Treasure Hunting

Summer Camps...When I was almost ten, my parents enrolled me for eight weeks in a boys’ camp in Washington, Maine. Probably my father and mother had had a discussion, initiated by my father, that I needed some “toughening up.” I would be sent to the boys’ camp my older brother loved so much. My mother packed a small locker trunk with camp shorts and T-shirts. She sewed a label into each item, even my socks. She gave me a packet of letters addressed to her with a typewritten address and return address. She took me to the North Station where a counselorescorted a small group aboard the Boston and Maine Railroad to a stop near Washington, Maine. We were taken by camp bus across farmland and dairy country to Camp Medomak. I yakked away, telling the other scared little boys I knew what would happen because I had an older brother at camp. I was quickly typed as a little boy with a big mouth. Within a week I was picking up donkey dung from a field as punishment for various minor infringements, like not turning off the water tap. Several times after taps was sounded in the twilight, I heard a whisperfrom outside the tent near my bed. “Fuller, get up, come out. You’ve been talking again after lights out.” I was ordered to the baseball diamond. “Start running, Fuller, run around the diamond, keep running, no stopping.” After four laps they hissed: “Now. Get back to your cabin. No more talking.” The counselors were 17 or 18 years old, soon to go off to fight in World War II.