The Summer of Reggie

Reggie and his parents moved into the house next door to Mike and Mark Shea in the summer that Mike was twelve and Mark and I were eleven. He was in his late twenties and had black hair, a mustache, and a trim beard. He quickly bonded with us. Soon we were all hanging out together every morning and afternoon. We'd pile into Reggie's convertible and he would drive us to a nearby school yard where we would play tag football. Riding there and back was the best, the wind rushing all around us, we talked as loud as we could. Reggie was so cool. He smoked cigarettes and everything. He even taught us all the different swear words there were and also what bands were really cool. For instance he told us about the MC5 who had a song called Up Against The Wall Mother-Fucker. His parents owned a little yapping dog that was tied to post in their backyard and sometimes the dog would yap so hard he'd throw up. Then he would eat his vomit.

My parents didn't understand how cool Reggie was. Like once after hanging out with him and playing tag my mother asked me if he touched me in a funny way. It was a question that made me ask what do you mean? You know, said my mother. Funny? I sorta knew what she meant. But I couldn't figure out why he would want to do that. Then one day Reggie invited us into his house. His parents where somewhere else. He showed us his record collection. He even gave us cigarettes so we could be cool like him. Inhaling made us cough. But Reggie told us that he had cough too when he was our age. So it was cool. And when we told him that we were headed off to Camp Norwich for two weeks and that we wanted him to buy us cigarettes he gladly took our money and did just that. We got four packs, two Kents, and two Salems.

Camp Norwich was located in the lower Berkshire mountains and was owned by the YMCA. It was rustic, coed, and spread out around a flagpole in a central yard. The girls slept in cabins with bunk-beds. We boys stayed on the other side of the camp in four men tents that had wooden floors and army cots for beds. We all had footlockers too in which we squirreled away our contraband cigarettes, matches, and candy bars. There was so much to do at Camp Norwich. There was archery, and it was fun pretending you were indians. But it hurt the inside of your left forearm when you didn't let the arrow go just right. We also had arts and crafts where we made stuff with glue, paper-plates, and elbow macaroni. And a hike away up a nearby hill was a rifle range where they let us shoot 22's at paper targets tacked up to a wooden wall. I got my shooting privileges taken away from me when, after getting bored shooting at my target, I closed my eyes and shot up over the wall and into the trees.

The campgrounds were laid out aside Lake Norwich and many of our activities were centered around its waters. There was swimming, sailing, canoeing, and water-skiing. You had to be rated a Shark in order to water-ski however. I never made it past Pike so I couldn't ski. Sometimes I would pause by the dock where the skiers entered the water. One of the skiers was a nephew of Bob Barker the TV game show host. Whenever he was skiing and the boat came anywhere near the dock he would splash the awaiting skiers. Every time he did so the girls would squeal with delight. And I would think before going on my way that some day I would be more famous than him.

During Free Swim you had to swim with a buddy. There was a board with hooks that you would hang you and your buddy's name tags on. One side of the tag meant you were in the water. The other side meant you were out. One day I forgot to flip my tag over when I got out of the lake and went back to my tent. When one of the swimming monitors took a quick heads up to make sure everyone was accounted for my name came up as missing. Authorities were called and soon the waters were being dragged by two alert deputies with grappling hooks. Some time later a camp employee came upon me hanging out at my tent. He said that I was supposed to be dead. He sent me back to the lake to let them know I was very much alive. As punishment for my blunder I wasn't allowed to swim for the following two days.

One night after that I slipped away while walking through the woods with Mark Shea. I hid behind a large rock. When I didn't respond to his calls he returned to camp. Soon flashlight wielding searchers were calling my name and shining their flashlights in every which way. I knew what I was doing was wrong. But there was such a warm feeling hearing others call my name. The search went on for quite some time. I later returned to camp and when I was asked why I didn't reply when called I said that I never heard them. As to their questions of where I'd been I mumbled nowhere. A camp councilor told me to go to bed. Now. A couple of nights later all was forgiven and I gathered in the activities center with others to watch in all its black and white horrors The Fall of The House of Usher.

A following afternoon as I was headed to archery I spied on a leaf two bugs, mating, one atop the other. Later that evening as the Sheas and I smoked our cigarettes while hidden in the shadows aside the wooden shower stalls a pretty girl happened upon us. She told us that she had up until then not thought that there was any one cool in the camp. She took a drag off my butt, coughed, and bummed three cigarettes off of me for her and two of her friends. After that whenever she saw me she waved in a very friendly way.

At meal time we all gathered in the camp dining hall. Each meal was served with a sweet concoction called Bug Juice. You could drink as much as you wanted, three meals a day. One night we were served what we were told was buffalo meat. It tasted alright. There were also rules about how you ate in the dining hall. If you were caught with your forearm resting on the table a councilor would call out your name and make you pace around the dining hall while everyone else chanted, for instance, "Mark Shea, young and able, get your elbows off the table, this is not a horse's stable..." After dinner the snack shop opened up and you could buy candy-bars and goods with Camp Norwich motifs. There were also some items for sale that had nothing to do with the camp. One was a poster of a hawk with his talons dug deep into the word Hawks. I bought it to hang in my bedroom at home the whole time knowing that I was a Dove, the opposite side of the political spectrum. I wanted however to show my dad that I was just like him.

At two weeks end we made our goodbyes and boarded a bus that drove us back to our demarcation point. Soon we were home and Mark Shea went to struggle on the can and when he failed his mother took him to the hospital. He had gone the entire two weeks of camp without once taking a crap. As for Reggie, he never crossed the line with us. And soon after our return from camp he and his parents moved away with their vomit eating yapper in tow.