What It Was Like (3 page)

“I'm great with kids,” he said, looking into a round shaving mirror he had set up on his dresser. “So don't worry about anything. Just follow Uncle Stewie.”

As he talked on, I set up my Sony clock radio. After some fiddling with a straightened wire hanger I attached to the antenna, I found, amid the static, “Louie, Louie” on WABC-AM.

“Yo!” shouted Stewie. “Turn it up, dude!” He danced around, trying to step into his underwear while still looking in the mirror. “Louder!”

I was glad to oblige. Stewie was a big, happy guy, and I knew that the kids would probably like him a lot; he was like a big kid himself. Which was going to make my job a lot easier. So I counted myself lucky and turned up the crackling volume.

“‘Ohhh, baby!
 . . .
 
Me gotta go now
 . . .
'”

≁

If I was expecting a fairly easy summer in the country, which I confess I was, I was quickly disabused of that notion by those first three days of Counselor Orientation. They worked us from morning until night, like Marine boot camp trainees, schooling us in the Mooncliff way of doing things. From morning ‘til night, it was Mooncliff routine, all signaled by bugle calls like in the army: “Reveille” at 7:00 a.m., “Taps” at 9:00 p.m., and a bunch of other calls in between, for meals and changes of activity, telling everyone what to do and when. They showed us how each bunk was to be run and how to handle the weekly laundry: whites in the white bag, colors in the striped bag, socks in the net bag. They showed us how to make sure the bunk stayed clean by setting up a cleaning schedule for the kids to perform each morning before Inspection. They showed us how to make the required “hospital corners” with the bedsheets. I was impressed.

They showed us all the athletic fields and facilities, and demonstrated how they liked to teach the campers how to play baseball and basketball, not to mention volleyball and soccer. I hadn't picked up a baseball glove or bat in years, but some of the guys were real jocks – you could tell just by looking – who took this stuff very seriously. But I acquitted myself decently during these sporting sessions. (I was always just good enough at sports not to embarrass myself, but guys are always worried about things like that. Especially in a new situation.)

We hauled
all
the campers' trunks – that's more than three hundred trunks – to their proper bunks, in teams, in four pickup trucks. We laid down white chalk lines on Mooncliff's baseball diamonds with little wheeled carts and hung the nets on the
eight
tennis courts, and the volleyballs courts too. We trimmed the greens and raked the bunkers on the pitch-and-putt golf course. There were several sessions on safety: what to do when your kids got sick, how to keep the bunks safe – like not keeping food outside the bunk that might attract bears. (“
Bears?”
 
“Yes, bears! Especially at night.”
) They taught us all these camp songs and cheers; I think I still have the sheets with the words someplace. At the waterfront – there were two separate swimming areas across the lake from each other: Boys and Girls – they taught us “the buddy system” and how to keep the kids safe during both Swim Instruction periods and General Swims (morning and afternoon). We counselors were tested to see if we could swim, and let me tell you, mountain lakes in the morning are
cold.

There was a super-serious safety session at the rifle range, led very slowly, almost phonetically by Gil, the hillbilly riflery counselor.

“They let
our
kids –
ten-year-old kids
– shoot guns?” I whispered to Marcus.

“Only BB guns,” he whispered back. “They
love
it! The bigger kids get twenty-twos. Single-shot, bolt-action Marlins.”

“Nice,” I said, not exactly sure what that meant.

Some of the training sessions were conducted by Jerry the Crew Cut, and some were with his opposite and rival, Harriet Wyne, the Girls' H.C., a big blonde with a big voice in a perfect Mooncliff green-and-white track suit. Dale Buckley, the Inter Boys Group Leader, who was technically my immediate boss, ran some meetings for just his Inter counselors – Marcus, Stewie, me, and a bunch of other seemingly nice guys. There was Sid, a chunky guy with glasses who was the other guy in Marcus' bunk; needle-nosed, sarcastic Brian, who taught archery of all things; Alby, a big quiet guy built like a bodybuilder; Eddie from the Bronx, who was a real jock but nice, not aggressive; and a couple of other guys whose names I still didn't know, but, all in all, they were like the guys you'd meet in an average gym class.

Dale had been the Inter Boys Group Leader for a couple of years now and took his job pretty seriously. He was a beefy PE teacher from somewhere in Ohio, bull-necked and sandy-haired. He didn't live in one of the bunks, but in a separate building called The Staff House. The Staff House housed all kinds of “extra” people: Doctor K., the fat camp doctor who spent the whole day tanning himself; Captain Hal, a Navy veteran and head of the boating program; Estelle Davis, the tall, stringy Inter Girls Group Leader and Dale's opposite; Esther, the sour little gray lady who was the secretary in the Main Office; Sal, the head of the Boys' waterfront – special people like that. Stanley Marshak was smartest of all: he had his own separate little green-and-white house, on a pretty little hill behind the Main Office. I guess it pays to be the owner.

From the beginning, Dale seemed to be a fair guy. He sat us down in the middle of Inter Circle, on the circular bench under this enormous tree, and told us what he expected of us Inter counselors this summer.

“This is the fourth year I've been doing this,” he said, chewing on a piece of grass. “And I'm here to tell you that the Marshaks are good people to work for. Most of you guys are new, but a couple of you know me. Marcus. Sam.”

We new guys looked at the two veterans, who nodded positively, then back to Dale.

“This is how I work: you play by the rules, you don't make me ride you, you watch your kids, you don't call attention to yourself . . .” Dale paused to let that sink in. “Then you should have a good time this summer. I can't be fairer or plainer than that.”

Fair and plain: that was my first impression of Dale, and it stood up for the entire summer. No matter what, he tried to be a good employee for the Marshaks, a good boss to us counselors, and was a good leader for the Inter boys – all at the same time. All in all, Dale was super-fair to me later after the difficulties started, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

On the night before the kids were to arrive – K-Day – there was a big campfire in the field out behind the Rec Hall, and a barbeque with burgers, hot dogs, and this fresh-from-some-nearby-farm yellow-and-white corn-on-the-cob that tasted like candy. They were letting us relax on this last night of freedom. One of the guys brought a guitar, and the girls started singing folk songs as the fire grew and sparks flew up into the black night sky. I thought I had seen stars before, but the night sky at Mooncliff was like the Hayden Planetarium times ten. You could actually see the milk in the Milky Way: so many stars behind stars, behind more stars.

That's when the Crew Cut gave us one last pep talk.

“I just want to say one last thing –” Jerry started to say when Harriet wisecracked, “For
now!”
And everybody laughed: by now, we all knew that Jerry liked to hear himself talk.

Jerry shot a look at Harriet – they would needle each other all summer, but never in front of the campers – and continued, “One
last
thing.”

He looked with one long sweeping stare at all us counselors, sitting or lying on blankets around the glowing fire, and pronounced, “This summer – these next eight weeks – can be the best summer of your lives.” He paused for dramatic effect. I could hear the crickets all around us.

“I mean that,” he said. We were all listening with complete attention because we all, me included,
wanted
this to be the best summer of our lives.

“You can make it whatever kind of summer you want it to be,” he continued. “
Provided
you remember that this summer is, first of all, about responsibility. And children's
lives
.”

I looked around at everyone listening, concentrating on Jerry's every word.

“Safety and protection is your Job Number One,” he raised his voice even higher. I don't think anyone but me knew or cared about his bad grammar.

“Six years ago,” he continued. “A little seven-year-old girl named Susan Factor drowned at Camp Indian Trails, just outside of Honesdale. During a completely normal General Swim, on an ordinary afternoon, in the middle of August. And, mind you, this girl was a good little swimmer. And today? . . . Camp Indian Trails does not exist, and their owners are bankrupt and living in disgrace!”

He paused, then repeated, “Job Number One.”

As Jerry talked on – I mean he was saying good, positive, helpful things, but my mind couldn't help but wander – I looked around at the other counselors in the big circle, their faces illuminated by the campfire. They were all paying strict attention to Jerry, taking in every syllable. Over the three days of Orientation, I had checked out all the counselors, by which I mean to say, all the
girl
counselors. Already some couples had started to pair off. You could see the quarterback-types pursuing the cheerleader-types. Marcus and Stewie had kept up a steady commentary about the quality of “this year's crop” (I am quoting Marcus) for the past two days. All the guys lusted after the ultra-blonde Sharon Spitzer, the aloof goddess-like girls' swimming instructor, whose body “did not quit.” I just kept my mouth shut. It's generally the ugliest, fattest, least attractive guys who are hardest on girls' appearances.

But truthfully, as I looked around that campfire, I did not see any girl for me. I was younger than most of the girl counselors, and I just didn't
feel
anything from anyone I had seen. Which was OK. If I just did a good job, had a low-key summer, and saved my money for Columbia, that would be enough – more than enough. I didn't need fireworks or excitement; I didn't need anything special to happen.

I'm just saying that I went into that summer at Mooncliff with the purest of intentions. Before that summer, I never had trouble with any authority figure – not my parents, or anyone else's parents, or any teacher or principal. I was/am a good kid. What happened happened, not by any great, nefarious scheme of mine, but by Fate. Or something like Fate, or Love, or Destiny. Or maybe it was the Fate Within Us. In any case, it was both the luckiest thing that ever happened to me and the beginning of the end.

≁

I remember we were all very ready the next day for the kids to come up. All this talk about the campers-this and the campers-that, camper safety, camper letter-writing, camper
nutrition;
it was time for the little buggers to arrive. The buses had left collection points in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Connecticut, New Jersey, and several places on the Island early that morning, so we were expecting them to arrive at Mooncliff shortly after lunch.

The Moon-shak, as I said, was very organized. We had been given the names of the campers in our bunks and were now aligned in rows on the baseball field. We stood next to big, colorful signs that the girl counselors had made for each bunk with Magic Markers and glitter on oak tag, mounted on big sticks. When we finally saw the first of the big silver buses rumble down the entrance road onto the main campus and into the sunlight, we all cheered – the real work was finally about to begin.

“Let's get this show on the road!” I said, standing with Stewie and Marcus and the rest of the Inter Boys' counselors as the first bus rumbled onto the baseball field.

“Be careful what you wish for, kid,” someone behind me muttered.

I turned around quickly and saw Jerry standing there, winking at me, his crew cut bristling in the sun. I smiled reflexively, but I was surprised by how easily he managed to sneak up on me like that. He clapped me on the back – hard – and walked away.

Marcus nudged me in the side and said, “They're always around.”

“Who?” I asked, watching Jerry as he worked his way down the line of counselors, pep-talking different guys.

“Some supervisor or other,” said Marcus. “There's no privacy here. Someone is always watching you.”

“Great!” I said sarcastically. “Who needs a private life?”

Marcus snickered as the first bus rolled to a halt at the far end of right field. The air brakes hissed, the front door opened, and the bus began disgorging children. One by one, they stepped off onto the grass, kids in all sizes, each one met by some helpful Mooncliff person.

“Say goodbye to paradise, guys,” said Stewie, as he scanned the list of our campers. “Which bus is this?”

“Connecticut!” someone yelled out.

We didn't have a kid on the Connecticut bus, but, as the full assault of buses filled the ball field, it wasn't long before we would have a bunch of them. I watched as the kids, some of them already in green-and-white, swarmed off the buses like insects. In no time, the field was buzzing with people and noise as bus after bus emptied.

“Inter Bunk Nine!” Stewie yelled through cupped hands. “Anybody for Bunk Nine? . . . We need some kids! We got
zilch
here!
 
We'll take anybody!”

Everyone near us heard Stewie and laughed. By now, I had gotten used to the fact that Stewie was a goofball. He liked to laugh and make other people laugh. He liked to have fun. In that, we were alike. But Stewie liked to call attention to himself, which was the very opposite of me. But that made me hopeful that we would be a good team, controlling this bunch of weird-looking and rowdy ten- and eleven-year-old boys gradually filling the row behind us.

The semi-controlled chaos spread across the field as hundreds of kids streamed off the buses. Some of the kids were really young: five and six. A couple of the little boys were crying. One little girl wandering around was carrying a big teddy bear. What kind of parent sends a teddy-bear-carrying kid away from home for eight whole weeks? And some kids were – well, they weren't really kids. The Senior boys, some of them, were bigger than me. One kid practically had a full beard. And the girls? The Senior girls? A couple of them – at sixteen – were model-tall and model-pretty. Some looked more mature than the girl counselors. But I really didn't have time to look: Stewie and I were, little by little, being overrun by the growing mob of Bunk 9 kids growing restless and rambunctious behind us.

“Why don't I take this bunch back to the bunk and get them started?” I said to Stewie. “You wait here for the other three.”

Stewie thought for a moment. I don't think that he expected me, as the Junior Counselor, to make any suggestions, much less a good one. But he saw the wisdom in my idea and agreed, “Good idea.”

So I turned and saw seven little faces looking up at me, waiting for orders. I had to act.

“OK, guys,” I announced. “Let's move!”

With a collective cheer, they turned and ran toward the Boys' Campus, arms, jackets and knapsacks flying, a pack of wild, clumsy animals. I had no choice but to fast-walk after them – who knew what trouble these kids could get into?

By the time I trotted up the steps and into Bunk 9, the free-for-all was in full swing. Kids were fighting other kids for – well, for everything: who would have the two remaining corner beds, who would sleep next to whom, who had the right to which closet in the back porch, who had claim to the few wooden hangers that were left, who would sleep on the mattress that had “cooties.” In other words, madness.

At first, I tried to talk sensibly to them. I reasoned with each pair of kids who had a conflict, looking for a fair way to arbitrate their disagreement. But eleven-year-old boys are not interested in fairness; they are interested in getting their way, no matter what. Finally, I had to yell at them. In fact, I used the voice that my Dad used for yelling at me, the voice that used to scare the hell out of me when I was eleven.

“Stop what you're doing right now and FREEZE!!!” I bellowed in my best once-removed-Brooklynese.

It worked. They stopped what they were doing and froze in place, their eyes wide with surprise and a little fear. Thank goodness that Marcus was right: they were scare-able.

Just then, Stewie came in with the three other kids.

“Hey, man,” he said. “Looks like you got things under control. I got the three other guys. You won't believe it: the driver on the South Jersey bus went into diabetic shock and almost crashed the bus!”

“Cool!” said a couple of the kids as the three stragglers who entered with Stewie spilled out their story of near death on the New Jersey Turnpike.

Stewie came over to me as the other boys all converged on the Jersey kids.

“How you doing?” Stewie said to me in a low voice.

“OK,” I sighed. “But why do they fight all the time?”

He looked at me as if I were a moron and said, “They're
kids
.” That, I guess, was the best explanation for a lot of the behavior I was going to deal with for the next eight weeks.

But we managed to get the kids unpacked without too much drama and down to a General Swim at the Boys' waterfront to cool everybody off. During General Swims, the counselors stood on the wooden docks surrounding the swimming areas, holding long bamboo poles and watching the kids swim. Presumably, we'd be there to hold a pole out to save a kid who was drowning, or at least help a kid who was struggling. A lot of that time was spent looking across the lake to the Girls' waterfront to see if Sharon Spitzer was wearing a bikini that day.

We got the kids out of the water, into clean clothes (green-and-white camp uniforms for this first Line-Up), and up to the flagpole area where the whole camp was assembled. Everyone gathered in a big circle around the newly painted flagpole before every breakfast and every dinner. That let Jerry make announcements, reward bunks and individuals who did something noteworthy, and bring the entire camp together at the beginning and the end of the day, not to mention actually saying the Pledge of Allegiance and raising and lowering the Stars and Stripes.

As Jerry welcomed everybody with a gassy speech about the event-filled, life-changing summer ahead, I looked at the big circle of people assembled around the flagpole. There were more than three hundred and fifty campers and over a hundred counselors. And that's not counting all the other staff: the kitchen workers, the waitresses, the maintenance guys, plus assorted hanger-on-ers like Marshak cousins, in-laws, and spouses. It was quite a little society plunked down in this beautiful forest, isolated with its own rules and customs. Standing alongside Stewie behind the kids of Bunk 9, I wondered if I was going to be a good counselor. I had never really done anything like this before. As the color guard lowered the flag to the recorded bugle call that was broadcast from Jerry's H.C. Shak, I put my hand over my heart like everyone else and wondered just how well I was going to fit in, this summer in paradise.

≁

On the first night, they broke us into groups: Juniors, Inters, Lads and Lassies, and Seniors. The bugle call sounded, and Stewie and I wasted no time in getting our campers out on schedule. We were the new guys and we didn't want our bunk to be late; certainly not on the very first night.

Some kids are just naturally slow, but a few of our kids seemed to be something's-wrong-with-them slow, so as we herded them across campus toward the Rec Hall, I started singing the theme song from
Rawhide,
the one
 
about keeping those doggies rollin'. “Rollin', rollin', rollin.” The kids all laughed and sang along. It made them act sillier, but at least it got them moving faster, and we were there on time. By the next morning, and for the rest of the summer, they were “the Doggies.”

As we burst into the big, open basement of the Rec Hall, Dale was directing the moving of the benches and chairs.

“Let's have four rows – two on each side! Boys on one side, girls on the other!” he bellowed and pointed. All these excited kids, my Doggies included, went into action, dragging the wooden chairs and benches across the cement floor into the formation that Dale mandated.

On the other side of the room were the Inter girls, who were doing the same thing, only shriller and gigglier. The Girls' Group Leader Estelle Davis, a beanpole redhead, clapped her hands and shouted out orders in a raspy voice: “Come on, Inter girls! Let's beat those Inter boys!” Boys-versus-girls was always a big motivator around Mooncliff, but especially with this pre-pubescent age group. And so there was more chair-knocking and shouting and shrieking and stumbling than before. I just laughed and let it happen. Stewie, however, pitched right in, making sure all our chairs were aligned. He actually cared about helping our boys beat the girls.

Finally, to stop all this noise, Dale put his two index fingers in his mouth and whistled, so loud and so high (damn, I wish I could whistle like that) that everything in the room came to a screaming, screeching, whistle-controlled halt.

“Inter Camp! Please sit downnnnnn!” he ordered from the front of the room, and, as he let his “nnnn” die, everybody did just that. They might have been giddy and fidgety, but they all sat right down. I was impressed by Dale's command of the room.

My Doggies were in the second row, behind the younger Inters. Stewie was on one end, and I sat on the other, next to Bunk 10 and Marcus, who kept up a steady stream of low chatter as Dale called the meeting to order.

“Welcome, Inter Camp . . .” he shouted. “To the best summer of your lives!”

As if on cue, the kids cheered like mad. Dale and Estelle beamed as they let the kids release some energy.

As Dale addressed the Inters, I looked around the big room. The basement of the Rec Hall – the upstairs had a really nice, professional-quality basketball court and a full stage for doing plays and talent shows and things like that – featured a large, all-purpose room with a juke box, ping-pong table, and a big playing area for games and general hanging out. A few steps up to another level, and there was the Snack Shak, the Camp's canteen. (Did I mention that a great many things at Mooncliff were named the something-Shak, in honor of the Marshaks? There was the Snack Shak, the Nature Shak, the Boat Shak, the Boys' Milk Shak, the Girls' Milk Shak . . . you get the idea.)

My gaze wandered across the walls covered with green-and-white pennants and black-and-white photographs of happy campers from earlier years. They seemed to have a nice sense of tradition here. I guess that there is something timeless about a place like this: time goes on, but the kids always stay young.

Then it happened: I saw her. I caught a glimpse of this older girl across the room, sitting with the Inter girls. She was sitting on the end of the second row, as if she were a counselor, but I hadn't seen her before. She had long, dark hair and seemed to have a pretty face (it was a big room and she was far away). But there was also something else. Just the way she sat with her arm around the crying, probably homesick little girl next to her, comforting her, she attracted me instantly.

“Psst!” I whispered to Marcus,. “Who's all the long, dark hair over there?”

“Oh,” he whispered back with a snort. “Forget it. She's trouble. Totally spoiled. A Marshak cousin.”

“Why haven't I seen her before?” I muttered.

“I don't know. She must be a C.I.T. this year,” Marcus whispered back. (C.I.T.s were “counselors-in-training.” They were seventeen-year-olds: too old to be campers, but too young to be counselors. Stanley charged them only half the camper rate for the privilege of being taught how to be a counselor.)

Dale coughed and shot a look our way. Estelle was talking about something.

“Come on, guys,” hissed Stewie to our kids, snapping his fingers. “Pay attention!”

“As far as evening activities
off
campus,” Estelle announced to the eager Inters. “We're going to be going bowling,” which elicited
oohs
and
ahhs
from the kids. “And GO-karting!” B
igger oohs
and
ahhs
. “And if you listen to your counselors and play your cards right . . .”

Unable to take my eyes off the pretty girl across the room, I whispered to Marcus, “She really has this interesting attitude going on, and –”

“Don't even bother,” muttered Marcus. “She teases a couple of guys to death every summer. It's really nuts. Nothing happens.”