It's coming towards the end of summer camp and the excitement of being there is lessening by the day. It's around the middle of August and the weather is unbelievably hot. The kids are wearying of the camp, thus making our job harder. They have one special day when the kids parents turn up to relieve their guilt of sending their kids off to a boot camp for the whole summer. This is a spectacle to behold, with parents turning up in a whole host of flash cars, wearing very snazzy outfits and bearing tremendous gifts.
Al, the crazy chef is particularly stressed during this period, as he tries to impress the kids parents with his culinary delights. The kitchen hands are given the opportunity to show off their artistic sides in a mini competition to create the most beautiful fruit platter. Al, returns after 30 minutes of setting the task, only to find that I have balanced 2 cherries on top of 2 half melons in a breast like formation, with a triangular chunk of pineapple around 20 cm below. He looks at me, shakes his head and sends me off to the bug juice room to keep out of the way.
There have been rumours throughout the summer of a 6 minute warning. That is, if you do anything which is deemed to conflict with the camp ethos, you will get 6 minutes to vacate the premises. This is all fine and dandy, except that you will also lose your return airfare, which will be taken from the pitiful wages, which are being withheld until the end of the summer. Al, uses this 6 minute warning as a threat throughout the whole summer, to further manipulate the kitchen staff. He informs us of previous years victims of the 6 minute warning, including one year when the whole kitchen staff were apparently dismissed in one foul swoop. I have my doubts about whether the 6MW really exists or is just a tool to keep the Crane Lake staff under control (I liken this to rumours of god's existence). However, as the camp comes to the final few weeks, people begin to mysteriously disappear in a very short space of time. Like a camp counsellor who allegedly had sexual liaisons with a 13 yr old girl, who was staying on the camp.
One evening, a bunch of us decide to stride further afield to pursue our drinking exploits. For this purpose we are allowed to borrow the camp station wagon which we cram full of people. The station wagon is so full that we take a jeep as well. I elect to ride in the open back, exposed to the great outdoors and the beautiful Massachusetts night sky. I have travelled a lot in my life but I can safely say that I have never experienced night skies as beautiful as the ones that I saw during the summer of 1992. The stars were absolutely crammed into the sky, an astronomers wet dream of constellations.
I am lying in the back of the jeep on my own, completely absorbed in my thoughts and lost in the stars. Around me, the stillness of the Massachusetts night is permeated by the crazy sound of bull frogs, cicadas and other such creatures (I will elaborate on this later). It's one of those travel moments. I often do a trick where I take a conscious mental snapshot of a particular moment in time, which I can recall at any time with perfect clarity. This memory has just joined my mental slide show.
We arrive at our destination, which I think is somewhere in the Springfield region although my memory fails me on this. Anyway, our desired spot is a pub/bar on the outskirts of somewhere and it is in the rear car park of this bar that I alight the vehicle.
The evening is going good and the beer is flowing well. As per usual, I am quickly drunk and head off on one of many toilet stops. Upon my return I notice that somebody has left the storeroom door open, I enter the room and proceed to fill my pockets with bottles of beer. I sneak these back into the main bar and distribute them amongst my mates. I am to return to the storeroom for 5 sorties before I am suspected of my criminal acts and ejected from the premises.
It's around 15 minutes later and I am waiting outside the building for my friends to emerge. I hear the unmistakable sound of a fracas in the bar foyer and go to investigate. My friend Andy emerges through the front door of the bar in a very animated state. Behind him are the 2 Americans that work in the kitchen, Mike and DJ. Mike, happens to be Crazy Al's nephew and DJ is his best mate. Although the 2 boys are only 17, they are enormous and not to be messed with. DJ is actually the guy that drank the bug juice contaminated with my urine and consequently battered me with a chair. Never quite content with the punishment he administered he is looking for an excuse to have another go. In approximately 5 minutes I am going to afford him that opportunity.
Andy, is from Manchester, well Wythenshawe to be more precise. Wythenshawe, for those of you that have not heard of it's reputation, has been dubbed the largest council estate in Europe. It was originally created as a garden city in the 1930's but fast became an overspill city for the slums and squalor of Manchester. During the 1960's and 1970's, Wythenshawe developed it's reputation as as very bad place to live and a place to stay away from. So, as you can imagine, Andy is quite rough and ready and fancies himself as a bit of a hard man. Right now he is like raging bull, ripping off his shirt in a very aggressive manner and saying "Come on you American faggots, let's fucking have it Manchester style". Alarm bells are starting to ring in my head, of my own possible involvement in this dispute. As a none fighting person, I do not relish the possibilities of this challenge, even in my drunken state. As it turns out, alarm bells are not going to be the only thing that will be ringing in my head.
The argument intensifies and the 2 Americans start pushing Andy backwards towards a small playing field. As he flies backwards he notices me and shouts "Are you with me on this Andy kid"? I'm thinking "Like fuck, I'm with you on this", but what actually comes out of my mouth is "Too fucking right, lets kick some American arse".
They're on the playing field now and the Americans are circling their prey. Andy is still intent on the fact that he is going to have them both, but as far as I can see, he is about to get a proper pummeling. Andy throws the first punch which connects with Mike's head but all this does is infuriate him and provokes the counter attack. This happens quickly, Mike returns the punch which also connects with a sickening crack. DJ then grabs Andy from behind and bear hugs him up in the air. Mike lands a few punches whilst Andy is in the air and I am thinking "they've done this before, it's almost choreographed". My thoughts are cut short, as DJ drops Andy to the ground with a knee in the back. He falls to the floor in agony and gets repeatedly kicked in the head. This is my queue, I run in with arms flailing like a windmill, with no particular, accuracy, power, speed or conviction. I am halfway between the pair of them when it hits me "Thwaacckkkk". DJ, has right hooked me right in the temple and it feels like I have just run head first into a brick wall. I thought that seeing stars was something that only happened in cartoons, but right now I am seeing large cartoon stars, as I lie on my back with my body exposed to any further attack. DJ, pounces on me whilst Mike pounces on Andy. He says, "Are you giving up, you English pussy"?, to which I reply "Yes, get off me, my heads killing". Andy meanwhile is still hurling abuse, even though he is in no position to do so. In my mind I am urging him to stop and he eventually concedes. DJ lowers down on top of me with all his weight and says, "I ought to fucking finish you off right now, for pissing in the bug juice". With those words said, they both head off towards the pub, whilst Andy and I writhe around in pain.
Andy, is up on his feet, blood pouring from his head wounds. He is fuming and goes tearing off in the direction of the pub. I am unable to move and in retrospect, concussed. Besides my injuries, I have had my t-shirt ripped off my back and a gold chain given to me as a gift from my ex, snapped from around my neck. My head is literally throbbing, ringing and full of nothing but pain. Once again I hear an altercation in the distance and I think, "hold on hear we go". I drag myself up, just in time to see Andy racing after the camp station wagon, wielding some kind of implement. The station wagon suddenly stops, allowing Andy the chance to bring his implement crashing down at least 4 times on the vehicle windows, which break with a sickening smash of glass. The station wagon then accelerates off into the distance whilst Andy hurls abuse at it's passengers.
Thirty minutes later and Andy and I are heading off into the Massachusetts countryside, our bodies battered and our minds in other places. We have no idea where we are going or how far it is to Crane Lake camp. All we know is that it was a 30 minute drive to get to the bar and it is now 1.30am. It is pretty clear that Andy is going to get the 6 minute warning but I am hoping that if I can make it back on time, I can salvage my arse. This is when it all starts to get quite humorous.
We are staggering along like 2 war victims and all we can hear are absolutely crazy sounds coming from everywhere. We can pinpoint the bull frogs "whhoooaahhhhhoooaahh", and the cicada's "shhhiiiiiiiiiiiiii" but the night is literally alive with noises and some of them are too ridiculous for words. Besides that, the night is illuminated by stars and even more peculiarly, the bushes are alight with the flashes of fire flies. If you have never seen a fire fly, you are missing a treat. These guys are amazing with their amazing lamp like qualities which they use to attract mates or prey. The first time I saw them was in Israel when one mysteriously appeared in my kibbutz room , sparking a ghost hunt. In Massachusetts the bushes are full of them and it appears as if the bush is flashing on and off, as if you have your Christmas lights set on an annoying setting.
We have walked some distance by now and despite the pain and thoughts of expulsion from the camp, Andy and I are enjoying the banter. We are in fits of laughter brought about by these ridiculous noises that surround and generally enjoying the night walk. However, I eventually decide that I can't walk much further because I am so tired and I become desperate for sleep, this is probably further exacerbated by the concussion that I have sustained. We decide that we will try and get our head down for some rest somewhere, when as if by magic we spot an erected tent in someones massive back garden.
With any stealth that is humanly possible for men in our condition, we run across the garden and unzip the tent. Once inside we make ourselves as comfortable as possible and begin to relax. By now I have fully conditioned my mind to the fact I am going to suffer the 6 minute warning and financial consequences but "fuckit", it's all part of life's rich tapestry. I'm here now and at least I will be able to rest.
Andy and I, are chatting in whispered voices when all of a sudden the tent is illuminated by a powerful flashlight and a booming voice shouts "Get the fuck out of my tent guys, I know you're fucking in there, so I'll give you a count of 10 to get out of my fucking tent before I wrestle you out of my fucking tent". Andy and I look at each other and try to stifle our nervous laughter before getting up and exiting the tent. Once outside the guy pushes us to the ground and says "what the fuck are you doing in my tent". Where do we begin such a tale?
Ten minutes later and a tale seriously biased in our favour has been told. The guy, who turns out to be a professional wrestler, has taken pity on us and is seeing to Andy's wounds in the kitchen. We are given glasses of fruit juice and even more importantly we are offered a lift back to Crane Lake Camp, which we very willingly accept. The wrestler, drives and gives us advice all the way back to camp. Apparently, we are very lucky to have got into the right tent and if we would have been Americans we would have more than likely have been driven straight to the police station. With his piece said, he deposits outside the gates of the camp and bids us farewell. It's around 4 am by now and I have to be up at 7 to serve the kids breakfast. I lie in my bed staring at Harry the Hood, my head throbbing against the pillow.
I wake up and have come face to face with my assailants. They actually seem ok with me but take great pleasure in announcing that Andy will be thrown off camp. Right on queue, we hear him shouting outside and go to investigate. Ed, the camp director and one his beef cake hench men are escorting Andy off the premises. Andy turns to us with his his rucksack on his back, a large smile, stretched across his contorted face and in his unmistakable Manchester accent says "fuck em, they pay fuck all anyway". With this he exits the gates and I don't see him again until a meeting years later at his council house in Wythenshawe.
My headache takes a week to go away, the memory of drinking my urine will remain with DJ forever.
Showing posts with label Crane Lake Camp 1992. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crane Lake Camp 1992. Show all posts
Thursday, 2 September 2010
Al the crazy chef, Harry the Hood and the stupid bug juice man's revenge
After saving like crazy for almost 2 years, I headed off to America on June 9th 1992. This was my first destination on my 2 year trip around the world and was supposed to be a gentle introduction. I first heard about Camp America during a brief encounter with an English guy at a train station in Cairo in 1989. The fire inside me had been ignited and upon my return from my trip to Egypt I began saving. To cut a long story short, I got a decent paid job, met a girl and fell back into normal life, which meant that my plans to travel were put on the back burner. It took me three years to finally execute my plans, after saving a wedge of cash and mourning a broken relationship.
You get 2 choices of work with Camp America, you are either a camp counsellor or a kitchen/maintenance worker. As a camp counsellor you eat, sleep and shit with the kids, whilst as a kitchen worker you work 3 shifts a day (breakfast, lunch and dinner) with free time between and after these times. To me at this stage of my life there was no competition between these 2 positions. I wanted to party and the position of kitchen worker suited me right to the ground. I bid my farewells to my family at Manchester airport, boarded a plane bound for Newark airport and was on my way. At the airport I was sat next to world snooker champion, Stephen Hendry and on the plane I was sat next to a member of a band called 25th May. In the 2 years previous to my departure I had been seeing lots of bands and had seen 25th of May on several occasions. I took these 2 signs as omens of the great times that lay ahead of me.
Arriving in New York was amazing and everything I expected New York to be. The New York skyline in the background with yellow taxi's everywhere and a cacophony of noise. Like a kid I was transfixed and remained silent throughout the whole hour trip. I have 2 prominent memories of the first night in the hotel. The first is hearing Billy Joel's, piano man for the first time and falling in love with the song. Whilst the second memory was ordering burger and chips and being given a burger and a bag of crisps. I mean who would order a burger and a bag of crisps? It just doesn't make sense.
The next day our group of 5, boarded a public bus and travelled through Upstate New York to Massachusetts. Our camp lay on the outskirts of a village called West Stockbridge, which is located a few miles into Massachusetts, close to the border with Upstate New York. West Stockbridge is in a beautiful area of America in the Berkshire Hills. The village is as quaint as it gets, white wooden buildings, with ornamental carts outside on beautifully manicured lawns. It is also very patriotic, each house displaying the Stars and Stripes from 20 ft high flag poles set in the grass. There were numerous shops in the village but they were all run by the Baldwin family, who I can only surmise were inbred.
The kitchen staff comprised of 13 British nationals, a couple of Americans and a Kiwi. The kitchen and dining room were set away from the rest of the camp and also housed our sleeping quarters, directly above the kitchen and second dining room. The chef was for want of a better description, a psychopathic lunatic. This guy was of African descent, and had a very vocal dislike for white people. He was quite small in stature, around 5ft 6 " and walked with a slight limp. However, he seemed to build this limp into his cool walk routine, which also saw him waving his hands around and generally trying to play "the man". Al, as he was named, also had a great fondness for Bill Cosby and the way that he walked was a reflection of this. He had a stocky frame and took great pride in abusing his power to either intimidate the boys or sexually harass the girls.
Revert to real time.
My room is just about big enough to house a bunk bed and a single bed. I share the room with Hugh, a quite eccentric guy from Devon and Daniel, a very sober and consequently boring guy from Macclesfield. Somehow, even though I am their senior, I end up on the top bunk with my face literally a foot away from the ceiling. There is a large graffiti picture of "Harry the hood" drawn on the ceiling which given my phobia of graffiti disturbs me immensely. Whose "Harry the Hood", I hear you exclaim. Harry the Hood is a strange faced cartoon guy that appears on the side of the milk cartons. I can only assume that at some point, one of the previous kitchen workers has drawn this picture (hold this thought, Harry the Hood will bizarrely turn up in a future tale). For the next 10 weeks, Harry the Hood is the first person I see when I wake up and the last person I see before I go to sleep at night.
We are awoken on the first morning by a banging of a frying pan on our room door, which is followed by Crazy Al (as he as been labelled), shouting at the top of his voice "Wake up, you white boys, sons of whore's, get the fuck out of your beds". Considering that until this point I had been in the middle of a beautiful sleep, with my eyes wide shut, I am more than a little disturbed and instantly wonder whether I have made the right decision to come to the summer camp. This is to be the routine and Al's mantra for the whole summer and we are later to find out that his tantrums are alcohol and drug induced.
I hurriedly get ready and rush down to the kitchen area, where Al is busy looking his staff up and down in a perverse fashion. I am later to find out that he has hand picked his staff from our submitted photographs. He will spend the rest of the summer trying to get us all into bed. After he has finished checking out our bits, we are allocated maintenance and cleaning jobs around the camp. The kids will not turn up for 2 weeks, so it is our job to make the camp homely before they arrive. My job is to paint all the green bits green and all the white bits white, which is no easy task given the amount of wooden huts around the place. The camp is set on a hill, with the kitchen building at the top and Crane Lake at the bottom. In between are all the outbuildings and playing fields.
Two weeks of hard labour later, the kids turn up and our peace is to be totally shattered. These kids are horrors, think Jewish American, loads of money and fired off to camps for the whole summer whilst their parents work and accumulate their wealth. These kids are spoilt, they have everything and want more. As far as these kids are concerned we are their slaves and they mean to make us work for our pittance of a wage. There are rumours that Vidal Sassoon's grandson is on the camp and it would not surprise me. As an example of how ludicrous these kids families are, one of the boys father's in my friends group of kids, sends him porn magazines on a regular basis. The kid is around 10 years old.
It is soon realised that I am useless as a kitchen hand and therefore I am fired off into a small room with a hatch looking out over the dining room and a large cool room behind it. In the cool room, amongst other things are 2 large containers which contain bug juice. If you are American and have been to camp, you will know what bug juice is. There are 2 types of bug juice, well at least on my camp there were. One is red and the other is a bright yellow, not dissimilar to the colour of urine. It is my job to pour 5, 2 litre bottles of this stuff into the large containers and then fill the containers up with water from a hose pipe. Whilst lunch and dinner is being served, it is my job to keep the kids watered whilst they ravage their burgers and chips. Boy, can these kids drink. They are drinking jugs of the stuff as fast as I can pour it. I am rushing around like a fool, trying to keep up with their greedy demands. However, as soon as I get back to my observation hatch, there are 20 hands raised up with empty jugs in them. If they deem me to not be moving fast enough, they start to bang their jugs like prisoners banging their cups on the bars of their cells. Some of them even shout "hey, stupid bug juice man, bring me some stupid bug juice" and other such derogatory chants. This particularly annoys me and prompts me to go slower.
Subconsciously I am plotting my revenge.
Throughout the whole summer, Crazy Al's behaviour becomes more and more erratic, as he indulges in his narcotic and alcohol habit. One of our tasks is to give the kids snacks at 3.30 pm to keep them going between meals (fat little bastards). However, Al often hits the bottle and then sleeps between shifts without telling us which snacks to give the kids. This results in one of the kitchen staff having to go and bang on his door and consequently suffer his wrath. It usually goes something like this, knock, knock "What, what do you want"? "erm Al, it's snack time, what shall we give them"? "Fuck, Christ, you fucking white boys are stupid, give then ice cream, give them ice cream man, yeah give them ice cream". He would then fall back into a deep sleep and we would feed the fat, gluttonous, little pigs ice cream.
Throughout the summer, the kitchen staff are partying like animals. We are literally going through a slab of beer each on a daily basis. Granted this stuff is weak but when consumed in the quantities that we are drinking it, it does the job. It becomes routine to finish our dinner time kitchen duties which finish around 7 pm and then the boys will then go off and have a game of football. A weak argument about the evening's pastimes then ensues before we inevitably head down into West Stockbridge to purchase slabs of beer.
One night we actually manage to break this routine and decide to do something more cultural like play cards or something along those lines. However, an hour into this new pastime and we are all getting shaky for ale. With a "fuck it" mentality to which we became accustomed over the summer of 1992, we head of into Baldwinsville to fetch the beer. However, our hesitance has ruined it for us, we get into town to find that the Baldwins have all gone to bed to produce more inbred Baldwins no doubt. We return to camp and a mist of confusion darkens our mood. What are we to do? By now we have forgotten that initially we had planned a none drinking night. Now, it's a crisis on a grand scale. We hold a meeting in my room and lots of idea's get thrown around before someone comes up with the gem of driving over the New York state border and purchasing our liquid gold at a truck stop. We dance around in glee at our saving solution before it is pointed out that we don't in fact have a vehicle. The person with the idea then interjects with the following show stopping statement "Well we could take the camp station wagon". Such is our desire for alcohol that we pay little heed to the consequences of this action and it's all systems go. Unfortunately for me I am the only one with a driving license and therefore get the job as chauffeur come delivery man. This fact is trivial when compared to the fact that somebody has got to retrieve the station wagon keys from Crazy Al's bedside cabinet whilst he sleeps. But who would be stupid enough to take on that task?
I tentatively turn the handle of Al's bedroom door and wince as it creaks open. The others are all located in the corridor trying to stifle their nervous giggles. I choose this point to inform the reader of Crazy Al's other hobby besides alcohol and drugs. The guy is obsessed with terrapins and has hundreds of the little blighters all over his floor. The majority are to be found in a paddling pool which is slap bang in the middle of his room but they are literally free to roam anywhere. With this in mind I have taken off my shoes and socks so that I can make careful strides across Al's floor and feel them out with my toes. I hasten to add that it is pitch black in Al's room and I only have a vague idea of where the keys will be. I estimate that I am half way across the floor when I encounter my first terrapin , fortunately my bare toes are sensitive enough not to crush him. My confidence rises and with beer on my mind I speed things up. This is to my detriment as it turns out. Within seconds I have fallen full length over the paddling pool, Al has turned on the light and is bolt upright in his bed. His face is totally illuminated and his eyes wide open. I brace myself for the onslaught as outside I hear the others giggling like a pack of hyenas. He looks directly at me, the whites of his eyeballs the size of pool balls and shouts "What's wrong with you boy give them ice cream, give them fucking ice cream". With his words released, he then switches out the light and falls back to sleep.
With balls of steel, I continue with my mission and grab the keys. My kitchen Buddy Dave and I then drive over the New York state border and grab the slabs. However, in my nervousness at what I have just been through I manage to leave the handbrake on and burn it out. This does not go unnoticed but blatant denial takes away any blame on my part. I think Al is onto me and have to tread carefully for the rest of the summer.
The kids become increasingly more beastly as the summer goes on and by the last week I am liable to explode. As, I say my sub conscience has been plotting it's revenge and by George it does not come any sweeter than this. It's a blazing hot Wednesday afternoon and my friend and I decide to join a group of the American camp counsellors at the nearby Card Lake. In the knowledge that I have to do the dinner shift, I tread cautiously with a few slow beers. This is all fine and dandy, until somebody offers me a tequila slammer, which turns into another tequila slammer and another etc etc. Before you know it, I am being carried back from Card Lake slumped over 2 guys shoulders. In the modicum of common sense that I have lurking in the depths of my rational mind, I assume that I can be thrown into my bug juice room and away from Al's prying eyes. Unfortunately, I assume wrong. When we get back to camp, Al has decided to throw a spontaneous bbq due to the hot weather. He spots me and shouts "Hey white boy, don't just stand there, serve them hot dogs". I am propped up behind the hot dog cauldron, in a manner not too dissimilar to 'Weekend at Bernies'.
Before long there is an enormous queue waiting for hot dogs and I am in no fit state to serve them. One of my friends has the sense to relieve me of my duties and tells me to hang out in the bug juice room. The story from here on in, has been told to me through the tales of those that witnessed the following. The guy that relieved me of my hot dog duties, comes to check on me in the bug juice room and finds me relieving myself into the large container of yellow bug juice. He is apparently in disbelief at what he witnesses and is concerned about how we are going to rectify the situation. The only way that we could rectify the situation it turns out is to notify the kitchen staff of my actions and let the kids get their daily dose of bug juice "who's the stupid bug juice man now"? Unfortunately for me, one of the American kitchen staff who nobody likes, is not notified and consequently get his fill of my salty fluid. This guy is enormous and not a person to mess with. After dinner I crash and burn in my bunk bed, only to be awoken by the brute in question, who is repeatedly bringing a metal chair crashing down onto my torso.
The story does not end there, in fact it takes an even more incredulous turn. Fast forward one year and I am at a youth hostel in Canberra, Australia. I have met a couple of guys that I have been hanging out with for a few days. We are sat having a few beers in the hostel when we coincidentally get talking about travelling through America. It turns out that one of the guys has also been on summer camp 2 years previously. I ask where his camp was located and am pleasantly surprised that he too was in Massachusetts. I ask him where and am even more surprised to narrow it down to the vicinity of Pittsfield. I tell him that my camp was also near to Pittsfield and was called Crane Lake Camp. The guy looks on stunned, he says something along the lines of "you're joking". It turns out that not only was this guy at the same camp but in the same top bunk. We literally go from country to state, to town, to village, to camp, to block, to room to bunk with 8 moves and finally arrive at "Harry the Hood", which we both shout out at the same time in amazement.
This was to be one of many "Small world" incidents that I have had in my life and they never fail to freak me out.
You get 2 choices of work with Camp America, you are either a camp counsellor or a kitchen/maintenance worker. As a camp counsellor you eat, sleep and shit with the kids, whilst as a kitchen worker you work 3 shifts a day (breakfast, lunch and dinner) with free time between and after these times. To me at this stage of my life there was no competition between these 2 positions. I wanted to party and the position of kitchen worker suited me right to the ground. I bid my farewells to my family at Manchester airport, boarded a plane bound for Newark airport and was on my way. At the airport I was sat next to world snooker champion, Stephen Hendry and on the plane I was sat next to a member of a band called 25th May. In the 2 years previous to my departure I had been seeing lots of bands and had seen 25th of May on several occasions. I took these 2 signs as omens of the great times that lay ahead of me.
Arriving in New York was amazing and everything I expected New York to be. The New York skyline in the background with yellow taxi's everywhere and a cacophony of noise. Like a kid I was transfixed and remained silent throughout the whole hour trip. I have 2 prominent memories of the first night in the hotel. The first is hearing Billy Joel's, piano man for the first time and falling in love with the song. Whilst the second memory was ordering burger and chips and being given a burger and a bag of crisps. I mean who would order a burger and a bag of crisps? It just doesn't make sense.
The next day our group of 5, boarded a public bus and travelled through Upstate New York to Massachusetts. Our camp lay on the outskirts of a village called West Stockbridge, which is located a few miles into Massachusetts, close to the border with Upstate New York. West Stockbridge is in a beautiful area of America in the Berkshire Hills. The village is as quaint as it gets, white wooden buildings, with ornamental carts outside on beautifully manicured lawns. It is also very patriotic, each house displaying the Stars and Stripes from 20 ft high flag poles set in the grass. There were numerous shops in the village but they were all run by the Baldwin family, who I can only surmise were inbred.
The kitchen staff comprised of 13 British nationals, a couple of Americans and a Kiwi. The kitchen and dining room were set away from the rest of the camp and also housed our sleeping quarters, directly above the kitchen and second dining room. The chef was for want of a better description, a psychopathic lunatic. This guy was of African descent, and had a very vocal dislike for white people. He was quite small in stature, around 5ft 6 " and walked with a slight limp. However, he seemed to build this limp into his cool walk routine, which also saw him waving his hands around and generally trying to play "the man". Al, as he was named, also had a great fondness for Bill Cosby and the way that he walked was a reflection of this. He had a stocky frame and took great pride in abusing his power to either intimidate the boys or sexually harass the girls.
Revert to real time.
My room is just about big enough to house a bunk bed and a single bed. I share the room with Hugh, a quite eccentric guy from Devon and Daniel, a very sober and consequently boring guy from Macclesfield. Somehow, even though I am their senior, I end up on the top bunk with my face literally a foot away from the ceiling. There is a large graffiti picture of "Harry the hood" drawn on the ceiling which given my phobia of graffiti disturbs me immensely. Whose "Harry the Hood", I hear you exclaim. Harry the Hood is a strange faced cartoon guy that appears on the side of the milk cartons. I can only assume that at some point, one of the previous kitchen workers has drawn this picture (hold this thought, Harry the Hood will bizarrely turn up in a future tale). For the next 10 weeks, Harry the Hood is the first person I see when I wake up and the last person I see before I go to sleep at night.
We are awoken on the first morning by a banging of a frying pan on our room door, which is followed by Crazy Al (as he as been labelled), shouting at the top of his voice "Wake up, you white boys, sons of whore's, get the fuck out of your beds". Considering that until this point I had been in the middle of a beautiful sleep, with my eyes wide shut, I am more than a little disturbed and instantly wonder whether I have made the right decision to come to the summer camp. This is to be the routine and Al's mantra for the whole summer and we are later to find out that his tantrums are alcohol and drug induced.
I hurriedly get ready and rush down to the kitchen area, where Al is busy looking his staff up and down in a perverse fashion. I am later to find out that he has hand picked his staff from our submitted photographs. He will spend the rest of the summer trying to get us all into bed. After he has finished checking out our bits, we are allocated maintenance and cleaning jobs around the camp. The kids will not turn up for 2 weeks, so it is our job to make the camp homely before they arrive. My job is to paint all the green bits green and all the white bits white, which is no easy task given the amount of wooden huts around the place. The camp is set on a hill, with the kitchen building at the top and Crane Lake at the bottom. In between are all the outbuildings and playing fields.
Two weeks of hard labour later, the kids turn up and our peace is to be totally shattered. These kids are horrors, think Jewish American, loads of money and fired off to camps for the whole summer whilst their parents work and accumulate their wealth. These kids are spoilt, they have everything and want more. As far as these kids are concerned we are their slaves and they mean to make us work for our pittance of a wage. There are rumours that Vidal Sassoon's grandson is on the camp and it would not surprise me. As an example of how ludicrous these kids families are, one of the boys father's in my friends group of kids, sends him porn magazines on a regular basis. The kid is around 10 years old.
It is soon realised that I am useless as a kitchen hand and therefore I am fired off into a small room with a hatch looking out over the dining room and a large cool room behind it. In the cool room, amongst other things are 2 large containers which contain bug juice. If you are American and have been to camp, you will know what bug juice is. There are 2 types of bug juice, well at least on my camp there were. One is red and the other is a bright yellow, not dissimilar to the colour of urine. It is my job to pour 5, 2 litre bottles of this stuff into the large containers and then fill the containers up with water from a hose pipe. Whilst lunch and dinner is being served, it is my job to keep the kids watered whilst they ravage their burgers and chips. Boy, can these kids drink. They are drinking jugs of the stuff as fast as I can pour it. I am rushing around like a fool, trying to keep up with their greedy demands. However, as soon as I get back to my observation hatch, there are 20 hands raised up with empty jugs in them. If they deem me to not be moving fast enough, they start to bang their jugs like prisoners banging their cups on the bars of their cells. Some of them even shout "hey, stupid bug juice man, bring me some stupid bug juice" and other such derogatory chants. This particularly annoys me and prompts me to go slower.
Subconsciously I am plotting my revenge.
Throughout the whole summer, Crazy Al's behaviour becomes more and more erratic, as he indulges in his narcotic and alcohol habit. One of our tasks is to give the kids snacks at 3.30 pm to keep them going between meals (fat little bastards). However, Al often hits the bottle and then sleeps between shifts without telling us which snacks to give the kids. This results in one of the kitchen staff having to go and bang on his door and consequently suffer his wrath. It usually goes something like this, knock, knock "What, what do you want"? "erm Al, it's snack time, what shall we give them"? "Fuck, Christ, you fucking white boys are stupid, give then ice cream, give them ice cream man, yeah give them ice cream". He would then fall back into a deep sleep and we would feed the fat, gluttonous, little pigs ice cream.
Throughout the summer, the kitchen staff are partying like animals. We are literally going through a slab of beer each on a daily basis. Granted this stuff is weak but when consumed in the quantities that we are drinking it, it does the job. It becomes routine to finish our dinner time kitchen duties which finish around 7 pm and then the boys will then go off and have a game of football. A weak argument about the evening's pastimes then ensues before we inevitably head down into West Stockbridge to purchase slabs of beer.
One night we actually manage to break this routine and decide to do something more cultural like play cards or something along those lines. However, an hour into this new pastime and we are all getting shaky for ale. With a "fuck it" mentality to which we became accustomed over the summer of 1992, we head of into Baldwinsville to fetch the beer. However, our hesitance has ruined it for us, we get into town to find that the Baldwins have all gone to bed to produce more inbred Baldwins no doubt. We return to camp and a mist of confusion darkens our mood. What are we to do? By now we have forgotten that initially we had planned a none drinking night. Now, it's a crisis on a grand scale. We hold a meeting in my room and lots of idea's get thrown around before someone comes up with the gem of driving over the New York state border and purchasing our liquid gold at a truck stop. We dance around in glee at our saving solution before it is pointed out that we don't in fact have a vehicle. The person with the idea then interjects with the following show stopping statement "Well we could take the camp station wagon". Such is our desire for alcohol that we pay little heed to the consequences of this action and it's all systems go. Unfortunately for me I am the only one with a driving license and therefore get the job as chauffeur come delivery man. This fact is trivial when compared to the fact that somebody has got to retrieve the station wagon keys from Crazy Al's bedside cabinet whilst he sleeps. But who would be stupid enough to take on that task?
I tentatively turn the handle of Al's bedroom door and wince as it creaks open. The others are all located in the corridor trying to stifle their nervous giggles. I choose this point to inform the reader of Crazy Al's other hobby besides alcohol and drugs. The guy is obsessed with terrapins and has hundreds of the little blighters all over his floor. The majority are to be found in a paddling pool which is slap bang in the middle of his room but they are literally free to roam anywhere. With this in mind I have taken off my shoes and socks so that I can make careful strides across Al's floor and feel them out with my toes. I hasten to add that it is pitch black in Al's room and I only have a vague idea of where the keys will be. I estimate that I am half way across the floor when I encounter my first terrapin , fortunately my bare toes are sensitive enough not to crush him. My confidence rises and with beer on my mind I speed things up. This is to my detriment as it turns out. Within seconds I have fallen full length over the paddling pool, Al has turned on the light and is bolt upright in his bed. His face is totally illuminated and his eyes wide open. I brace myself for the onslaught as outside I hear the others giggling like a pack of hyenas. He looks directly at me, the whites of his eyeballs the size of pool balls and shouts "What's wrong with you boy give them ice cream, give them fucking ice cream". With his words released, he then switches out the light and falls back to sleep.
With balls of steel, I continue with my mission and grab the keys. My kitchen Buddy Dave and I then drive over the New York state border and grab the slabs. However, in my nervousness at what I have just been through I manage to leave the handbrake on and burn it out. This does not go unnoticed but blatant denial takes away any blame on my part. I think Al is onto me and have to tread carefully for the rest of the summer.
The kids become increasingly more beastly as the summer goes on and by the last week I am liable to explode. As, I say my sub conscience has been plotting it's revenge and by George it does not come any sweeter than this. It's a blazing hot Wednesday afternoon and my friend and I decide to join a group of the American camp counsellors at the nearby Card Lake. In the knowledge that I have to do the dinner shift, I tread cautiously with a few slow beers. This is all fine and dandy, until somebody offers me a tequila slammer, which turns into another tequila slammer and another etc etc. Before you know it, I am being carried back from Card Lake slumped over 2 guys shoulders. In the modicum of common sense that I have lurking in the depths of my rational mind, I assume that I can be thrown into my bug juice room and away from Al's prying eyes. Unfortunately, I assume wrong. When we get back to camp, Al has decided to throw a spontaneous bbq due to the hot weather. He spots me and shouts "Hey white boy, don't just stand there, serve them hot dogs". I am propped up behind the hot dog cauldron, in a manner not too dissimilar to 'Weekend at Bernies'.
Before long there is an enormous queue waiting for hot dogs and I am in no fit state to serve them. One of my friends has the sense to relieve me of my duties and tells me to hang out in the bug juice room. The story from here on in, has been told to me through the tales of those that witnessed the following. The guy that relieved me of my hot dog duties, comes to check on me in the bug juice room and finds me relieving myself into the large container of yellow bug juice. He is apparently in disbelief at what he witnesses and is concerned about how we are going to rectify the situation. The only way that we could rectify the situation it turns out is to notify the kitchen staff of my actions and let the kids get their daily dose of bug juice "who's the stupid bug juice man now"? Unfortunately for me, one of the American kitchen staff who nobody likes, is not notified and consequently get his fill of my salty fluid. This guy is enormous and not a person to mess with. After dinner I crash and burn in my bunk bed, only to be awoken by the brute in question, who is repeatedly bringing a metal chair crashing down onto my torso.
The story does not end there, in fact it takes an even more incredulous turn. Fast forward one year and I am at a youth hostel in Canberra, Australia. I have met a couple of guys that I have been hanging out with for a few days. We are sat having a few beers in the hostel when we coincidentally get talking about travelling through America. It turns out that one of the guys has also been on summer camp 2 years previously. I ask where his camp was located and am pleasantly surprised that he too was in Massachusetts. I ask him where and am even more surprised to narrow it down to the vicinity of Pittsfield. I tell him that my camp was also near to Pittsfield and was called Crane Lake Camp. The guy looks on stunned, he says something along the lines of "you're joking". It turns out that not only was this guy at the same camp but in the same top bunk. We literally go from country to state, to town, to village, to camp, to block, to room to bunk with 8 moves and finally arrive at "Harry the Hood", which we both shout out at the same time in amazement.
This was to be one of many "Small world" incidents that I have had in my life and they never fail to freak me out.
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