A few years back, there were three Freedom alumni, sitting outside the staff lounge. We had come up to volunteer one weekend, and we ended up with an audience, telling stories of years gone by.
So I thought I’d share a few favorite stories with you.
Counting is important
One year we had a Senior Camp Commissioner who could just never get moves right. Math eluded him. Which led to seven of us, with the help of a Central Staff member having to move 30 floorboards from Mass Bay to Concord. Without the tractor (it was doing moves on the ridge). At eleven o’clock after opening campfire. In the pouring rain.
We did one, maybe two trips beetling the floorboards, but realized it would take too long. So we grabbed one of the push carts (the old ones, you know, where the wheels weren’t quite round), and balanced the remaining floorboards on top.
The seven of us, pushed the cart from Mass Bay to Concord, up and down the hills of the lower sites, through the thickening mud and the pouring rain, while the Central Staff member drove a vehicle backwards in front of us, so we would have the light of his headlights to see by.
Looking back, of course that move was horrific. But the seven of us bonded over the event, and of course, made sure to double check the moves the SCC did before Saturday mornings.
Two for the price of one
Late one night, I was awoken by the sounds of a leader outside of my tent yelling for help. Which was strange, since my tent had no real attractive features (a few others had Christmas lights strung). One of his Scouts was having a severe allergic reaction and he had called an ambulance.
Luckily, I was the one best to deal with situation, so it’s actually good that he didn’t know to wake the CQ or go to another tent. My tentmate offered help if I needed it, but I told him to go back to sleep. I went down back to the office and got a hold of the medic and filled him in on the situation.
He met the ambulance and led it to the campsite, going past the office where I was waiting outside to hand him the medical like a fast food drive-thru. He took care of everything, although as they were leaving, a second ambulance showed up. To this day, we still have no idea why.
The medic was leading the first ambulance out and told the second to wait where they were and he would be back to lead them out. Well, the ambulance decided to move, and it got stuck in the bedrock between Eco-Con and Field Sports.
So the medic came back and at that point, we then had to wake up another Ranger to bring out the backhoe to pull the ambulance out of the ditch.
The next morning I recounted this all to the camp director and then promptly told him I would be skipping breakfast so I could sleep.
Family food
It was during shut down one year, and it was miserable. Cold and wet, I think it rained from the middle of week 8 until Monday night of closing staff week.
In between packing up what we could and drying as many tents as possible in the QM and Dining Hall, we came back to the staff site before a meal to find the family of a fellow staff member had set up a mini campsite outside the staff lounge and was cooking us a veritable feast.
On top of it all, he made two dutch ovens of cobbler. We were all soaking wet and exhausted, and the home-cooked food and warm cobbler gave us all the energy to keep going.
This was actually something that happened quite a bit though, we would get home-cooked food sent up from families (the famous boxes of brownies), or if a staff member’s unit was in camp, usually any leftovers they had.
It was a nice break, a good treat, and really reinforced that we were all one giant, extended family, which was probably the best thing about camp staff.
That time I touched a really expensive painting, or at least, the frame
This one is more recent, but it fell to our department, so we had a lot of camping volunteers involved.
We had a giant event held at Heinz Field, which was really cool since I got to run into a friend from college who was working there, as well as walking on the field. At this event were original paintings from Rockwell and Cisteri.
We did a fancy event, I even wore a suit, and gathered as many of the volunteers as we could as a way to say thank you, and the set-up during the day with the black shirt crew and some of the other staff (including a fun trip to Bettis Grill) was actually kind of fun, although very tiring.
I had about 700 nametags that I set up (since I was in charge of the registration), and I remember having to yell at three different professionals. I had literally been setting the registration area up for hours (there were patches involved, and speakers and VIPs, it was a task), and upon walking in an hour before the event, three of them (not all at once, I had to keep yelling) tried to redo the entire registration area.
After the event, we moved the paintings to our office for it’s 40th anniversary celebration and set up an impromptu art gallery, with stanchions and everything. As we were setting things up at the office, without thinking, I touched one of the frames.
Now, it wasn’t a big deal, but I of course, was mortified, considering the art, in total, was worth millions. We all joked about it, and had a good laugh, once we realized that there was no harm.
That night was the longest at the office (didn’t really compare to camp). I think after we finally got the artwork situated, it was about three o’clock in the morning, but it was kind of cool to set up an art gallery.
There are a lot of other stories I have from work. Enough to fill books (which may be a project if I decide to do Camp NaNoWriMo), and thinking about what stories to share here, I thought back to a lot that’s happened.
I’ve worked with a lot of amazing camp staff members over the course of 11 summers. And the volunteers that worked with us are some of the best people in the world, hands down. Both groups put their heart and souls into the camps and the programs we ran.
And of course, since this is part of my special series, here’s the twist: in two of the stories above, I’m not the only LGBT person.
But the point is that it doesn’t matter. It never has.
All my best,
Mike
