Of sailing ships and sealing wax...

Growing up I went to Camp Wilkerson every year. I am sure it has a different meaning for me than most people...after all, Camp Wilkerson is a location frequented by a large number of groups, not just ours. But for us it was location, week, lifestyle.





I have a lot of memories of Camp Wilkerson. Every day we would have an afternoon softball game. I loved those games...I played shortstop all the time. At that point I was still athletic enough to play a solid and sometimes even spectacular shortstop.



I particularly remember one play where Kyle popped the ball foul behind third base. I had been playing pretty much straight away up the middle since he is southpaw. I read the pitch and his swing perfectly and took off before he connected with the ball so I was well on my way towards third when he popped it. Well, Wilkerson is not spectacularly well maintained...and not too much further back from where I was playing there was a pretty sizable ditch that ran through the playing field. I leapt the ditch and laid out completely horizontal to catch the ball, probably the single best catch I ever made even without the ditch being involved...but with the ditch it was unbelievable.



Now, on the one hand I could not say for sure who won that day...or, for that matter, who won any other day. But I do remember the play and having a lot of fun. We had people from about 8 years old on up to their mid 50s playing, and with skill levels ranging from Billy, Kyle and myself in the "really good" range on down to people wearing their glove on their throwing hand...and it was fun.



We would also play volleyball and, one year, we took up a badminton craze. Badminton might have caught on in more years had we any idea of the rules or scoring, but we didn't.



We also played a lot of ping pong. I pretty much remember who won that...if it was singles competition...well, how do I say this without being egotistical? I could play the entire game with my left hand and never let anybody hit double digits before I got 21. In later years a few people got to where I actually had to play right handed to win but still kept them to about 15 -17 points. On the other hand, I did occasionally lose a few games of around the world...but that was okay because it was a lot more fun. We never had enough paddles so you would see people using song books, handing off paddles, stuff like that.



Another thing we did was every day we would put on two skits...one funny and one Bible pantomine the other campers were supposed to guess.



Billy, Kyle and I put on some very funny skits. One week when Rocky was there we did "Lawyer week" where every night our funny sketch was based on a courtoom scene. One night I ripped an old Harlem Globetrotters routine where I was drinking water out of a bucket while the defense lawyer kept objecting. Finally, as he was in front of the crowd he objected, I grabbed a bucket and threw it on the crowd...only instead of the bucket of water it was a carefully prepared bucket of confetti. Of course, they all thought it was water...so it had a tremendous effect. I twas hilarious. At least, it was when we did it. The next night another cabin did the same joke...and of course it was nowhere near as funny. First off...it was no longer a surprise. Everyone expected it. Second, instead of confetti they used wadded up balls of paper and just hucked them at people which actually hurt a bit. On the bright side, they did not do the submarine or Dr. Blue Bonnet skits, so I guess it is all good.



We had fun with the pantomines, too.