfect mother, why does she think I held myself up AS being perfect?  I never did.  I apologized to my kids when I realized I had made a mistake in judgement...and that was often.  

My mother wasn’t perfect either, she made mistakes, but I knew she was being the best mother she could possibly be.  Before she died, she told me she wished she hadn’t been so consumed with her career but I knew that was just the way she was.  I loved her intensity and success.  I wanted to be like her.   

Truly loving someone is like childbirth…..you forget the painful parts and concentrate on the parts you loved.  My daughter never really loved me in the first place…..sometimes that happens.  Now the pain between us is over, I no longer even know where she lives, we have gone our separate ways….we are free of the pain and can both be happy now.  I still love her and cherish the time I had with her.

I am glad my daughter is the perfect parent.  I hope her daughters realize that……..