I began writing this in part because I’m planning on tackling the storage locker and going through these old journals and some of the files I’ve kept for years. Starting at 12 I’d produce a couple of binders of hand written journals or poetry and even some scrapbooks. It’s sad so much was destroyed. Like ISIS wiping out the temples of the Zoroastrian, Christians, and Jews. My personal shrines destroyed. There will be no other religion but one. A divorce is like a war. There’s a lot of scorched earth. Both people come away scarred but little do we remember the wounds we inflicted. But boy or boy do we dwell on the wounds we received. I’m still working on forgiveness.
My first big work began with Camp Stevens. I took a paying job there for 6 weeks or more. It’s a camp job. For people who have never worked in ‘camps’ in the north they usually don’t have a clue as to what this is. I’d get my first experience and later admire the men and women who went off to the out of the way places, mostly in the north and work while the sun shined where the work was.
I’d been working for my Dad now for a couple of years. Before that I cut lawns. Tried a paper route one yard. Always worked in addition to school and everything else. Dadhelped me get my millwright helper ticket. I’d begin to work on job sites with him. That’s when I really appreciated how others saw him. He was really smart and a hard worker and problem solver. My brother was annoyed that he didn’t wear a suit. He always wore work clothes and got his hands dirty. My brother felt that he didn’t show his status and consequently wasn’t respected as much as he should have been. He was high status but did portray this. He didn’t even have his engineering diploma displayed on the wall. That was my dad, a humble man. A shirt and tie didn’t make the man for me. What I saw working with Dad was that all the men followed his direction and sought his advice. He was given the authority over hundreds of men and managed it. That’s no small feat. Business owners and employees all admired him. I didn’t know that till I worked on big job sites with him. The men all spoke highly of him too. Sure took the wind out of this adolescents sails, considering I by contrast was a ‘know it all’ as teens can be.
I’d only work on weekends or in the summer or evenings like this. Dad would get these industrial painting contracts or roofing contracts and we’d work as a family evenings in the spring summer and fall getting the work done. My brother was a worker too. I was spoiled as a kid working with these great men. It was rare for me the rest of my life to be surrounded by people set on working their best with a view to completing the task its best as quickly as excellence permitted. Being an owner operator Dad took pride in his work knowing that would bring in contracts word of mouth. As his sons he’d trained us since childhood to meet challenges and to be conscientious. We had fun too. Working as a family doing physical construction type work is rewarding. Later he’d leave me to do jobs like painting the apartment building. If I needed money he’d find work for me. I think people and governments that give out money for free are doing a disservice to people and really don’t respect them. I’m personally not as wise or accomplished as my brother or father with money. I give out charity but I think often it’s from a place of fear. Dad loved me and showed his love by finding me work that paid. My brother carried that on with his children.
Camp Stevens was my first actual ‘longer term job’. 6 weeks away from home working and living in the camp. As a “cookie” , the job title for camp kitchen help,we were in a nebulous position in the camp. We bunked with the camp leaders but we were actual employees.
The camp cook was a crazy lady. An emotional angry efficient Nazi of a leader. She was loveable too in that blustery middle aged lost way some women are. She took no ‘guff’. She was a worker and she got the job done. We were her slaves and we did as we were told. There were three of us ‘cookies’ , an assistant cook and a cook That was the kitchen. We were up at 5. We had to get the breakfast made for 150 kids. The cook had an elaborate healthy menu with scrambled eggs, pan cakes and hash browns, bacon and toast and jam for breakfast. Sandwiches and salads or soups for lunch. Then dinners were a variety of roasts and stews and soups. She really had a good taste sense and made great meals which the kids and staff enjoyed. There were recipes that had developed over the many years of the camp. I thought they were hers but no they were just one thing more the YMCA ensured worked well with excellence. The YMCA was and is an amazing organization of excellence and yet modest cost. Camp Stevens was and remains one of the great camps for boys. I don’t know if girls are going there now. YWCA at the time had another camp on the other side of the same lake. I found this out because the leaders had a panty raid with a retaliation by the girl leaders stealing the guys underwear another night.
Because we bunked with the leaders who were mostly there for fun and a small honarium we had a lot of the experience of the camp albeit as the ‘hired help’.
The one other woman in the camp was the gorgeous nurse. I believe that nurse at Camp Stevens caused me forever to love nurses. She was the source of all the erotic fantasies of all the boys of Camp Stevens for years to come. I was especially traumatized by her godliness because as camp help we got to share her shower on occasion. She had the only hot shower. “Her’ shower smelt heavenly, lilac and other sweet feminine fragrances. Each of us talked about being in there after our shower. Guys masturbated in the bunks trying to be discrete. Some less so than others. There wasn’t any porn so memory sufficed. The nurse really was gorgeous. We’d imagine her naked there washing off with any of the vast collection of shampoos and lotions she kept. She dated a couple of the older leaders that summer. She wore white short shorts and mini skirts.
Once we made the breakfast we had to do the clean up. I found out I loved working a dish washing machine. I liked spraying off the left over food stacking and then getting that soul gratification of closing the door locking the mechanism and pushing the button to begin the cycle. Then it was the unstacking and storing. I competed against myself and got incredibly fast. It was a ‘skill’ and I liked acquiring ‘skills’ and having ‘competence’ with them. This was an important part of the ethics of Boy Scouts , the YMCA and frankly ‘manliness’ of the day. Competence was such an important word. It was the height of praise to be called ‘competent’. I would become ‘competent’ in a lot of things over my life arriving at that point where I could accomplish a task well, reliably and on my own. I really miss ‘competence’ when I see it lacking. It’s not perfection but a level of ‘good enough’, a kind of B or A standard, not A plus but certainly more than C. It was the basis of professionalism in earlier days.
The afternoon was peeling potatoes. We had potatoes for breakfast and evening many days a week so had to peel hundreds of potatoes, hundreds. We’d shuck pees too and peel carrots. Hours of this. One of the cookies wasn’t very good. A funny guy. Not fast and not very competent. Still two hands is better than one. The other cookie who’d been there the year before was great. We’d become friends too. We all hung out together but this other guy and I had more in common. We both had hunting and fishing back grounds whereas the whining kid was purely city spawn. He was all tv , hollywood and talk. Not very competent.
Jon Cowtan was the assistant camp cook. Jon would become my lasting friend and sometime mentor. He was president of the North American Unitarian Youth Groups at the time. A year or two later I’d storm out of my parents home and move in with him. He played guitar. We became fast friends at Camp Stevens talking ethics and philosophy and religion. We both canoed evenings when we had a little free time. We’d be canoeing on the moon lit lake just enjoying the call the loon or the hoot of the owl. Often I’d paddle at the back and Jon would bring his guitar and play. He was into jazz and fingering styles ahead of his time. He’d sing too at other times but playing guitar was his passion.
He taught me my early chords. The first song I learned was “Draft Dodger Rag”We’d talk politics and war. I can’t explain how much we all feared that the Vietnam War would expand into a global conflict. As guys we discussed volunteering to ‘fight commies’. We worried we’d be conscripted if the Russians got in. We met draft dodgers. They talked a lot. They were usually stoned. The soldiers didn’t talk. They often had the thousand mile stare.
It was good to talk with Jon. He was a little older and a whole lot wiser. He’d traveled more too. Met more people. The unitarians were an intellectual lot and had a breadth of consideration. We didn’t argue. I didn’t argue religion. I was curious and interested and learned a lot in my teens and twenties. The only time I’d argue with someone was when I saw they weren’t sure so were trying to get certainty by selling their idea to me. I thought the best ideas were free so that complicated things. Freedom was a big word then.
‘What’s that I hear....that’s the sound of freedom coming’ was another song I learned from Jon. The best one though was “Elusive Butterfly”. Jon played that song beautifully and I’d spend years trying to play it right.
To put this playing guitar and skill thing in perspective. My friend Kirk who played guitar a bit like me told me in his 30’s, ‘you know that rift Danny used to play.’ I finally figured it out and got it down last weekend. I knew because I’d been practicing that same ‘distinctive Donahue rift’ for a decade or more myself and it had taken me just as long to get it.
Some guys were really talented, natural and obsessed with an instrument. Jon and Danny were like that. Regular George Harrison and Paul Simon types.
So that was the summer I was peeling potatoes and learning guitar, making friends.
The cook had a nervous breakdown and maybe alcohol was a contributor. I can’t say. Just one day she was shouting then the next she was packing her bags. Jon became the cook then and I became the asssitant cook until we got a replacement.
The camp ran in two week stretches .150 boys at a time. We’d get a day off between the groups leaving and coming. That was the big day in Kenora. Kenora was one of those big towns for folk out on a camp. When you’re weeks in the woods whatever town that’s nearby takes on aspects of a city. It’s got that ‘feel’. It also takes time eventually to adjust back into the noise and rush of bigger cities. Working years up north I remember first having this experience in Kenora.
Camp Stevens was a great summer job even if the money was very poor. The experience and friendship were incredible. Just meeting Jon was worth the trip. Beginning to play guitars and more poetry writing. Politics, romance, religion and God. Lots of Christian men and Christian creations but no one talked of Jesus. We lived like the disciples in many ways and our discussions were becoming more and more high minded despite the occasional lapse into full blown adolescence.
That came when one of the guys said he had the longest dick and bet everyone he did. These memories are too bizarre to make up. Everyone has $5 dollars riding on the outcome and we’re sitting around the hall on chairs with our backs to the wall. 20 guys all waiting, money in hand, backs to the wall. One guy has a tape measure. This guy then pulled out his pencil thin boa constrictor.It was long, not huge, but really long. More than 12 inches. It was measured. Not even hard. No one wanted that thing hard. No one brought out a competitor. He collected the the money. We had a feeling he’d collected winnings with that thing before. We had to share a bunkhouse with him so that was a source of jokes too. It didn’t win him friends. It was a circus thing. He was a bit of a freak now. Already a peculiar kid so he was more a loner. In time we all forgot he was different. Differences lapsed for boys really quick when we’re working and playing sports together. That week we all lost money we thought about this guy as weird but after that he just became another weird kid. Like the guy who could go cross eyed or rather went cross eyed and had to consciously keep his eyes uncrossed. Nobody was ever as weird as the Cub Scout who put ketchup on his corn flakes years earlier.
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