Text 20914, 158 rader
Skriven 2006-01-03 22:57:52 av Ward Dossche (2:292/854)
     Kommentar till en text av Carol Shenkenberger
Ärende: The Road to Disneyland
==============================
Carol,
 
> Like to hear more even though I didnt comment.  Last I saw you were on a
> bus still enroute the camp.
 
Especially for you ... here's part-II of my "Coming to America" story.
 
This is part of a series of articles I wrote about my first experiences in the
US. They were entitled "The Road to Disneyland" since as a young kid I had
always dreamed of visiting Disneyland in California and going over to work a
summer on an American scout camp at that moment merely was the tool rather than
the purpose.
 
As a reminder, "Part-I" elaborated on my first reactions when arriving in New
York, a 4-day bus-ride from NYC to the Intermountain Bus Depot in Great Falls,
MT and it left the question unanswered "Did I get to Disneyland in California
or not?"...
 
I entered Montana for the first time of my life on July 1st 1972. It was a
Greyhound bus which I caught in Salt Lake City with destination Butte. We
crossed the state border in Lima and stopped there for 15 minutes, that's where
I learned the heavenly pleasures of a truly ice and icecold iced-tea on a
blistering hot day.
 
It didn't occur to me then but with hindsight I remember now that the closer we
got to Montana the more the composition of the group of my fellow-travellers
was changing to a more rural-attitude. In years to come I eventually was to
learn that you could look for the Northwest-flight to Great Falls in
Minneapolis in 3 ways: either by looking at the monitors and the flightnumbers,
by looking for the gate where a lot of people with mauldy old Stetsons were
waiting to board (the bright new Stetsons indicated a flight to either Dallas
or Houston) or find the people who were carrying a small can of Copenhagen
tobacco-chew in their shirt-pocket.
 
Although 3 1/2 days on a bus wears you down I was lively enough to notice I was
entering some special countryside.
 
In Butte I had to switch from Greyhound to Intermountain Bus Lines, which in
those days with the quality of buses they were operating most likely resembled
an old John Wayne western where people in the middle of nowhere got off a
comfortable train and boarded a stage-coach.
 
There was an older man next to me and I remember him taking-off on a story as
if I were his most intimate next of kin. He was going to Glasgow and
complaining it was such a long trip; I told him that flying to Glasgow indeed
would keep him busy for the better part of 2 days and he looked rather worried
about my mental health while I grew suspicious when he defined his travel-time
in "hours on a bus". Eventually I learned he didn't know about the
million-people city of Glasgow in Scotland while I didn't know there was a
Glasgow in Montana. In later years I was to learn there was an Amsterdam and a
Belgrade near Bozeman but that may be another story.
 
Finally I arrived in Great Falls at 11pm, now I still remember coming down the
hill close to the airport from the direction of Helena and see all those
lights. After hours of darkness it was a relief.
 
In the busdepot there was a helpless lady waiting for me whom I never had met
before in my life ... Darlene McFadden, the wife of Camp Napi's Camp Director
David McFadden. She had my original application-documents in her hand with a
decent photograph of mine of the previous year with nicely groomed hair, a
mustache, white shirt and tie with a vest. Now I was wearing corduroy brown
pants, a yellow T-shirt, no mustache, crew-cut hair and smelling the way you
probably smell after 4 consecutive days on a bus without a source of water nor
soap nearby.
 
The first thing I asked for was a shower and that still carries the memory of a
heavenly blessing.
 
The next morning I was confronted with a piece of American culture I had only
heard rumours about ... all day TV, even more: colour TV. I couldn't believe my
eyes then that people were actually watching TV other than during the
evening...
 
Anyway, that next morning we drove the remaining distance from Great Falls to
Babb and Camp Napi in the car. The road leading north was not the 4-lane
divided-highway there is now but a 2- lane (one in each direction) thing. We
were at 2 moments confronted with a herd of cows on the road which blocked
passage and you litterally had to push through. I was then told this was a
strategy from the farmers so that when you hurt one of their cows they'd sue
you for damages before having it slaughtered anyway.
 
It is not obvious, and sometimes not known at all anymore, but there has been a
major flash-flood in 1964 between the town of Vallier and the hammock of Heart
Butte at the Blackfeet Indian Reservation which killed dozens of people. In
1972 much of the driftwood from that disaster had not been cleared away yet and
it was still obstructing some of the grazing land (along the road to Browning
and beyond there are roadsigns commemorating the disaster).
 
Main street Browning didn't have traffic-lights then, it was a dirt-road and
not paved while the newly built War Bonnet Inn was a Best Western outlet then
charging 50$ a night while it now goes for 28$. It says a lot about Browning
itself because in general hotel-rooms have trippled or quadruppled in price
anywhere else since then.
 
We raced through Browning since I was told it was a bad place (which shows how
wrong people can be) and headed towards the mountains, Glacier Park (unknown to
me then but now I think it's the crown of the nation) and a scout camp.
 
When we got to camp it was a work-week with parents of different scouters
repairing winter-damage and preparing the camp for summer. There also was an
OA-event going on which I still exactly haven't understood till this very day.
Grown adults and youngsters alike not speaking for 3 days and trying to get
along that way ... how can you operate post-hole diggers and erect a fence with
a crew if no-one is talking and the boss isn't giving instructions?? Oh well, I
survived the ordeal and so did they.
 
The camp-director asked me what camp-skills I had and I told him I was a
certified horsebackriding instructor. "Well, we sure don't have any horses here
... can you row or canoe?" ... I couldn't ...
 
Now it seemed this was an emergency occuring every year ... the foreign
scouters coming to camp-staff for the summer-season never had any of the skills
required at a BSA-camp so they were assigned to the Buddy Board at the water
front managing the Body-tags of swimmers, beginners and non-swimmers.
 
There are more exiting things in life. Booooooringgggg.....
 
Then something happened that changed all that ... a guy came to camp by the
name of Joe McGillis, he would change my life. His duty was to fill a
staff-void in aquatics but upon noticing me he told me he was going to teach me
Rowing MB and Canoeing MB. We worked on it extensively, by week's end my hands
were all blisters and raw meat but boy could I row and canoe.
 
As of the next week I was handling all Rowing MB instruction and it gave an
added value to my presence there.
 
You had the senior staff there and junior staff. One way to differentiate was
age, anotherone was salary but the more common-one was "Are you legally allowed
to drink beer?" ... so I was senior staff.
 
During our next weekend-outing accross the Canadian border into Waterton my
fellow senior staff-members pleaded me to order the beers for them in French
claiming it was Canada and they didn't speak the language. In my ignorance I
obliged ... way down in red-neck Alberta ...
 
You get the picture? Well, we all had a good laugh ... eventually yours truly
too after having accepted the insults the bartender addressed to me. My lesson
for the day was to never trust a fellow senior-staff member within the confines
of a bar, even if he happens to be the chaplain.
 
So, in the meantime I had written my pen-pall in California that I had crossed
about 3/4 of the distance and she must have about choked in her breakfast as
everything kind of went fast and unprepared. We made plans to meet later in
summer and she tried adjusting her's and her husband workschedule accordingly.
Something to look forward too for after camp ...
 
In the back of my head was the knowledge that the city of Madera in California
(just north of Fresno) was a few hours north of LA ... and LA spelled
"Disneyland" to me.
 
Would "it" happen after all?
 
... well, read "Part-III" if you're really interested...
 
 \%/@rd

--- IN-A-GADDA-DA-VIDA
 * Origin: "Leonard will be free" - http://www.leonardpeltier.org (2:292/854)