The Adventures of Jack and Billy Joe (13 page)

“Nah,” Jerry replied, “I don’t think they want us to do that. We’re waiting here for somebody to tell us what to do next.”

“Did you see the piece of paper tellin’ about the powwow at the Circle?” Billy Joe asked.

“Yeah, but we don’t know where the Circle is,” Jerry explained.

Jack and Billy Joe looked at each other in disbelief. These guys planned to just sit here until some adult told them exactly what to do and where to do it.

“Okay,” Jack said, “at about ten minutes to eight, we’ll take you to the Circle. What time is it now?” he asked Jerry who was wearing a watch.

“It’s twenty minutes to eight,” he said.

“Okay, all you guys get dressed to go to the Circle and we’ll show you where it is. You’ve got about ten minutes to get ready,” Billy Joe said loud enough for everybody in the hut to hear.

Boys were scurrying around looking for their shoes and socks to put on.

One boy even came to Jack and asked, “Do I have time to go to the bathroom?”

“Yeah,” Jack said and in a louder tone, said, “Any of you guys who need to go to the bathroom, you had better go now.”

Several of the boys left the hut to go to the “Shower Building,” which also contained the toilets and sinks.

Billy Joe shook his head. “They gotta be told to go to the bathroom,” he muttered so nobody but Jack could hear.

“You know it’s always been that way,” Jack said with a laugh.

At ten to eight, they led the boys to the Circle.

The Circle had changed. The lights that circled the field were on, a speaker’s stand had been placed at one end and there was a table loaded with cookies and a tub of chocolate milks in bottles covered with ice.

“Okay, boys, gather around the speaker’s stand in a semicircle.”

As they moved into a tighter semicircle, Jack could see that there were about 125 to 150 boys there. About 25 to a hut, he thought.

All the adults were in folding chairs to the sides of the speaker’s stand and the man making the announcements was at a microphone on the stand. Jack didn’t know who he was.

“I’m Mr. Harris, your camp director, and I want to welcome you all to Roosevelt Lake Park and our annual summer camp. We plan to make it interesting for you. We have a good group of camp counselors and leaders this year. You will be working with them on a daily basis and will probably only hear me on this PA system every day.”

He continued, giving the overview of the camp and all the wonderful events that were planned. He also announced that there would be church and Sunday school on Sunday morning. Sunday afternoon would be a free time to do whatever they wanted to do.

He then introduced Mr. Akins, his assistant, who went into the details of how the events would be scheduled and carried out. He told them that a schedule of events for each day would be posted in each hut by 3 PM every day except Sunday, the free day.

Mr. Akins introduced all the leaders and counselors, who stood up as their names were called, smiled and waved.

“It will be the responsibility of each of you to be at your scheduled place and on time for all events. A graph of how well each hut completes all the events, including being on time, will be posted on the bulletin board in front of the office. You are free to check it at any time you are not otherwise busy. At the end of the two weeks, the members of the winning hut will be given special achievement pins to be worn on your shirt or on your Boy Scout sash and it can be used toward qualifying for your citizenship merit badge.

“Okay, let’s all have some cookies and chocolate milk and I’ll see you all here for your powwow tomorrow evening. Oh yes—I want each hut to elect a captain and tell your adult leader who that is. The leaders will tell the office and they’ll make a list. Enjoy yourselves.”

The boys, their leaders and the counselors milled around for about an hour getting to know each other. Then somebody turned out half the lights, which seemed to mean, “Go to your hut and go to bed.” It was 9:30 PM so the hut lights had to be out in thirty minutes.

Back in the hut, one of the boys said, “We need to elect a captain. How we gonna do it?”

Another boy said, “Let’s just each write one name on a piece of paper and put it in a hat. Then we’ll just count the votes each person got and the one with the most will be our captain.”

“What if somebody votes for himself?” another boy asked.

“That’s okay, if he’s nuts enough to want that job, I say, let him have it.”

They all laughed and scribbled a name on a piece of paper and put it in the baseball cap that was the official ballot box. Two of the boys counted the ballots and finally announced that five boys got one vote each, Billy Joe got eight votes and the winner was Jack with twelve.

Jack tried to protest but they all yelled him down and some even called for a speech but Jack said, “Forget about it. I ain’t givin’ no speech.”

Coach Jackson stuck his head in the door and said, “Okay, boys, it’s five to ten. Lights out in five minutes.”

“Coach, we picked a captain. It’s Jack,” one of the boys said before the coach could get away.

“Good. Does everybody agree with that?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” they chorused.

“I’ll turn his name into the office tomorrow morning then,” he said. “Jack, I’ll talk to you in the morning about what your duties are. Get the lights out in the next couple minutes, boys.” He turned and walked away.

“As captain, I guess you get to turn the lights out, Jack,” one of the boys said and the others laughed.

“No,” Jack corrected, “I get to appoint the one nearest the light switch to turn them out, that’s you, Jerry.” He pointed to Jerry, who was the closest. Jack turned to get undressed to get in bed.

As they always were, Jack and Billy Joe were awake and dressed by five thirty AM. Not knowing what time breakfast started, they walked over to the mess hall to check it out. There were already good smells in the air as the cooks pre-prepared breakfast as much as possible. That way, when the boys began to show up it would go faster.

When they reached the mess hall, they could see the coach sitting at a table just inside the door drinking coffee. He saw them at the same time and waved them in.

“Good morning, boys,” he said. “You’re up early.”

“Yes, sir. We always get up between five and five thirty,” Jack said.

“Good. I need to appoint one boy to wake up the camp every morning,” the coach said with a grin. “Which one of you is it gonna be?”

“I’m already the hut captain,” Jack reminded him.

“That’s right, you are.” He grinned even bigger. “That makes you ‘It,’ Billy Joe.”

“Yes, sir. I guess so,” Billy Joe said in a hurt tone. “When do I wake them up every morning? I don’t have a watch.”

“That’s okay. You just march right up here to the mess hall and look at that clock.” He pointed to the clock on the wall. “When it says five minutes to six, you start your rounds of all the huts. Just stick your head in the door, flip on the lights and yell, ‘Six o’clock. Time to get up.’ And go on to the next hut until you have done them all.”

“What if they don’t get up?” Billy Joe asked.

“That’s not your problem. After you give them their wake-up call, it’s up to the hut captain to see that they do get up.”

“How do I know what all jobs a hut captain has gotta do?” Jack asked.

“That’s why you have to go to a hut captains meeting at eight AM, to find out what you’re supposed to do,” the coach said.

“Billy Joe, that clock says six minutes to six,” the coach pointed out. “Hadn’t you better start your rounds? And Jack, hadn’t you better be in your hut when Billy Joe gets there to make sure all your people get up?”

They both said, “Yes, sir” and left the mess hall to perform their duties.

After breakfast, both boys walked back to the hut to make sure their areas were in good shape. They didn’t know if there would be a military-type inspection or not but they knew they didn’t need the grief if there was.

At five minutes to eight, Jack walked back to the office to attend the hut captains meeting. Mr. Akins, the assistant camp director, met them at the door and said, “Let’s go over to the mess hall where we can use a table and have plenty of room.” They all trooped next door to the mess hall, where Mr. Akins selected a table in the corner to stay out of the way of the cooks and KPs.

He gave each captain a copy of the Roosevelt Park Camp Manual, several policy letters, a hut roster for their hut and a small spiral notebook. He went over some of the policies with them, including those that the coach had discussed with Jack and Billy Joe this morning.

“I expect you to read the manual and all the other printed matter that I have given you and remember it. Then you will have a hut meeting and go over all these things with the hut members. The spiral notebook is for you to make daily entries of what happens in your hut. Every day there will be something that happens in each hut that should be noted. But even if you think that nothing happened, you make an entry that says, ‘Nothing happened of note in this hut today.’ Actually, I’d like for you to have your first meeting this afternoon before supper. I want you to have your hut members name the hut. The only restrictions on names is they cannot be dirty or nasty. It can be Bluebird or Bluejay or Possum or Skunk, I don’t care. If two huts come up with the same name, we will flip a coin to see who gets to use the name and the other will have to pick another. Any questions?”

There was no response.

“I suspect you are too confused to ask questions right now but you will have plenty at the next meeting,” he stated. “We will have meetings every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at eight AM right here. After our meeting, you captains will have your own meeting to discuss common problems. If you come up with problems I need to solve for you, don’t hesitate to bring them to me in the office. Any questions?”

He received only silence.

“Okay, I’ll leave you with it then. Thanks for serving as captains. I’ll see you at the next meeting.”

After he left the table, the captains couldn’t think of anything to discuss so they closed the meeting and each went back to his hut.

The schedule posted on the wall of the hut said:

6AM—Breakfast

9AM—Water Safety—Boat Docks

12 Noon—Lunch

1PM—Rest Hour

2PM—Swimming—The Beach

4PM—Rest Hour

5:30PM—Supper—Mess hall

8PM—Volleyball—The Circle

10PM—Bedtime—Lights Out

“I guess we had better get on down to the boat docks,” Billy Joe said.

“Yeah, I’m really anxious to see if they’re gonna let us take the boats out or do we have to stay right around the docks,” Jack wondered. “If they let us take them out, I’m gonna find some fishin’ hooks and line somewhere.”

“We can use a bent pin and string from flour sacks in the mess hall if we have to,” Billy Joe added.

“Yeah, and any old dry stick can be a bobber and we don’t need no weight, and we’ve used a straight limb skinned off as a pole lots of times.” Jack completed the substitute tackle list.

“Okay, let’s go to the lake and see what they have to say,” Billy Joe said.

They walked down the winding path to the lake along with a lot of other boys, all talking at once and all saying the things they were going to do that would probably not be within the rules. This talk ended as they came within the earshot of the adults at the docks.

One of the counselors standing on the beach end of one of the docks was saying, “Gather ’round me here, boys. Form a semicircle so you can all hear me. I don’t want you to say tomorrow that I didn’t tell you something and you break the rules because of it. Your adult leaders are all here too, so they will know you have been told the rules.”

The counselor continued in a monotone that had developed after he had given the same lecture too many times. “There are fifteen canoes and five flat-bottom boats. Each day, the first ones in line to sign up for boats will get their choice of canoe or boat as long as each lasts. When each boy signs up, he will be given a paddle. The paddles for the canoes and the boats are the same.” Billy Joe and Jack looked at each other and shrugged. They were both thinking the same thing: The boats should have oars, not paddles.

The counselor pointed out the boundaries for boating. The area was larger than Jack had expected but not as big as he would have wanted. They didn’t reach to the black stumps sticking out of the water along some of the shoreline. And the biggest no-no was going anywhere close to the girls’ camp.

“Why would anybody want to go near the girls’ camp?” Jack and Billy Joe wondered. Jack did wonder, though, what were the girls’ limits in their boats. Maybe they didn’t have boats.

“Unless you have any questions, that’s all I have,” the counselor said.

Billy Joe’s hand went up.

“Yes?” the counselor acknowledged him.

“Do you ever let us go fishing?”

“We’ve never had fishing as a part of our program but I have seen boys fishing off the end of the docks in their free time. I don’t believe they ever caught much.” The counselor answered the question as best he could.

“Now,” he continued in the same breath, “you can go look over the boats and if you have questions, the adult leaders and I will be wandering around the dock so just ask us. We might even know the answer.” He and the leaders laughed.

Jack and Billy Joe checked out the flat-bottomed boats first. They didn’t have oars or even oar locks.

“That thing would be hard to move with paddles,” Billy Joe observed.

“Yeah. Forget that,” Jack said.

They moved on to the canoes. Half of them were metal and half were some kind of thin wood lacquered and varnished.

“Now, two of us can move that easy,” Billy Joe noted.

“Yeah,” Jack agreed. “We need to make sure we get down here early enough to get a canoe.”

“They can’t get all the boys in these boats at one time,” Billy Joe observed. “I wonder what happens to the boys left over.”

A leader standing close by on the dock said, “You can only keep the boat out for thirty minutes. Then you have to bring it back for other boys to use.”