Blue Gums himself was not so great a deterrent to the late night movements that called us out of our tents, sometimes with friends, to venture out to the edge of camp where the latrines waited, black and silent. In fact, during many frightening camp fire tails, it was not uncommon to catch a whole semicircle of campers and staff, clutching blankets, holding arms around the fire, staring off into the woods in the direction of the outhouses.

As a camper and then as a councilor, the latrines were a particularly nasty initiation to life at the old camp, particularly during what we later termed ‘The Drop Pot Era’…

The smell was so notorious, it was rumored that one particularly odorous draft had caused a first session camper to fall in, never to be seen again. Apparently, the ‘pits’ were strategically dug around the camp to keep the locals away, a trick learned in ‘The Nam’ by our old counselors. Only the most foul of swamp creatures or perhaps escaped convicts would pass bye without turning aside.

I remember my first session summer when ‘Gee’ and ‘Big Al’ warned us not to shine our flashlights down the hole. As a counselor, I later realized that this was a cruel, but effective assurance that young boys would of course do this, every single time – every single time without fail.

The timely end of ‘The Drop Pot Era’ happened while I was a counselor. God only knows what possessed some engineer, or architect to design the brand new facilities with the resonant qualities of a musical theater or opera house.

Yes, in the bright new era of the old Camp Chanco, we started to think that Blue Gums actually lived in the bathhouses…

I can only tell you, that on one particularly traumatizing occasion, I slipped back to the campsite for some private time there, and while relaxing in the resonant chamber, a certain particularly fetching female staff member, special to my heart, apparently had the same idea, only five minutes behind me. Oh, how cunning and cruel is fate…

And as I sat on the men’s side of that ungodly wooden instrument, the brain child of some twisted architect, silently, holding my breath for fear of detection… well what followed would have cleared the Jurassic era in one groaning roar.

Alas… I would not love again for years to come. But that is another story.

Love and Spirit!

Brian