Chapter 6.
Family Camp
Nearly as long as we had lived in California and had gone to Pasadena Covenant Church friends like Jim Davis, his wife Cheri, and their rather large family of five boys and a girl, had been urging us to go to Family Camp, a summer camp for the whole family held at the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship’s Campus By the Sea on Catalina Island. The week for the whole family was about a thousand dollars and, with that cost and other summer trip plans, we usually hadn’t felt we could do it. This summer I was doing The Event with Katherine and it didn’t look like there would be much else, so I had suggested back in the winter that we apply for Family Camp. We applied for the final week of the six-week stretch, the one running from August 6 to 12, with the fifth week, July 30 to August 5 as alternate. The speaker during the sixth week was not a regular at the camp so it was less popular and was the one for which we were selected.
As plans firmed up in the spring, I realized that August was going to be a very busy month. The next day after the East Santa Cruz “Waves and Caves” kayaking trip we would go to church and straight from there to the Catalina Ferry. Returning on the following Saturday, we would have less than a week to prepare for the Santa Rosa trip.
And, as the events of August unfolded, the Santa Rosa trip looked more and more austere.
Because Viann and I had both been out on Saturday, Sunday was going to be a tough day.
When we got up in the morning, I was the only one packed and ready to go. I left all my things in the van and, taking nothing with me (which was unusual) had Viann drive me to church and drop me off (also unusual) for pre-service rehearsals so we wouldn’t have to deal with the leaving the car there at church later. Sunday mornings could be a strain as none of us were ordinarily as rested or prepared as we could be. This was surely going to be even worse. Paul Linz, the sound guy, was on vacation so I had to do my own synthesizer setup. The band rehearsal was rushed; the playing was rough. Unfortunately, this wasn’t unusual either.
Meanwhile, Viann was at home trying to get everybody else packed and loaded for the trip to the ferry. There were rules about what could be brought and how much luggage each camper could have. In essence, a family needed to be prepared to carry everything for themselves and some for others too, perhaps, because some might have little children and more stuff. There was a slight and fading hope that Viann and the kids would at least make it to church for the second hour, but this didn’t happen. As the realities of personality and preparation ran up against looming deadlines, Viann got mad and started swearing at people. This was unusual for her, a bad habit she had learned from me perhaps. (I didn’t usually swear at people, just roadblocks of all inanimate sorts.)
They eased off on the pressure by not trying to make it to church. After second service, I stood outside, waiting for them to drive up. We were to go right to the ferry in Long Beach.
Ideally, we would have gone to the vicinity of the ferry port and then grab lunch at a fast food place, but we knew, from the kid’s experience at prior CBS camps that there weren’t fast food places near the docks. We went to Jack In The Box on the freeway near JPL, a few miles back towards home, for lunch, Viann chafing at her watch. This was usual in such circumstances. With plenty of time left, we finished up and drove south. That would be the last self-destructive, over-eaten meal for a week.
The 710 Freeway was always busy as it was the main truck-shipping lane away from the Long Beach Harbor to the rest of the U.S.A. This was one reason why some in La Canada, which had the 210 going right through it, opposed the completion of the 710. All that traffic would then go through our city too.
We got to Long Beach in plenty of time and had no trouble finding Catalina Cruises or getting unloaded. Viann had been here to chauffer other church groups in the past and knew the routine. This was church camp; we had to be on our best behavior now. No Swearing! … Anybody.
I drove off and found a place to park the van in the adjacent parking structure while the rest carried all our gear through the ferry reception area and out to the Campus By the Sea location along Dock Number 2.
People around us wrestled with children. So did we. In due time the ferry came. I took a Merazine pill while we waited for those returning to disembark. Most of them were campers from some other camp held during the prior week. (Family Camp Week 5 would have returned Saturday, yesterday.)
We got our baggage and ourselves aboard. “All CBS stack your luggage in the center, there,” a hand on the lower deck instructed. After doing this I went to the top deck to get a GPS position. This would allow us to see how far we had to go on return next Saturday. It would also tell us how far we were from home, 50 kilometers (30 miles) it turned out. On occasions like this, it always made me a little sad to look ahead to the end of the week like that. Events could be so short and our planning horizons so long that the events themselves got swallowed up in the relentless march of the calendar.
Soon we were underway, passing through the breakwaters and going to sea. The captain came on several times to give directions, ending each sentence with the nautical adjunction “there.” The usage “there” was not an indicator of some location; it was simply the end of a sentence.
“The main rule is, don’t do anything your mother would yell at you about, there.”
“Stay off the railings, there.”
“Snack bar is up front on the lower deck, there.”
“It will be a little choppy out on the open water, there; and breezy on the open decks, there.”
The crossing took over an hour. Our group, being largest, was to be let off first. The boat was going straight to Gallagher’s cove first, the location of Campus By the Sea, since our group of campers was the largest contingent aboard. After letting us off, they would continue on to Avalon, the normal destination for ferries. We had been issued nametags aboard the ferry but weren’t being widely friendly yet. I watched other parents, other dads, treating their kids with nearly ministerial patience. (Public ministerial patience, that is.)
As we came within site of the cove, many children who had obviously been here before and were excited about their return were picking out landmarks. “There’s the cross!” I could see nothing but a pier extending from the right side of the cove. We were headed straight for it.
Soon we were tied up at the pier. A huge rope extended out from the shore and the ferry tied to it then backed up to hold itself laterally against the unloading area. Camp staff lined the pier to help and to applaud as we got off. My family didn’t quite get the paradigm of baggage, that is, that every piece was brought off but not necessarily by its owner. There was one item that I wanted to be sure and carry myself, a suite case with a loose handle.
Ashore, we gathered around the water sports equipment area for an initial briefing. The waterfront was closed until swimming tests could be given tomorrow morning. Carts were available to carry our things to our cabins. Be careful with them, if you lost control, they could go right into the water and that would be bad since the waterfront wasn’t open until tomorrow…. This sort of dry humor permeated all directives through the week. Paul Friesen was in charge. Family Camp was his invention. He had been doing it for over twenty years.
The camp bell would announce dinner later; we would receive instructions. Now was the time to settle up our camp fees and settle into our cabins.
We paid the balance of our fees and received our cabin assignment, “Seagull’s Suite, a cabin for exactly five people right across the ravine from the restroom pavilion. The girls took the top bunks, Viann and I the double on the bottom, and John across from us in the lower single. We laid out our sleeping bags on the mats and unpacked our few things.
At dinner, we received first our memory verse for the week.
“Jeremiah 29:11: ‘I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’ Jeremiah 29:11.” We would repeat this before every meal, and at other times.
I checked out the background on this. The Babylonian Exile…. It seemed a reassuring verse for storm-clouded times such as these.
Monday, John’s 10th Birthday
We slept soundly in our open-air cabin. The temperature was perfect. The cove was sheltered. We awoke to the camp bell to start our day.
This was our first time at camp; there were many conventions to learn. There were possible special activities each day. We signed up for some and planned for others. A talent show Wednesday night had us thinking about doing “A Book Report On Peter Rabbit” from the musical "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown" which we had learned last fall, partly in preparation for Viann’s brother Michael’s wedding January 1, 2000.
The bell rang again; it was time to line up for breakfast. The bell rang a third time; we were let in to sit at the tables. Each meal served itself family style. Camp staff would bring refills to the tables for anything that ran out. All attendees had OTS (Opportunity To Serve) or cleanup duty two or three meals during the week, assigned on a per-family basis. The daily schedule was quite unrushed. Even the ten-minute breaks between events were 30-45 minutes in length.
After breakfast and the first break, we met with our small group at what would become our meeting place for the week, a picnic table down near the beach on the side opposite the pier. There was an outcropping of rock there into the light surf. Our group was four couples, selected based on the sizes of their families, that is, three or four children. We had only three children, but were the elders in that our children were oldest. Our group was composed of ourselves, Dave and Debbie (Dave reminded us of Tom Cook from Rosehill United Methodist Church days), DeeDee and Arlen, a “blended” family, and the leader couple, Jim and Dawn. Jim did freelance video work in the movie making business. He had been one of the ones who had seemed somewhat ministerial when dealing with his own children yesterday on the boat.
We began our study, the troubles of Joseph in Egypt. We had handouts in which there were questions for preparation. We hadn’t prepared this before today’s group meeting, but I wouldn’t make that mistake again. Viann asked an open-ended question about a professional concern: personal responsibility. The group, not liking a situation with unbounded circumstances, jumped on this with many “God is in control” affirmations. I made a note, “Sometimes Christians are real control freaks. Scared people who cope by having God ‘in control.’ God is in control, but not in ways that are always comfortable for us.”
After our group and another break, we responded to the bell again to go to a session with the speaker of the week, Steve Jolly from a church in Santa Barbara. Paul introduced him as someone he’d never heard of before. This was cold enough that he nearly seemed to stumble at the outset. Possibly this was all arranged. Possibly it was a test. It was certainly true that a person qualified to be the camp speaker should be able to deal with something like this. Steve started into his teaching with an introduction of himself and his own problems. At the end of his hour, the bell sounded a brief break before lunch. I went and got the radio and wandered around in the bushes looking for a place from which I could check into the JPL noon net. Not that I wanted to be thinking about work, just that I wanted to see if I could get into the repeater from way over here. With one staffer wondering what I was doing yelling softly in the bushes, I managed on several repeats to get in. Later, after studying the map, it occurred to me that I should have been trying this from the beach, or from up the hill, or out on the pier.
The bell rang again; we went to lunch, recited our memory verse again and ate.
After lunch it was family devotional time. We had been provided with a five-lesson booklet to study. We decided to take turns reading from it each day. Viannah read the first day; I fell asleep.
After this rest time, it was time to go to the waterfront. All children junior high aged and down had to be tested by swimming out to a boat that receded before them as lifeguards swam nearby. Anyone who used a lifeguard failed the test and would have to stay within certain limits in or near the water. I went out for the test myself, not understanding the age limit, but they weren’t interested in me. Katy was in junior high but was so tall that they skipped over her too. Only John had to take the test and he, nervously, did fine.
After this we were able to swim out to the diving platform in the cold water. A bit of a beach had built up in a storm overnight, but this was unusual, we were told. Usually it was just rocks. We had been instructed to bring some kind of water footwear, such as water socks. Shopping for these had been easy, except in my size (13) where it had turned into weeks of scouring footwear stores.
Viann checked out snorkeling gear and persuaded each of us to go snorkeling with her. She was fascinated. I found the masks to be fog prone and somewhat painful. Maybe I didn’t know what I was doing.
When the waterfront was open, a lifeguard had to be on duty. For those properly certified, this was one of the possible staff positions at camp. One of the guards was particularly friendly. A large fellow, he had his usual duties, to keep everybody from doing unsafe things. After every correction or warning, he would conclude what he had to say through the bullhorn with something like, “And, as always, have a very nice day.”
Kayakers from other camps would wander by and slip into our marked swimming area.
“You, in the red kayak," he bellowed over the bullhorn, "you have now entered the Campus By the Sea swimming area. Please exit immediately and, as always, have a wonderful day!”
The afternoon wore on and the time for the waterfront to close came and went. We went and took showers. Each person was allowed one shower per day, either at the beach or in the bathhouse. Shampoo was even provided at the beach for those who didn’t mind going there and bathing in the open air (in swimsuits of course).
After this break it was dinnertime. For dinner entertainment, Batman and Robin (a couple of the college age counselors) came out and sang Happy Birthday, to John! After dinner, this evening’s activity was singing and a talk by Paul Friesen himself. The idea was to rearrange your life so that sin didn’t seem like a good idea. After that there was a get-acquainted mixer. The only thing we could think of to characterize our family was the quip from “Galaxy Quest,” “Never give up; Never surrender!” This wasn’t the best or most spiritual phrase given. Lots of these people had been coming here for years and were more prepared for this routine. We also got talks about the camp rules from Friesen, the program director, and Sally, the camp facility director. This is where we learned about how much (how little) water we could use, this being a desert island. The singing was contemporary, led by other staff, but was a little dull compared to what we were used to back at our own church. (On the other hand, maybe a little on the outside for these conservatives here, it was hard to tell.)
Afterwards the gift shop and snack bar was open. Charge pages were kept for everybody so we wouldn’t have to carry any money around. Soft drinks were rationed out here like alcohol would be other places, and the snack bar was the only place to get them.
Towards the end, Viann got a call from Texas. Thinking it might be an emergency, Paul’s wife Virginia came to be with us. It was the same emergency that had been going on for 20 years, the sale of Viann’s parent’s homestead.
Afterwards, it was off to bed in our just-right cabin. Regulated by the bell, our lives were totally under control here. There was nothing complicated to do or decide. This alone made the trip worth it for me.
Tuesday
There were special activities available such as fishing, water skiing, kayaking, and hiking. Some of them were on a sign-up basis. In order to “do everything once” and build experience for future such camps, I had signed up (late Sunday night) for things early every morning except Monday and Thursday. Today it was fishing. Katy and I were to get up before the bell and go on the fishing tour.
What I had in mind when I had signed up was that we would go out on the pier and would be supplied with poles, line, hooks, bait, and instruction. What I had signed up for, however, was a boat ride out onto the ocean where I would use my own equipment to troll for barracuda and other fish of the sea. Katy took a long time getting her hair done every morning. I left her behind and arrived on the pier half an hour late at 6:30. Nobody was there. Nothing was happening.
A few minutes later a boy of nine or ten showed up and started fishing himself. Katy arrived, and we “borrowed” some poles that were sitting there. These were probably people’s private equipment that we were supposed to leave alone, but we boldly used somebody’s tackle box to fit weights and hooks and started trying to perfect our casts. The kid told us not to fish off the swimming area side of the dock. We moved to the other side and joined him.
Hooks and lures weren’t the thing here; we were supposed to be using
bait. The kid knew where the bait was and
what we
were supposed to be doing with it. He
went to the freezer back on the shore and had me cut up frozen
anchovies into
three or four pieces each. Then we
tried poking these slimy pieces on our hooks.
For all the joy it was supposed to be, I had never understood or enjoyed fishing.
After a while, he caught a fish. I was the only adult around and had no idea what to do about this, though he was expecting my help. I unhooked it and measured it against a ruler attached to the pier. It was 11-1/2 inches long, half an inch short of being a keeper for a bass. I took his picture and we threw it back.
His dad, Dave from our group, came out and in just a few minutes, did everything correctly, and caught a 14 inch bass within minutes. Now he was the one faced with dealing with a “keeper.” Handling it with obvious expertise, he thought they might refrigerate it and use it on the BBQ Friday.
Katy and I hooked nothing but pilings, some above and some below. We were lucky that I could reach everything we snagged and recover all the borrowed equipment. Around seven thirty, I decided we had pushed our luck enough and we put the stuff away and went up to get ready for breakfast.
This fishing wasn’t what we had been expecting at all.
This morning before the talk, Virginia Friesen gave book reviews; well crafted introductions to books that they thought were particularly close to the ministry style in practice here. By the end of the week, I had decided to buy three of them. The Friesen’s had their own stock that they carried around to the camps that they ran and, this being the last week here, they were running low. Paul Friesen reviewed a few books too, usually introducing his effort with something like, “I didn’t really read this book, but I did peruse it a little,” or “I haven’t read this book, but I helped write part of it" or "I kind of flipped through the front of this volume, and…."
We had “Opportunities To Serve” after lunch. It amounted to bussing all the tables and loading and unloading the industrial dishwasher and drying dishes and silverware and setting things up for the next meal. One of the staff was in charge and had all the answers about what we should and shouldn’t be doing, what we should and shouldn’t be putting away or leaving out. This took all of our family devotional time. We missed that day’s study of Joseph, and our nap!
Tomorrow we were supposed to get up equally early and go on the overland hike into Avalon. The girls immediately protested, they had been to camp and done the hike before. They wanted to take the boat over and back later. Viann and I had never been here before and I wanted us to do it as a whole family once. This made no impact on the arguments against; the girls were digging in their heels. Ultimately, Viannah was resigned and Katy upset by the non-elective nature of our demands.
They and Viann worked on a “Family Banner” for the week in the crafts area. John played with friends his own age. This worked well enough. It was nice to be in this constrained area where everybody was supervised enough to be safe and without having to worry minute to minute about possible dangers to children.
I talked to Viann about Katy. I thought she needed firmer limits and that I should take that on as a project myself. She also needed more space, being crowded between high-maintenance Viannah and high-octane John. Of course none of this would help immediately, but could have positive results in the long term. Of course, these were good intentions on my part. Anything is easy to say in a place like this.
Jim, our group leader, had taken the early boat back to L.A. that morning. He was supposed to be on a shoot with John Travolta and couldn’t afford to miss the business. Dawn led by herself. I rabble roused. Steve Jolly’s lesson was about King David and the things he learned. 1. Only God provides satisfaction. 2. Only God provides security. 3. Well, I didn’t get number three written down. But my problem was not that I didn’t trust God, it was that I didn’t trust my understanding of God. I had a picture of a big God where my interests weren’t very important. Maybe part of the trust problem was an understanding problem. But, wasn’t God large and powerful enough to be able to clear up misunderstandings about Himself? What was the deal here?
At one break the facilities director guided us up to the site of new construction. We were encouraged not to bother the workers here in camp except on this occasion. Their time was precious. Houses were being built which would serve as dormitories for staff, permanent and temporary. Most staff currently stayed in little houses around the edge of the cove, and the summer staff was over in the next cove west. We looked at cabin construction and at special dwellings that people had built or customized for themselves and heard some of the history of the camp. What they were proud of this year was the new LP gas storage. Three big tanks held enough gas for the whole camping season. When it was time to fill them, the LP truck would come out on a barge and drive up there. Telephone service and power came down telephone lines from the ridge above, conventionally, and there were computers in the offices just like anywhere else, but there was much about this place that was special in terms of utilities and live-ability.
We also saw the water supply tanks and fire water tank and heard stories about the past when there had been less water. Some years there had been much less water. Another church friend of ours had been at camp one year when each person was given a cupful per day for all hygiene. This had been tough with small children in diapers.
We swam and snorkeled in the afternoon. For every event, our lives were controlled by the bell. The activity of the evening was Virginia Reel dancing. Katy and I and Viannah and I tried some. Viann and John sat out.
We spent most of the day trying to remember all the words to “A Book Report on Peter Rabbit” and get down versions of them in our notebooks. Left uninterrupted, each of the kids could rattle off big parts from their own lines and those of others. In groups of two or more, however, no kid was ever left uninterrupted. The task of getting down all the words was toil. And there would be need for rehearsals sometime too. John’s speech (the philosophical analysis of the scholar Linus) was hardest to remember exactly enough. This was where experience would help. If we’d been experienced campers, we would have thought about this while packing (or before) and would have brought along the three sheets of paper that contained all of this, including music charts, which I had worked out last year.
Wednesday
The protests against today’s hike continued into the night. The last stand in the morning would be that all the kids would try to sleep late and resist getting up on time. We made it clear that we were getting up and hiking. The protests escalated. Morning came early; we started shaking kids so as to get them up. This was worse than a school day, but we were still firm. Finally everybody was up and after bird-light breakfast, the early-bird campers-hikers were assembled for prayer and a sendoff.
The hike began, up the steep hill to the west, rather than to the east (the direction of Avalon) as we might have expected. Immediately the pack spread out. Soon John, Viann and I were in the next to last party, trailed only by an older man with bad knees. We kept the girls in sight for a while, Viannah was wearing an orange shirt that we could spot up the trail once in a while, but before long we lost them too.
The beginning was supposedly the hardest part. Once we reached the top it was supposed to be level or downhill on paved roads the rest of the way to town. Still, the downhill part was two thirds of the distance. We stopped for short standing rests often. I wished the girls had their radio licenses already.
Eventually we came out on a gravel road, and there were utility vehicles carrying campers from the adjacent science camp up to the top. This was their version of the hike into town, perhaps. We caught up with our group friends Dave and Debbie and their three small children. They were having problems similar to ours. People wanted not to go on, wanted to be carried, were creatively stalling over trivialities of clothing, and so forth.
Our girls long out of sight, the remaining three of us stayed with the other family for much of the rest of the way, until we were nearing the end. They had family radios with which to try to stay in touch with their older kids who were also far ahead but they weren’t working well, due to the long distance.
More science camp cars passed. One of them offered us help, but we were on the hike, we had to walk all the way up, of course!
At the top of the climb we came to a little park with a pay telephone and a small lake. This is where Katy had called me from when she had gone to camp last year. My phone at the office rang mid-morning on a Wednesday and it was Katy at camp on top of the hill. Now that was the spirit of wireless.
We had been following a few buffalo for the final few hundred yards on the gravel road and now we stopped while they all passed down the ravine to a watering hole and beyond. I tried taking pictures with our inferior camera. The pictures came out good enough to prove that it had been buffalo but not good enough to win any buffalo photo contests.
I tried calling Jan, WB6VRN on the club repeater back at JPL. He was at work, not monitoring. I could also reach the Catalina repeater from here as well. It couldn’t be hit from most of the coves, but, being at a high point on the island, near where we were now, could be reached from a wide stretch of the mainland.
Dave and Debbie told us about their disaster hike in Hawaii. They had gotten out on a dangerous cliff-side path late in the afternoon and had been way up the canyon when the daily afternoon downpour arrived. It was dark and late when they came out, sloshing through mud.
Live and learn.
Now that we were on paved roads, there was car and bus traffic. This was a route from town back into the rural parts of the island where there was a ranch and an airstrip. Also there were sightseeing busses where tourists who were staying in Avalon paid to be driven into the interior to look around. It was a desert island, not much rainfall. We passed a municipal water collection area.
The remaining three miles was a long way, though downhill. Our friends pulled ahead and were soon several hundred yards, a whole wind of the road, ahead. We began to come downhill and see parts of town ahead. I still couldn’t tell exactly where we were going. John didn’t want to walk far at a time. I started getting ahead myself and had to take several extra stops to keep Viann and John in sight. The road went through switchbacks and wound around canyons. More bus-trailers full of passengers hauled uphill by what appeared to be specially made tractors, met us on their way up. We’d have to stand out of the road while they swung through the switchbacks. The downhill side of the right-of-way was fenced by a white rail fence. Parts of it were very picturesque. Town was in sight, but the meandering road made it further, and the slow pace even more so.
Finally we reached a fork in the road. There was a locked turnstile. Only people with keys could drive up where we had been. From one direction, the road came one-way up the hill one way, the other direction it went down. There was some discussion of which way we should go. Both ways ostensibly led into town, Viann thought that the one towards the ocean went the wrong way, but I thought we were seeing a different road in the canyon below. This did turn out to be the case.
We reached town on Clock Tower Road at ten until eleven. People in fancy duds were being brought up to a wedding and walking the last several blocks uphill in their fancy shoes. Here we were in our hiking duds and fancy hiking boots walking down. By eleven we were down on the waterfront in town. The bell up above tolled. We found the girls in the crowds along the street. They had been here window-shopping already for over half an hour.
It was interesting the extent to which we returned to normal tourist mode once in town. We shopped and bought gifts mostly in several of the stores, we looked at real estate brochures; we ate in a sit down restaurant and put the $70 tab on a charge card. We found bead curtains for the girl’s rooms, a toy ferryboat for John, a carved wooden buffalo for my dad, a purse-like bag for my mother, and other similar items for other family members.
After charging up $200 or so and even seeing the Friesen’s on the street once, it was time to get in line for the boat trip back. Last minute as always, somebody disappeared into a restroom, somebody else into a line at some sort of food outlet. We had to go get them. I searched the Men’s Room while Viann patrolled the pier shops. People snorkeled in the bay. We had been offered camp snorkeling equipment if we wanted to go ourselves without renting anything. Maybe next time…. Some had taken the glass bottom boat tours. Wouldn’t that be nearly equivalent, without getting wet?
We boarded the open-air boat that consisted of hard pew-like seats arranged like a church and during the obligatory safety talk (not unlike a commercial airplane safety talk actually), shoved off and headed northwest towards the coves. This was what the girls had wanted to do from the beginning. I pulled out the GPS and studied our course. A neighbor looked on. In fifteen minutes, nearly as predicted by GPS, we were back at camp and unloading at the dock. There was still time for swimming. There was still time for practicing for tonight’s Talent Show.
After dinner it was show time. The talent show was led by one of the staffers who regularly led the singing. We were placed near the front of the program. The acts ranged from little kids getting up for their first pre-stardom performances and being videotaped by doting parents, to serious singers, to silly family skits. The one we still remembered months later was the one with the silly punch line, built as a parody of our Bible verse for the week. It began: “I have plants for you; they cleared the fiord...” Spoken with an appropriate Norwegian accent, this could sound like “I have plans for you, declares the Lord....” “… and, Jerry Meier, it was only $29.11!” (Jeremiah 29:11….)
And so it went.
Our own act came up. After all the work to try to remember what we were doing, we had a break down or two in the middle. I was going to shine by only by introducing the act then disappearing to behind the piano. My introduction was a flop too. In this show, you got credit mostly for trying more than for performing. Audience response was uniformly thunderous regardless of performance quality, or even understanding.
As we went back to the cabins for the night I noted the stars. There was usually fog or patchy haze throughout the day and night, but right at that moment it was clear. The moon was bright. I thought we might be able to see the asteroid Vesta if we know where to look. Had I even brought the sky maps along? I wasn’t going to fuss with it. Horizons were not good here, but seeing surely was.
Katy was late coming in. We went looking for her and found her in a group of kids playing cards. We had worried and gone out too quickly by maybe half an hour. The camp directive was that nobody stayed out past eleven. If somebody told you that a group was supposed to be out past eleven, they were wrong. We were all asleep by eleven, except Katy, across the ravine in the bathing pavilion.
It was just the right warmth these nights. One needed a wrap to be out in the dark, but the sleeping bags were just right in the cabins.
Thursday
Ahhh, we slept in until the bell for once. Next time I wasn’t going to sign up for much or anything that meant getting up early.
In our grown-up group we were beginning to grow on each other, there was even talk of getting back together sometime on the mainland. They were even informally asking me for leadership at times and places. What was this? I was thinking of going to somebody, one of the leaders or staff or somebody and talk about my spiritual problems. I could barely acknowledge that there was a God sometimes, much less subscribe to all this that was built around these traditional understandings of Him, much less do it wholeheartedly. Viannah was having a good time with her friends. John had friends too. Katy did fine when she wasn’t with us but was unusually surly when she was. True what they said at indoctrination, “Your junior higher will find you; they don’t want you coming to look for them….”
We had noticed.
Today’s lecture outlined itself easily; the third concept was “statutes.” Satisfaction, Security, Statues. Take action. Have confidence, not in self but in Christ. Persevere; it was a long distance race. G. K. Chesterson, “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.”
That’s easy for him to say! It all makes sense if you subscribe to the fundamentals. My life was having major foundation work in progress. This was hard on an old guy like me.
The afternoon activity was kayaking. One of the staff lifeguards came along and we paddled three or four coves to the north, stopped for a while at a little beach, and paddled back. Nothing “rough” like last Saturday. Nothing sleek like a Freedom or a Swing. These were all stable boats.
The evening featured a choice between two lectures, the Friesens’ on “Parenting, Design or Default” which I went to and Steve Jolly on Biblical perspectives on sexuality, which Viann went to. We thought they were both good.
Friday
We had signed up for water skiing for early Friday morning. They did this every morning of camp while the nearby seas were smoother and there was less boat traffic. We started out thinking that the kids and I would all go, but for standing up on skis, everybody but me chickened out and went for being towed around in a tube instead. Skiers went first and that group consisted of only me. They looked a little shocked when I said it was my first try. I was given easy skis and instructions and we started off. I got up and tried cranking myself up to a standing position bouncing across the waves. It was like a kid learning to walk; finally I fell over and went in headfirst. The boat circled around to bring me the rope and we tried again. In three tries I might have been up for a total of a minute. Maybe a total of twenty seconds. On the fourth run, my legs just went out from under me. I went in butt first right when they gunned the engine. I was exhausted and had them take me in.
Then, John and Viannah took turns in the tube and I went last. Even that wasn’t as easy as it looked. John got flipped crossing the wake, and I got into a regime where I couldn’t get enough water out of my eyes for long enough to get them open and see what I was doing. The driver kept looping back and forth until I finally realized he was waiting for me to give the signal to go in. I managed this, at least, without falling out.
Later in the day I started feeling sore in unusual places. I thought of taking notes so that next year I could go to the gym and train those muscles particularly in advance. Chances are you could go to the gym and ask a trainer what to do to prepare for water skiing and get similar results, if they knew their business.
They said it usually took three or four times out to get to where you could stand up on skis for long. Jim from our group, watching from the shore, said the boat wasn’t big enough to hold me up. More like my legs weren’t strong or flexible enough to hold me up!
Friday being the last full day at camp, it was the day of the homemade sailboat race and the evening of the banquet. John and his friends made a boat entry. Around 2:30 the race started. The idea was that the first one back to shore would be the winner. A stiff southeast wind blew all the boats up the beach. Under the pier, then one hundred yards, then two hundred yards up the beach, none of the boats were any closer to shore than when they had been released, though some of them moved rather slowly. Soon most of the boats were out in the traffic lanes, headed for Santa Cruz. The race officials, a couple of counselors, and some of the die-hard contestants, stayed with it until after 5 p.m. Finally there was one winner. All the other boats were lost at sea.
After the ‘more than average’ meal in more than usual gentlemanly form, something else happened that the regulars would anticipate and perhaps prepare for but which was new and unexpected to us. Everyone who wanted to get up and tell the group something about the week that was important to them was invited to the microphone to do so. With thoughts about it all racing around in my head, I listened for an hour while people got up and talked about what was memorable to them or what should be done to make camp better, or something they had learned, or hints for others on what to do at camp. Some people cried from memories, absences of family or friends this year, or growth. It was clear that this was a community of several hundred that extended back more than a couple of decades. Everyone would say how long he or she had been coming to Family Camp and how many times. Much of the camp staff itself was homegrown, that is, all these college age kids running the show had grown up going to this camp with their own families.
One lady got up and said we would have to keep this place a better secret as many had not gotten off of the waiting list this year. In all fairness there had been a mix up in the mail that had caused some of the problem, but it was still true that there were many more applicants than there had been space and that they either had to make more space or quit spreading the word. Eighty families had been turned away this year. The program ran six weeks each summer accommodating a few thousand. Friesen would address this problem briefly later. (In summary, leadership thought it was about the right size, the people had to fit into the facility. It couldn’t go longer because the camp was used for other things and staff had to get back to school and their real jobs on the mainland and so forth.) Listening to this complaining, the lady sat down and I finally decided to get up and see if I had anything to say.
“Hmpph,” I muttered, partly from nerves, partly from annoyance and started up to the microphone while the applause from the previous lady died down.
Viannah and Viann watched in anticipation in the audience. Katy and John were at their own age-appropriate events elsewhere.
“Well, we are part of the problem,” I opened without much trace of attitude.
Laughter.
“Half a dozen families encouraged us to come here for years. They are part of the problem too.”
Bigger laughter.
“This is our first time; we’ve been coming here for about one years.”
More laughter. The Friesens and Jolly were on the front row, doubled over.
“At work I do a creative type of job. I’m always having to make decisions about this and that, then I come home and there are things to decide about the kids. Stuff is happening at church; I’m on a committee; it’s a drag. Here, all you have to do is lay in bed until the bell rings.”
Laughter. Yes, it seemed to the crowd that this was indeed a good feature of camp.
“Then mess around for a while, then the bell rings again and you go eat. You don’t have to think about what to eat, you just eat what’s there.”
Laughter.
“Then the bell rings and you go talk about stuff and it goes on like this all day. What more could you want?”
This brought the house down. Again.
“Advice on Family Time.” (People had had various comments, some supportive some critical.) “What we do is, one of us reads the lesson while the rest sleep.”
People rolled in the aisles, Viann and Viannah included, nodding. I motioned in their direction as an aside, “They know this is true.”
“I only know about one of the lessons, the one that I read.”
Laughter tittered through the audience.
I began to realize what was going on, “I’ve never really done “stand up comedy before.”
Even this statement was funny to this crowd.
“It’s great, you get to think about the next things while everybody is laughing.”
More light laughter, but this was less funny.
“Steve [Jolly], you need to bring your family next time.” The speaker was here by himself, this was doggerel by now, but he nodded anyway.
“It’s great to just be here and not have to worry much about where the kids are every minute, everybody enjoys age appropriate stuff to do.”
Affirmation from the audience.
“I just got up because it looks like everybody has to share before we can turn in.”
This made a huge surge in the crowd, the leaders, the ‘secret keepers’ everybody.
“Next year we’re going to review more of the literature, perhaps Red Riding Hood.” (This referred to “A Book Report on Peter Rabbit” from Wednesday night, up until now our main claim to local fame and recognition.)
There was some laughter, but it was getting to be time to close.
“I’m done,” I said and put the microphone up to thunderous applause.
Garth, the moderator for the evening, got up and closed the sharing session. So it had worked, we might well get to turn in soon, now.
The evening closed with a slide show about the history of Campus By the Sea and the improvements and things they had had to go through to have the facilities that we now enjoyed. In submission to authority, they had to get all proper permits or waivers to put in the eating establishment, for instance. One of the problems had been lack of parking spaces there, although there was no practical way to get cars to the cove. There were pictures of storm damage and the pier under construction and various incarnations of the cabins and other structures. In all, quite a bit of improvement had been made here since the property was first leased from the Wriggly family back in the 1950s.
Many of the improvements were very popular, in particular, the indoor bathing pavilion (all facilities had been outdoors for many years) and the pier. Before the pier it had been necessary to bring all campers ashore (often in their church clothes) in small boats from the ferry. This sometimes resulted in unexpected swimming with one's luggage, and before the waterfront was open, too!
Until we were off the ferry and away from this crowed, I couldn’t go to the restroom or anyplace else without people telling me about my new career, asking when I’d be on Leno and Letterman, making quips about the bell. One feature of humor, apparently, was that it brought to consciousness some things that people already knew. People speculated that I now had a reputation to live up to in future years. Maybe we would make the cut then, I thought. I was uneasy about this. My “sharing” really seemed to have reached everybody, people of all interpersonal types came up and talked to me, suddenly they knew who I was. I had also defused the tension about exclusivity that had developed. I told Viann that it must have been a movement of the Holy Humorous Spirit.
Saturday
I lay in bed at dawn thinking about the next weekend, which would be on Santa Rosa. That would be entirely different from this. Anything that we didn’t take care of ourselves wouldn’t be done. Anything we didn’t take with us ourselves wouldn't be there. There would be no bells, no ample water supply, no showers, and no warm, partially enclosed cabins like this. I wasn’t looking forward to that right now. This was enough away-from-home-island-living for a while. I considered canceling, but I couldn’t do that. If we weren’t sick, we would have to follow through.
We got up and ate with the bells again, but there were no further planned activities. The ferry would be coming around lunchtime and we needed to be packed and ready to go.
It was the last week here for the Friesens. They were leaving early that morning. Garth would be in charge of the rest. As we moved around getting ready for breakfast, we saw them boarding the boat back on the end of the pier and leaving for the jet ferry in Avalon and from there to a plane flight. They were going to do one more week of Family Camp, but this time for their own church in New England. Most of the staff was out on the pier to see them off. It was the end of the summer for everyone when this started to happen. Even the worship leaders had said so during their last praise song session Thursday night. The boat pulled away. Everyone waved and yelled. One of them fell in and swam around for a few minutes.
We spent about an hour stuffing our dirty laundry into bags and checking to make sure we had everything, then swept out the cabin as instructed and carried our stuff out to the pier to stack with everyone else’s. That one suitcase handle was still acting up and needed special attention. I would have to carry it myself again, of course.
Our instructions for this period were to settle up our bill in the snack shop and to keep track of our kids. When the ferry arrived was the one time during the week when it was important to know where in camp your kids were! The bell would ring to give us about five minutes notice to get down to the pier.
We were instructed not to go on and off of the boat. We would be charged every time someone got on and though they appreciated our help, they didn’t appreciate it enough to pay an extra fare.
While we waited we looked around for everyone's friends and took pictures. Debbie offered to get our picture at the Campus By the Sea sign. Everyone was happy but Katy who was indifferent for the first picture and absolutely scowled for the last one. She disappeared back off with her friends. Perhaps she would be better there. I asked Viann if she thought it might be her period. Maybe so.
People who were used to having their entire scheduled controlled were sitting around thinking that there should be singing or meetings or other activities while we waited on the ferry. After a long morning it came, about half an hour late. All of the luggage and the people boarded then we got an additional treat (at least it was a treat by my standards). The ferry went first to the northwest up the island to the isthmus area, the location of the other town on Catalina, Two Harbors, so named because it had harbors on both sides of the island, this, the lee side, and the rough side to the south. This trip took fifteen or twenty minutes. We watched parched desert island go by to our left.
As we neared the harbor we passed a huge rock or island at its mouth and the skipper pulled expertly up to a pier where about two hundred Boy Scouts were waiting to return home from their own Catalina encampment of the week. I got another GPS position here for the isthmus.
With all aboard, we set course for Long Beach. For a time we paralleled a container ship but when we got clear by outrunning her, turned and headed for the mainland harbor. I could see all this from my GPS display. I went downstairs and sat by Viann in a row of the chairs. We both dozed for a while. I got my radio out and tried calling WB6VRN again. It was Saturday now; maybe he would be listening. No luck. Nobody answered my calls. Jim came by just as the repeater identified in Morse Code and asked what that was all about. Viann said, in essence, “Don’t ask.” He told us that he wouldn’t fly to Catalina on the air service. Too many crashes. I had never heard of this. We were psychologically approaching home. The confusion and overload was already rebuilding.
Mid afternoon, we were back at the harbor, as predicted and observed by GPS. We unloaded and I brought the van around. By four we were back home with our cats, our washer/dryer, and our busy to-do lists.