By Jack Edwards

My kids occasionally ask me questions which cause me to reference my free-range childhood in the rural town of Alsea, Oregon. This question for example, “Dad, when you were a kid, did you go to summer camp?” Me: “Yeah, it was called ‘Shovel the Manure Out of the Barn Camp.’”

My summers were exactly like going to camp, with slight variation. The Director of Cleaning the Barn Camp was my dad. If you needed him, you had to run out into the field and yell at him over the roar of the tracker which he was on 23 hours a day.

Going out into the field was not without risk. Joe the Bull lived in the field. Joe was the bovine equivalent of an overheated car crusher, except not quite as gentle. A popular “elective” activity at Cleaning the Barn Camp was called, “Narrowly Escaping Being Killed by Joe the Bull.”

Joe could sense fear, and he generally spotted me when I was merely standing by the fence weighing my odds of survival at sprinting across his territory to avoid the long walk around. The only person Joe gave a wide berth was my dad, who had once introduced Joe’s forehead to a two-by-four. This occurred on the one and only time Joe ever charged at my father, who not so coincidentally happened to be carrying a fresh length of two-by-four.

There was, of course, a physical fitness unit. It was called marching along next to the trailer “bucking” bales of hay twelve hours a day. The good news was that the hay bales only weighed twice our body weight. A special benefit was that it was all the free water we could drink. The Assistant Camp Director, my mom, would freeze gallon jugs of water which would melt throughout the day, thus improving our chances of survival.

Religious training was integral. We even wore special religious garments – long sleeve shirts, jeans, leather gloves and boots. I have rarely prayed as often or as fervently as I did during the mandatory camp activity called, “Clearing the Blackberry Bushes With Machetes While You Prayed You Didn’t Step on a Wasp Nest.” Luckily, each summer this activity only lasted an entire sweltering week. By the end of it, I was qualified to be ordained.

Camp Alsea. Fun and frolic with all the safety features of a Syrian mine field. And, of course, in addition to the frozen water jugs, it was all the Kool Aid we could drink. On the down side, the closest thing we ever got to a s’more was slipping on one of ole Joe’s cow pies.

I’d head back in a New York minute.

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