A Pile of Summer Memories

In the previous post, FBB very eloquently described some of the signs of summer's onset. Allow me to add my 1.94 yen.

For me, summer doesn't begin when school ends, when camp begins, on Memorial Day, or on June 21st. Summer begins when the horses show up.

A couple of miles from my house, right near the New York/New Jersey border, there's a large day camp.In front of the camp, right off the road I travel most days on the way to work, is a holding area for a few ponies. As the month of June progresses, the pen is spruced up, and the fences are given a fresh coat of white paint. When the horses appear, you know that the camp is about to open, and that summer has truly arrived. The horses showed up in the middle of last week, meaning that we're now a few days into summer.

The fact that this camp has horses on the premises daily probably means that the place caters to children-of-privilege (COPs). By contrast, the summer camp I attended as a kid never had any horses.

Except, that is, for that one time, when they "broke out" colorwar.

The summer camp I attended was run by a not-for-profit organization. It was a boys-only camp, with a separate camp, for girls, a few miles down the road. (Or, as a wiseacre counselor of mine once put it, "It's a special camp. For ugly girls.")

Now, this organization wasn't exactly what you'd call "well-funded," so there wasn't much of a budget for extraneous things, like colorwar break-outs. Whatever budget there was would typically be consumed by the girls' camp, which would often stage very elaborate breakouts. Perhaps they did so to boost their flagging self-esteem. I'm not really sure.

Here are some of the things that were featured in the girls' camp's colorwar break-outs over the years:

* A Lamborghini
* An elephant
* The cast of Cirque de Soleil
* The 7th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army
* A helicopter
* Fireworks
* A Led Zeppelin reunion concert
* Big Foot
* Every police officer and fireman from within a 25-mile radius

The break-out itself was always very dramatic and frighteningly realistic. It typically resulted in dozens of girls crying for hours on end. In other words, it was much like the average day in camp.

Meanwhile, in our camp, we usually had to settle for something like a crazy, homeless-looking guy running around spitting on people. Then, the head counselor would appear on the scene, and berate the crazy guy by saying something like, "Hey, stop that. You can't spit on people during colorwar, don't you know?"

My friends and I would watch these pitiful scenes unfold, shake our heads, and shuffle off to the canteen to eat twin pops. In other words, it was much like the average day in camp.

Well, one year, for reasons that are still not entirely clear to me, they decided to throw us boys a colorwar breakout bone.

One day, we returned from a trip to see a couple of horses hanging around in the meadow in front of camp. No one knew how they got there. We just figured that they were a couple of strays from one of the local farms. We didn't think about it too much.

A couple of days later, the camp was in the dining room, finishing lunch. Suddenly, the side doors of the dinning room opened, and there was this guy, sitting on one of the horses. The guy was holding a sign in his hands that said "Colorwar."

In terms of drama, it wasn't much of a break-out. But, it involved a real, live horse!
So, it was pretty cool.


What happened next has become the stuff of legend.


Perhaps the horse was excited/nervous at the sights and sounds of more than 300 cheering boys.Or, because, well, he was a horse, and that's what they do, the horse proceeded to evacuate his bowels, right there on the steps leading into the dining room.

Bedlam erupted in the dining room, with kids laughing, shrieking and pointing at the sight. The counselors vainly attmepted to get their youthful charges to settle down, while the head counselor furiously blew his whistle, trying to restore order after a colorwar break-out that had gone horribly (and disgustingly) awry.

For me, it was a memorable moment, and proof that sometimes, magical things do actually happen.

I don't remember anything about the ensuing colorwar.

I don't remember the teams' colors.

I can't recall the teams' names.

I no longer have any idea who the generals were.

I don't remember whether or not the teams' various "songs" represented a felonious assault on the English language. (Although I'd say it's a pretty good bet that they did).

I don't even remember if my team won or lost.

But, for as long as I live, I'll remember how that horse let it rip at the dining room door.


So here's to summer.

Enjoy it, everyone.