Ashes to Ashes
Noel Laflin
8-20-25
It’s Gene’s birthday
today. He has born in 1920, so you can do the math as to know just how old he’d
be now.
He was forty-nine when he and Glad came to Ahwahnee back in
the summer of 1969. We didn’t know his real birthday that year - as he’d always
lie and say it was in December - or else he would have been thrown into the
pool on this day, just like any other lucky staff member who happened to
celebrate a summer birthday while camp was in session. But Brent Farley and
Charlie Ross figured it out a year later and into the pool Gene went – a fitting
tribute for turning fifty. - and for fibbing, too.
This particular photo was taken by Glad when I met up with the
two of them in Northern California back in 1981. Camp had closed, of course, so
the Bergner’s moved and managed a mobile home park up that way. I called ahead
and asked if we could meet up, which we did in this restaurant – the name of
which escapes me at the moment.
As we prepared to leave, Gene slipped a bulky napkin my way.
“Got ya a souvenir,” he said with a grin.
“Gene?” Gladys whispered, frowning a bit as we both took a peek
inside the napkin. “Is that an ashtray?”
“Could be,” he replied, suddenly studying the pretty ceramic
piece more closely, turning it this way and that before covering it up with the
napkin again and slipping it into my lap.
“But I cleaned it out,” he proudly announced.
Glad just shook her head and mumbled something inaudible as we
snuck out of the place.
We stayed in touch over the years. Sometimes I would come home
to find a box on my front doorstep with a hand written note addressed to me. It
might contain camp mugs, neckerchiefs, old photos from camp, a camp director’s
log of every off-season visitor to Ahwahnee from 1970-1980.
We’d exchange letters and phone calls, too, fairly often. Gene
loved my early stories about camp. He said to keep them coming.
My last call to Gene was nearly twenty-five years after the
theft of the ashtray. I called to wish him a happy birthday. He sounded tired –
but I expected that from a man just turning 85.
He didn’t ever let on that he was sick.
He died three months later.
I just finished a cup of coffee in an Ahwahnee mug with an old
North Orange Council logo on it. It was in a box left on my doorstep years ago.
And in a cupboard there’s a pretty ceramic ashtray around here
somewhere.
I should look for it today.
Then I’d remember the name of that forgotten restaurant; write
them an anonymous letter apologizing for some minor thievery decades ago, but that
I wasn’t giving anything back.
