Month: September 2023

It was the Spring of 1963, the year that I became old enough to attend Church Camp. In Indiana, as an Evangelical United Brethren or EUB, to qualify, you had to have logged 14 years on earth. Our church regularly sent 20 – 30 kids for a week every summer in an effort to broaden their horizons and hopefully to experience a spiritual awakening. I was unsure what the implication of all that meant but I did know that girls were going to be there, and I was in.

In my house, with three kids in residence and one on the way, expense was the first item on the agenda. It was decided that I would assume responsibility for one-third of the cost. The church would cover one-third and my parents would cover the remaining balance. This decision was based on my father’s natural Scottish heritage. He reasoned that if one or both of the other thirds defaulted on their liability, he was off the hook. You see living in a Scottish family is first and foremost intrinsically intertwined with the answer to “how much does it cost.”  Although, I never fully grasped the concept of how much was too much, my father was the sole decision maker when it came to that answer.  So, after establishing how much I needed to fund my trip of a lifetime, I doubled down on my need to save money.

I already was employed by the Muncie Newspapers as a route carrier. More commonly known in the sixties as a “delivery boy”. In fact, I carried both the Muncie Morning Star and the Muncie Evening Press. My routes were roughly the same territory bounded by Bethel Avenue on the North to Neely Avenue on the south. In those days Sunday was the largest circulation and I routinely delivered to around 300 homes. All in, I delivered around 350 newspapers a day during the week. After all of this commitment, I collected 35 cents a week for my labor. Of that I cleared about a nickel a day per customer. Now you don’t need to be Warren Buffet to figure out that I was going to start mowing yards if I was going to hold up my end of the bargain. The cool thing about being young is that you don’t know that you can’t do something. Besides that, there were going to be girls there.

Mom was the designated as the keeper of the funds and off I blundered into the world of desire vs affordability. Being raised in the depression Mom had never been able to afford Church Camp, and it had always been a regret, so she became my biggest cheerleader. Every week as I handed over my contributions, she let me know how close to my goal I was getting. My father, on the other hand, would regularly, at breakfast, downgrade my expectations by letting me know that he might need to use the family money for my brother’s dental work. I didn’t know if he was joking but I could care less about LB1’s overbite. Even with the repair work, he was still going to be lifelong ugly.

Due date for the funds arrived and my contributions were there, just barely, with a little help from Mom’s grocery money, I think. Dad wrote the check to the church and my date with destiny was secure. It was now time to get advice from the older boys at the Sunday night youth group meeting as to what to expect. Their experiences were as wide and varied as their individual personalities. One thing was clear, every single one was going again this year, and they were excited about the prospects. The primary reason mentioned by most as to motivation to return, “girls will be there.” Now at 14, I was not inexperienced in the world of coeducational cohabitation. I had done my fair share of handholding and had even been kissed on a front porch once. This, however, was going to be different, no parents lurking around.

As the warm summer days were being checked off my calendar daily, I realized, rather abruptly, that I was going to need new clothes. Last year’s school outfits were out of date and besides they didn’t fit well any longer. You have to love my mom, she announced at breakfast that next day that she was taking me school clothes shopping early.        With the last big hurdle checked off my list, I was ready to take the plunge into “teenagerhood” as my buddies called it.

A couple weeks later we met at the Church on Sunday afternoon to get our assignments for the carpools that were to take us to Camp INDICOSO church camp. As we loaded into the waiting car caravan and pulled out of the parking lot, I thought I saw a tear in my mom’s eye. I guess I hadn’t realized until that minute, that I was accomplishing something that she had always wanted to do. As emotional as that moment might have been, I didn’t hang on to the thought long because I was sitting right next to Judy, a cheerleader, and would be her companion, for the next two hours. This was going to be one great week.

Upon arrival the groups were billeted in cabins on opposite sides of the camp based on gender. Assignments were given out in each cabin as to responsibility for the upkeep of the area inside and out. Very soon after that, the dinner bell rang, and we followed in the direction of the smell of baked beans and chocolate cake. Upon arrival to the Mess Hall we were given the opportunity to be seated at our option, but mostly we separated ourselves, boys on one side and girls on the other. After eating, twilight was fast approaching, and we were given maps as to how get to the evening campfire. Soon we found the log benches arranged around the campfire and I noticed a girl that I had seen in the chow hall. She was looking in my direction and she motioned for me to come over and sit next to her.                                                                                Looking around to make sure she was waving to me, I turned toward her and with all the coolness a 14-year-old could muster I sat down on the log by her.  The next 30 minutes were a blur of singing and laughing and the warm tingly feeling of raging hormones. We had an evening prayer service and were dismissed to go back to our respective cabins. I walked her back to the girl’s sleeping quarters and we said goodnight. As I was leaving, she shouted over her shoulder that she would see me at breakfast.                                                                                                                            As I floated back to the boy’s cabin, I realized that we had not introduced ourselves. Not to worry, we had five more days. I had just barely made it to “lights out ” and climbed into my bunk when the guy above me, who was from my church, hung his head over the top of the bed and whispered, “I heard that the girl you were with was 16”.          Rolling over and burying my head in my pillow I said a quick prayer to God, “Dear Lord it’s ok if you want to take me now, because I know it’s never going to get any better than this. ”

The rest of the week was pretty much the way it started out, raging hormones, spiritual experiences, ego enhancing moments, and a lot of hand holding. And then the last night was at hand. I pretty much didn’t hear the sermon; my thoughts were a tangle of emotions and pleasure. Strangely I felt older, at least 15.  On the way back to “lights out”, we were able duck behind a large pine tree for a quick kiss and a hug. We made promises to call each other and write letters.                                     The next morning, we said our goodbyes and loaded up into our respective carpools and headed home to different cities.                    Again, I was paired up with Judy the cheerleader, after just a few minutes on the road, she whispered in my ear, “did you know that girl was 16 years old”?    “Really?”  I said to no one in particular.

We did call each other on the phone a few times and we exchanged a few letters, but our geographical challenges were evident. My mom was the first to notice that something was different.                                “Was it worth all the hard work that you put in to get there?” she wanted to know.                                                                                                             Yup” was all I said. Little did she know that I had just had the most exciting week of my young life.                                                                              Several years later when my daughter came to me with an inquiry about going to Church Camp and wanted to know if she should go. My immediate reply was “don’t miss it.”  I wanted to tell her about the experience, the feelings, the underpinning of spiritual awareness, the connection of being outdoors to feeling closer to God and the knowing that you were growing older. But all I could get out was ” I’ll pay for it”.

In later years, as I bumped down the road of life, that Church Camp experience floated back to my memory on many occasions and when it did, it never failed to bring a smile to my face and a tug to my heart.   It also always reaffirmed that growing up in the sixties was among the some of the greatest times of my life.

 

 

 

 

 

Most young men between the ages of twelve & sixteen, growing up in the sixties, toyed with the idea of becoming a musician. The number one instrument of choice was the guitar. To accomplish this dream, a Silvertone or Gibson acoustic flat top was available at most Western Auto stores for about $25.00. The biggest problem was that most boys this age did not have the $25.00. The two obvious ways to access the means were Mom & Dad or work. Mom & Dad were generally the easiest route; however, it meant waiting for a birthday or Christmas. “Money didn’t grow on trees you know”. The other avenues for acquiring this wealth were getting a paper route or mowing yards. For me, since I was the oldest, Mom & Dad were indeed the easiest approach to solve my debt crisis. The oldest kids, you see, were the trailblazers & the trend setters and for better or worse, parents of kids in the sixties wanted their children to have more than they had. After all, having grown up in the depression, and attending high school during World War Two was synonymous with “doing without”, and most of my buddies understood by the time they reached their teens that this was an opportunity to exploit.

So, on my way through puberty I reasoned that if I could get a guitar and learn to sing, I was just another undiscovered Elvis Presley. As it turned out I had a knack for singing and soon joined the church youth choir. My next move, while waiting for Christmas to arrive, was to buy all the 45 rpm records I could afford. Most dust jackets on the records in those days included the lyrics to the songs, so I would hole up in my bedroom during afternoons and evenings practicing my tone inflections. My Mom didn’t mind the wailing so much, but when my Dad arrived home from work, all bets were off on my budding career. “Turn that thing down” and “take that out to the garage” were the instructions that were shouted up the stairway in my direction. I wondered many times if Elvis had endured the same indignities before he hit the bigtime.

Christmas came and to no one’s surprise, a Silvertone Flat Top was propped against our family tree with a red bow around it’s neck and a note that Santa hoped that I would enjoy it. For the next week I picked and banged on that thing to my utter delight. What sounded like music to me was not permeating my household. I began to hear comments around the supper table like, “when do your lessons start” and “hope you learn something soon”. Even LB1 (Little Brother One), the staunchest ally on my trek to stardom, was expressing concerns about my progress. He had shared a bedroom with me since he was born and had become accustomed to my many whims. However, this one had necessitated his need to cover his head with pillows to get to sleep at night. I guess I should have gotten a clue when he no longer sang along on my 45^th rendition of Sea Cruise by Frankie Ford.

So, a phone call was placed to Muncie Music Center with an inquiry as to the cost of guitar lessons. Big time snag here, my mom could not rob enough from the weekly food budget and my dad told me we needed a new lawn mower instead. The only chance I would have was to find one of my buddies to teach me. I had plenty of wannabe teachers but mostly they were just a few chords away from the beginner stage. Primarily though the biggest obstacle that I needed to hurdle was genetics. I had fat fingers. No matter how hard I plucked or strummed the only sound I could replicate sounded most like an alley cat with it’s tail caught in the backyard gate on a Saturday night. I laid my dilemma at the feet of one of my best friends who had struggled though trying to give me lessons while simultaneously keeping my fingers uncaught from the guitar strings. His solution was simple, you can sing, we always need singers, the world is full of lousy guitar players. I was not sure if I was encouraged or disillusioned. Not wanting to go down without collaborative feedback I cornered LB1 while he was brushing his teeth the next morning. I indicated that I was considering retiring from my guitar lessons in favor of focusing on my signing career. Looking back at me through the bathroom mirror, “Thank God” he spluttered through his Crest ringed lips.

Plunging fast forward into my future, the next few weeks were spent looking for opportunities to put my abilities into practice while climbing toward my first million dollars. In those days, most of us had been banished to our garages to work on our fledgling careers. It was helpful if the room was heated but the best attribute was good wiring and several plug-in outlets. Because our amplifiers often overloaded the fuse boxes and plunged the whole house into darkness, we were always in need of backup practice locations. It was not uncommon to see drum kits, amplifiers and microphones loaded into wagons or wheelbarrows rolling down the street on the way to another garage that had a stronger fuse box. Thus, the term Garage Band was coined and is still being used today. At the time, it was a pain in the neck and ended more than one promising career, but for those who stuck it out, it became a badge of honor.

Overcoming all the logistical challenges was insignificant to the human element. The majority of these “bands” were male and most had girlfriends. Maintaining a girlfriend was hard work. Girls wanted attention; guys wanted stardom. Practices were canceled or postponed, arguments ensued about the issue of priorities and infighting was commonplace about the importance of “practice”.

Then, out of the blue, one of the guys got asked if the band could play somewhere on Friday night for a 30-minute intermission fill in. Suddenly, we need a name, outfits, shoes, hair styles and most of all permission from our parents to go. Our parents were amazed that someone, anyone, was interested in paying to hear what they had been wearing ear plugs to shut out. Mostly, we needed the parents because we were not old enough to drive and needed the family station wagon to haul our equipment to the venue. Most of these venues were church socials or sock hops or street fairs and the pay was minimal. The pay mattered not in the beginning, we knew it was only a matter of time, before we would be commanding the big money on Saturday night at the American legion.

Friday night came, we stood in the wings, wearing our new madras button-down shirts and waiting on our next step up the ladder to fame and fortune. With our hearts beating in our ears, we ascended those three steps to the stage as the main act retreated in the opposite direction. They smiled at us, seeing their own reflection from just last year. We assumed our positions, looked out at the audience, who mostly had left to go get popcorn, our drummer popped his cymbals and my life changed forever.

On the ride home my buddy’s dad told us he thought we did a great job and pointed out that the audience clapped afterward. We didn’t feel it necessary to tell him that our girlfriends had brought their girlfriends and hand clapping was obligatory. On the ride home the mood was mostly quiet and reflective. In some strange way, we had crossed over the Rubicon. We were on the other side; we had been paid for our talent. We were on our way. Sleep would not come this night easily. Flashes of the audience, watching in admiration, were embedded in my subconscious.

Mom was the first one to ask at the breakfast table about our “gib”. Correcting her gently with “Gig, mom” I told her it was cool, trying to withhold my enthusiasm. Dad looked up from the morning paper and inquired “oh was that last night?”, as he returned to the editorial page. I grabbed a banana and headed down the street to Dave’s garage, I felt strangely older.  He was there, the overhead door was open, and he was holding his guitar and staring at the clouds. I climbed up on a bar stool stared at the same clouds and asked how he felt. “Cool” he said. “Me too” I volunteered. “Do you see this as a future” he asked. “I don’t know, but I wouldn’t take a hundred dollars for the way I feel right now” I said.

“Me neither” Dave replied.

That’s the way it was while I was growing up in the sixties.