From left to right: Tim Bergstrom, Ryan Bergstorm, Me (Jim Gibbons), Dan Gibbons and Lexie Gibbons. Photo presumably taken by my mom.

Based on the fact that we’re all in our Sunday whites and my sister is in the photo, this must have been taken on Parent’s Visiting Weekend, which occurred after campers had been at Shewahmegon for four weeks. Why we wore whites for matins must have been explained to me at some point, but I now presume it was because we weren’t going to bring our Sunday best to camp and what we wore the rest of the time was pretty filthy. Camp is a ton of fun, but it’s not a very clean place. Sanitary? Sure! But not many clothes made the return trip down from Northern Wisconsin without sustaining a considerable amount of dirt or food stains and other wear-and-tear damage.

Behind us you can see Shewahmegon’s beautiful waterfront area and Lake Owen.

I went home with my parents at the end of visiting weekend that year instead of staying the full seven weeks. It was a huge mistake. Much as I loved my first bit of camp, I felt like I was missing out on stuff at home. I wanted to get back to swimming in a pool instead of a lake and playing video games or watching TV instead of paying Capture The Flag. I got home and was reminded how ridiculously boring summer can often be. You can only ride your bike around the same few streets for a certain amount of time before you realize that the comparatively limitless amount of activities you could be enjoying at camp is a far superior way to spend your summer.

That was the only summer I went home early in my seven years at Shewahmegon. My other four years as a camper, I stayed for the full seven weeks. The two years I was on staff, I was up there even longer helping set up during pre-camp and tear down during post-camp. By that final year (mine as well as camp’s), Shewahmegon and the people I saw there every summer had become such a special part of my life that the fact those extra weeks up there were primarily devoted to raking leaves and hauling brush for hours on end, well… it wasn’t too bad considering the company and the scenery.Similar Posts:

• Random Recollections—A messy first
• Ambling Preambular
• How a chubby, young asthmatic ended up deciding to go to camp.

From left to right: Axel Owen, Owen Aronson, Tim Bergstrom, Andrew Porter (counselor), me (Jim Gibbons) and Brian Swan. In the back, Cabin 10's David Will and Ben McIntyre (Counselor). Photo nabbed from Pete Reckard's Facebook.

I think I’m 11-years-old in this picture. Clearly, at the time, I was an extremely impressive dresser, as are all my compatriots here. Our counselor Andrew Porter was from the Isle of Man in the UK and I consider him to be one of the first truly cool people I have ever known—a title that, disregarding the chronological aspect, I think I likely applied to most Shewahmegon counselors while I attended camp. Andrew played guitar, informed us he was in a band called “Radiohead and the Scabby Donkeys” (the type of outlandish and playful lie you’d hear often at camp) and introduced me (with the help of Australian nurse Steve Guinea) to a song we were frequently regaled with on hiking trips that went a little something like…

There was (Name) (Name)
Looking mighty (word that rhymed with person’s name)
In the store, in the store.

There was (Name) (Name)
Looking mighty (word that rhymed with person’s name)
In the Corner Master store.

My eyes are dim
They cannot see
I left my glasses in the W.C.

I left my glasses in the W. C.!

Andrew, I also realize, taught me that W.C. stands for Water Closet. (A term synonymous with “bathroom” for some Brits and Aussies.) And, if memory serves, Andrew had a shirt that featuring a grenade-like emblem and words that I can’t remember now which had a meaning none of us younger campers, despite numerous guesses, could ever figure out. I presume it was something horribly offensive disguised by British slang—and I have to presume it was more than just a little offensive as we had pretty filthy mouths for a group on 11-year-olds.

At this point, Luis Orduña had not arrived from Toluca, Mexico, to join our cabin yet.

Lastly, memory doesn’t have to play into this reminiscence thanks to the photo, but we were clearly a well-fed group of kids. Look at those chubby cheeks!

Oh, also, I think I wore that St. Louis Cardinals hat (at least, I think it was a Cardinals cap) for 90 percent of the summer.

———
Quick notes: If I mention your full name on this blog and you’d prefer I wouldn’t, drop me a line and let me know. I’m at jimgibbons1 [at] gmail [dot] com.

Also, nothing I state here is necessarily fact. I plan to relay stories the way I remember them. Memory is an imperfect thing, so I may get things wrong from time to time. If I do and you know better, comment on the post and help flesh out these long forgotten stories! Thanks!

Similar Posts:

• Random Recollections—A messy first
• How a chubby, young asthmatic ended up deciding to go to camp.
• Fiction-fueled preconceptions of camp

"Aw, poop." (Click comic strip to enlarge it)

When your 11 years old, the brain doesn’t foresee a number of things, especially when it comes to events that will later make for embarrassing stories. In this case, my noggin didn’t really work when it came to my first “number two” in the great outdoors.

At Camp Shewahmegon, every cabin went on a few trips each summer. These were overnight outings that usually lasted two nights where a cabin group would head off to some remote campsite or on a journey down a river, sleeping out in tents and cooking over fires instead of sleeping in our cabins back at camp and eating in the dining hall. My first summer at camp was back in ’95 and that summer my cabin’s first trip was to an island on Lake Owen (the lake camp was located on) named Carter’s Island. We packed up a few days worth of clothes while our tripper (an extra staff member whose main job is to get things in order for trips and, to a degree, to act as a second counselor while the cabin group is away from camp) secured us tents and food for the duration, and we canoed the few miles down the lake to our home for the next couple of days.

Once we got to the island, it wasn’t long before I had to make a bathroom run of less liquid and more solid variety: poop. I’d never gone in the woods before and really had no idea as to how it would be done. Sure, it seems simple when you’re old enough to have seen enough poop-humor comedies and Discovery channel programs, but I honestly don’t remember having the slightest clue as to how I could drop a log outdoors—save that it must involve some sort of squatting and the pulling down of my pants. So, I asked for a little advice from my counselor, heard leaning up against a tree would be a good move and ventured into the woods with a roll of TP (toilet paper) and a shovel.

After walking clear of the campsite and finding a sturdy tree, I dug a small hole at its base, plunged the shovel in the ground out of the way and propped up against the tree. I pulled my teal Nike swim trunks down to my ankles, tried to relax and focus on doing my thing. I few pushes and grit teeth later, and I had a swimsuit full of brown matter.

I leaned against the tree, but hadn’t squat enough to get my legs and ankle-level shorts far enough away from the drop zone.

Bad, right?! Well, it gets better…or, rather, worse. In my embarrassed haste to clean up the mess, I dropped the roll of TP into my messy shorts—which is extra bad as camping trip supplies normally only have a limited amount of bathroom tissue.

So, not sure what to do, I hobbled back to the campsite with my filthy pants at my ankles. My calls for help and advice were met with exasperated yells from my counselor to get into the lake (which we were completely surrounded by on our island campground) and clean myself off. I made my way to the lake, stumbling down a muddy hill in the process and dirtying myself even more before finally getting in the water and soaping off myself and my shorts.

That was a mistake I only made once in my days at camp, because a surprise like that in your shorts is a pretty good motivator to get it right next time.

Confession time: Though I cleaned myself up, there was no way to salvage the TP and I knew ruining half our stock—especially with over half the trip left to go—would be a little harder to forgive than my personal mess. So, I removed as much stained TP as I could, and brought the dirty roll back to the campsite. It wasn’t until my counselor had to poo that the messy paper was found. However, Brian Swan had gone in between my incident and my counselor’s potty trip so he caught the brief verbal assault as I looked on, not fessing up to my part in the TP mess. Now, 13 years later I confess: It was me.

Man, it feels good to come clean!Similar Posts:

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