A very good day
It was 1984, I was 17 years old and working for the summer at Crow Wing Scout Reservation. A new group of scouts would arrive each Sunday for six weeks straight, and stay until Saturday morning. Saturday was our day off. For a few hours in the afternoon you could go into town to do laundry, maybe buy a pizza. One day I remember someone had a car and we drove to Park Rapids. I bought a National Lampoon magazine at the drug store. We went to the laundromat. It was warm and we spent some time jumping off the railroad bridge into the river which had enough current that you had to get going swimming in order to make it to the bank. That night we went to the drive in theater before going back to the camp.
posted by Matt_J @ 10:06 PM
3 Comments:
Nice. I had a full blown false nostalgia for those days while reading that. What about the guy who forced you to buy his hat?
That was a different Saturday afternoon, in Bemidji at the public restroom by the lake. He (a Native American for those who don't know the story) was a convincing salesman.
Wow. Talk about a blast from the past. The flood of vivid pubescent pine-scented memories of summer freedom and Scouting is truly intoxicating.
Ok, pine; early morning lake mist; wood smoke; damp just-after-the-rain mushroom hyphae; the first wisps of a fire you made from sweat, birch bark, and elbow grease; visiting Scoutmaster's daughters; brain-tanned leather; hot aluminum canoes; skunk; invigoratingly fresh and clean air; Swisher Sweets; mocassins drying in the sun; - those were the smells I remember most.
Seriously: Wow. I take a break from reading your blog for a week and look what you do - the latest string of entries has given me pause. In a good way.
Matthew J, those were some times, eh?
Keep on truckin.
- Bick
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