camp life

          after receiving the money from jeff, i headed off to bakersfield, ca. all i have to say about bakerfield is they have nice grass. very good on the toogers. i stopped at a music store there and bought a ukulele for $30, because somewhere in my mind i had rationalized that it was a necessity. what folk musician would ever consider traveling without a ukulele? especially when you already have a baritone ukulele....i mean,...you can't have one and not the other. so another blow was struck in the name of impulse buying.
          i left bakerfield and drove to fresno, ca. to be more exact, sanger, ca. sanger is about thirty minuets outside of fresno. the camp i worked at was called wonder valley ranch, or scamp. (southern california university alumni family camp). this place was weird, though i enjoyed it very much. there was a different theme every night. my original impression was that i would play 2 or 3 nights a week at the bar, but this was not the case. basically my roll was to play at campfires and talent shows. and a thursday night event called coffeehouse. there were only a couple of folks that actually enjoyed my original songs. most of them wanted to hear margarittaville, american pie and puff the magic dragon. so i played all the covers i know; tom waits, christmas card from a hooker in minneapolis, (great for family camp) and jimi hendrix's, little wing, (which is a really short song if you remove the 3 minutes of guitar solo). i did fumble through, sitting on the dock of the bay, and these arms of mine. but it seemed my originals just didn't cut it. at one event while in the rest room i heard a gentleman come in and fart, then saying, "that's what i think of the musical programming!!!!". charming. give some people enough money and chances are they will turn into assholes. the staff was great. there were so many of them i can't begin to describe them, but almost all of them were sweet, energetic and down for just about anything. i slept most of the day and then would get up for dinner and such. the last week of camp they were short handed so i helped out on the go cart track, which was fun because i got to ride go carts and work on my sunglass tan. from my earlier entry;
          every day has a theme, (which drives me nuts) so i shaved my head to be dr. evil. i suppose it's almost fun in some ways. the kids are great....yes, me getting along with kids. luckily i have no direct responsibilities to them which makes them even better. though i must say that the activities are not what i remember from summer camp. wednesdays is casino night for the 13 to 17 year olds. they have black jack tables, roulette, craps,...and all those other games. then at the end of the night they auction off what are called pepsters, which are usc students that come for a week to entertain the guests. ...college girls for auction....makes the mind spin, don't it! so that's it. singing every night at campfires, making beaded necklaces', fishing and just trying to figure out how i ended up here
         . to correct a few things from this entry. i never did get to finish making my necklace bearing the phrase "kill whitey" in cute little cube letters with blue beaded flowers. i did shave my head to be doctor evil for what they call "hollywood night" or something to that effect. there was also a route 66 theme night. this was a good one, complete with an elvis impersonator. circus night was pretty surreal. they would hold a parade around the camp clanging on whatever they could find, riding horses and mini bikes. there was a girl on stilts, and a clown that tied balloon animals for the kids. popcorn and of course, alcohol. the last week of camp i decided to do gymnastics at 1am in the pitch black. this left me with a bruised heel bone and bursidis of some part of the heel i cannot begin to spell let alone pronounce. so i now limp, making me walk even more like an old man whose down on his luck....pardon me, can you spare some change for a guy who's down on his luck?. so that was camp.