Summer Camp, Part Three: Geronimo junior staff- Chapter Five

Today, we reach the thrilling conclusion of my latest summer camp remembrance. For those just coming in, I highly recommend reading the last four posts in advance. Yesterday, I had just finished telling about the weekend and downtime activities.

As I said, Sunday morning was also off-time, and work responsibilities only began with the campwide fire-drill. Staff and campers would assemble as a test of fire-preparedness, then there would be an interminable series of announcements given to the campers after most of the staff had gone to lunch. Following lunch, we would open up our areas. At the Nature Lodge, we did two things in the afternoon: supervise the campers as they looked at and handled the animals, and lead the nature hike. The latter was something each troop had to do to win some award. It was a half-hour hike during which one of us stopped to point out a variety of plants and give a little speech about them. Most treacherous were the blackberries (by a creek with a too-inviting log bridge) and the poison ivy. Every day, we would be assigned to scheduled troops, and seldom escaped it except on our off-days.

Summer Camp, Part Three: Geronimo junior staff- Chapter Four

The tale of my early days working at summer camp goes on. The last three posts are best read before this one.

After a week of prepping the camp and training on the material we'd be responsible for, it was time to open the gates for campers. The schedule was a little different for the staff, or at least it felt that way from the staff's perspective. Saturday was the one free day for most departments, including ours. It was the day of transition for campers, and a work day for Headquarters and Aquatics. The first week, it was just new campers coming in, but in subsequent weeks, the previous week's campers would leave in the morning, and the newcomers arrived a bit later that day, leaving a short window when it was just us again. Even as campers began to settle in, most of us were free to occupy ourselves as we wished. You went to town if you could, or did something else recreational.

Summer Camp, Part Three: Geronimo junior staff- Chapter Three

Today, my latest summer camp account continues. The posts of the last two days will serve to catch you up enough that you will not be lost or disinterested today.

After the training and orientation I had just gone through, it only remained to go to camp. If I recall correctly, my old friend who brought me in rode with my parents and I up to the camp. We brought in our gear and waited a while after my parents left. I then got my first taste of the salty language and diversity of opinions that would define relations with fellow staff members. The signing in process then got started, and we did that. Assignment to cabins was basically random, but my friend had considerable sway at this time, and ensured that we'd be together. This was a real blessing.

The life of junior staff members like us revolved around the residence area Staff Hill. The compound consisted of cabins, showers and bathrooms, laundry facilities and the rec room, where meetings and indoor events were held. The latter had a pool table, ping pong and a TV with a VCR. One couldn't really get tv or radio reception there as the camp lay in an area of rather forbidding geography.

Summer Camp, Part Three: Geronimo junior staff- Chapter Two

Today I continue the narrative of my summers as a junior staff member at the BSA-run Camp Geronimo. It's best to read yesterday's before getting into this.

Where I left off yesterday, I had failed to catch on at the Commissioner's Shack (the department I most preferred) due to a dearth of openings. After that initial setback, I was disheartened, but had more interviews to go through. Each of them was as tough as that one, but only because I set them up to be in my mind. As I said, the interviewer in that case had been a childhood friend I didn't recognize. The others were people who turned out to warrant no such fear as what I felt when I sat across a table from them and justified my worth as an employee. I try to remember that feeling whenever I'm in such a position as they were then.

The place I wound up with was the Nature Lodge. What was interesting was that I left the interviews thinking that I had been made a CIT at the discretion of the area director, when in fact he simply didn't realize how old I was. That was straightened out, and it was exhilarating to think that in some sense I had  become a man and was about to make my own way in the world as an independent being. I had been away from family for no longer than three weeks previously, and was not then drawing a salary.

Summer Camp, Part Three: Geronimo junior staff- Chapter One

Recently I followed up my account of Camp Arrowhead with my years as a camper at Camp Geronimo. Today I continue the series with my recollections of my years as a junior staff member of that camp. It's largely a story of increased access: a story of seeing more than is presented to the general public. In my telling of it, perhaps it will become apparent that the public is not interested in hearing any more than they are told. I guess we'll see about that. I find that it's an exceptionally expansive tale (even by the standard set by parts one and two of the series), so I'll be splitting it up into chapters.

When I was fifteen, a friend from my Boy Scout troop had already begun working at the camp the year before, and was no longer with us when we went for our week there. He had seen what was on the other side of the divide, and was full of inside stories and jokes. He suggested that year that I join him- immediately. I was surprised by the notion that I could so suddenly change from camper to staffer- that I could stay beyond that Saturday all the way through the end of the summer. I somehow had the idea that I would not meet the high standards of the camp, and anyway needed to warm up to the idea, so that year I declined.

Summer Camp, Part Two: Camp Geronimo

Some time ago, I wrote about my first summer camp experience, with the intent of writing more. I think it's fair to say that the subsequent chapters, encompassing events now years in the past, have not grown any more stale for having waited since April of last year.

After that summer, it would be a while before I had such an experience again. Upon becoming old enough,  I got into Cub Scouts, and then Webelos. Eventually, I was in Boy Scouts, but was in a troop which was at its nadir. There were perhaps three or four of us. Finally, I wound up in a bigger, more active troop. It seems to me that it was immediately after that that I began going to Camp Geronimo with them. With my state of development being what it was at that age, summer camp could be tough at times.

Summer Camp, Part One: Camp Arrowhead

I thought that I would like to look back at the various summers I spent in camp, and see some of what I can recall. In the summer of 1991, I went to camp for the first time, to Camp Arrowhead near Tuxedo, North Carolina. My father had been to the same camp as a boy, although it was on the site of the current girls' camp at the time.

It was the summer that Terminator 2 came out, although at the age of eight, I wouldn't see it for a while. I did wonder about it quite a bit when seeing promotions for it at fast food restaurants on the road. I wondered less about Ice T's song Cop Killer, although that was prominent at the time as well. I further recall someone talking about the Mickey Rourke movie Barfly, which I still haven't seen.