Ahwahnee Hit Parade of '68

Ahwahnee Hit Parade of ‘68

By Noel Laflin

August 2004

Greg Richards leading the troops up the old Cherokee trail, July 4, 1968

 

Liberation

“Shout it from the mountain on out to the sea (out to the sea)

No two ways about it, people have to be free

Ask me my opinion, my opinion will be

Nat'ral situation for a man to be free”

The Rascals, “People Got To Be Free,” No. 3 hit from 1968.  

I was not supposed to work the entire summer of 1968.  By some fluke, however, my initial three-week offer of membership on the Ahwahnee staff was lengthened to nine weeks - and with pay at that.  My honorarium would be five dollars a week.  I took the offer and planned my escape.  You see, the year was already proving to be a sad and tumultuous one - what, with the assassinations of both Martin Luther King and then Bobby Kennedy. The lure of a mountain get-away sounded pretty appealing to this recently deflated and yet still idealistic fifteen-year-old.  With more trouble coming later that summer in far away Vietnam, Czechoslovakia, and even Chicago, I felt damn lucky to be away from the daily television barrage of Russian tanks, continued body counts and bloody skirmishes between protesters and the Windy City’s Finest.

Like so many young men trying to establish his own identity at fifteen, I needed to blow off some steam, having felt pent up in school for the past nine months. I had also been recently freed from a heavy leg cast that had greatly limited my movements for thirteen weeks that spring.  I had really just learned how to walk once again when the call came from Jack Moulton, the camp director, offering me full-time work that summer.  No wonder I jumped - limped, was more like it - at the chance.  I packed my bags and had my folks drive me out of the city smog and up the mountain once more.  I was finally going to be a full-fledged Ahwahnee Staff Man.  The only regret I had at the time was leaving behind my first girl friend.  But, she was true to her word and wrote me that summer.  I was almost starting to feel all grown up.It had been two years since I had been to camp, as summer school took precedence over the prior season.  My friend and fellow cohort from the 1966 staff, Scott Mac Donald, kept me up-to-date with Ahwahnee goings-on as he did work camp in 1967 and skipped out on summer school.  It turned out that he missed the acting class and I missed the camp drama.  So, we traded information.  It proved to be a fair swap.  Now, a year later, I was more than happy to make my escape up the magical highway.  Little did I know that I would be seeking such liberation on old Highway 30 for the next nine years.

Hell Week
"I'm gonna raise a fuss, I'm gonna raise a holler

About a workin' all summer just to try to earn a dollar

Every time I call my baby, and ask to get a date

My boss says, "No dice son, you gotta work late"

Sometimes I wonder what I'm a gonna do

But there ain't no cure for the summertime blues”

Blue Cheer, “Summer Time Blues,” Hit No. 84 from 1968

 

Staff week at Ahwahnee amounted to every football jock’s version of hell week, minus the padding.

Our newly assembled group of sixty were assigned quarters, fed three mess hall meals a day and expected to rebuild a winter-ravaged camp within one week.  This involved the preparation of twelve troop campsites, campfire arenas, kitchen & mess hall, warehouse, pool & shower facilities, archery & rifle ranges, nature, camp craft & handicraft lodges, Scoutmaster’s lounge, trading post, doctor & general staff quarters, outhouse (KYBO) placement or replacement, road  & trail repair, assembly area revitalization and anything else needing a quick spit-and-a-promise.

Additionally, we had to learn our individual roles for the summer as well as how we all could function as one cohesive family throughout a nine-week period.  You had new guys learning from the old timers.  Our ages ranged anywhere from thirteen to sixty.  In 1968, there was little ethnic diversity, as most of us tended to be from lily white, middle class Orange County families.  In short, the family thing was not much of a stretch as most of us were in our teens.  Brotherly bonding occurred from day one.

Each area of camp took primary responsibility for their immediate concerns; i.e. the aquatic staff (Jeff Sherwood, Jim Hirsch and an aide) had to get the pool heater functioning, clean out the dead squirrels, mice and what have you from the stale, green swamp of a pool, which had frozen and thawed several times over the winter and spring.  Additionally, they had to get their merit badge and swimmer safety game plan together.  The same routines held true for every division of camp: get your site together and plan your program. 

Where we all had to pull together, however, was in the refurbishing of the twelve campsites.  This involved the rebuilding of the tent platforms campers would call home for the week, as well as the hauling in of heavy tent canvas, tent poles, army surplus metal cots (with busted springs and all) and ancient, dusty, stained mattresses, which had been stored in the shower area all winter.  There were over two hundred tents, cots and mattresses needing relocation.  It was a daunting chore, especially when it came to hauling these bulky items up a steep dusty trail (like Tielroy), as it had no road leading into it. Every site needed rakes, shovels and fifty-gallon drums for trash.  Pine needles then had to be raked out of the immediate vicinity in order to meet U.S. Forestry fire regulations; pathways were in dire need of repair, as were broken water lines, plugged up outhouse outlets, etc.  The physical work was long, hard, dusty and tedious.  Cold showers were then usually in order as the heaters at the pool took some time to repair, let alone fire up that first week.  The food was either plain or somewhat questionable, depending upon the cooks’ disposition, the condition of the kitchen and just how green the mess staff might be.  All in all, it was sort of like being in the army, I suppose.  At least those who had already served in that noble profession kept referring to the similarities.  

After the daytime physical maneuvering of inanimate objects, evenings were then turned over to the senior camp staff who instructed us in everything from first aid classes to song leading and campfire skit preparation. It never seemed to end.  People fell into their bunks dead tired every night, too tired to party.  Daylight would come all too early and the heavy, dusty work would soon resume.  For a few of us, new trails were also on the horizon.

 Trailblazers

"Do you know the way to San Jose?

I've been away so long. I may go wrong and lose my way.

Do you know the way to San Jose? 

I'm going back to find some peace of mind in San Jose.”

Dionne Warwick, “Do You Know The Way To San Jose,” No. 79 hit from 1968.

I have in my possession an old grid section (Keller Peak quadrangle) of a topographic map of  the San Bernardino Mountains, dated 1953.  The communities of Arrowbear and Running Springs are  noted, as are various summer camps, including Arrowbear Music Camp, Camp Cedar Crest and the YMCA camp in Little Green Valley.    Interestingly enough there is no Camp Helendade, Wintaka or Ahwahnee shown here.  Where Ahwahnee would someday take its place was Larry’s Boys Camp instead, established sometime in the 40’s and later sold to the Boy Scouts in the mid fifties.  There are hand marked dotted trails surrounding Larry’s Boys Camp, coded as the Red, Blue, Orange, Green, Rainbow and Deep Creek trails.  And as it turned out, this was the most up-to-date map three of us had to lead our way across unfamiliar territory back in late June of  1968. 

Now, legend has it, that when asked if he had ever been lost, Daniel Boone is reported to have replied: “No, not lost, but at times just a mite bewildered.”  Like Boone, Scott, Steve and I were also a mite bewildered for a day or two during that first week of camp.

The commissioner  staff  was assigned the task of remarking two of the hiking trails in camp: the Red Trail and Deep Creek’s Yellow Trail. Scott Mac Donald was volunteered for the job of trailblazer by his boss, Wally Simmons.  I was asked to represent the Grand Canyon Commissioner Area by my commissioner, Bill Herzberg.  It turned out that Steve Sundquist did not have an assistant as yet and so had to volunteer himself.

It’s still unclear to me who was responsible for the marking of the other four trails in camp.  Perhaps it fell to Mike Barnett and his Senior Patrol Leaders.  This seems to make sense as Mike would hike every new batch of kids the entire length of all the trails, connecting one to the other.  And this they did weekly, with full backpacks, covering God-only-knows how many miles in a two-day period.  I guess someone must have known the way.

Now, I know that Steve and I had never hiked either of our assigned paths - and in looking back on those two days it’s doubtful that Scott had much experience with red or yellow trails either; it was evident from the amount of time we spent roaming the woods searching out our way. 

Armed with a backpack of wooden markers (arrow-shaped), a hammer, nails, brushes, and red and yellow paint cans we were told to follow our ancient map, vintage 1953, and remark the trails in advance of the troops, which, would arrive the very next week.  So, we followed the old paths, scouting out old trail markers and when found giving them a new coat of florescent paint (red or yellow).  Each trail was approximately five miles in length.  At the rate we crisscrossed the forest searching out hidden or non-existent markers I believe that we probably doubled the length of each trail.  I am not even sure the paint was dry on most of those old markers by the time we finally emerged from the woods and those first campers tried to follow our wooden directions.  And I never understood why we used florescent red and yellow paint.  That was, not until the next week on July 4^th, the night Greg Richards decided the entire camp would hike the Red Trail at night, so that we could view the fireworks being shot off over Lake Arrowhead.  It turned out that our trail markers held up just fine.  Our Program Director’s timing was rather off, however.

It was a special campfire we put on that Wednesday night, July 4, 1968.  And  it was at the end of it, that Greg proposed  we all follow him up the Red Trail, grab a rock  for a chair and await the splendid fireworks, which would commence at precisely nine that evening.  And like believing children, we followed the man out of the fire arena, crossed the highway and up the steep switchbacks, searching out red florescent markers from many an old tree, stump and painted boulder.

It looked like a scene from an old Frankenstein movie - you know the part where the villagers are approaching the old castle with torches ablaze.  Well, our torches were merely flashlights and it was hardly a castle we were storming - just the top of the mountain, which stood a good eight hundred feet above camp. But it would have the best view in the area of the fireworks, or so Greg said.  And so, we continued up the dark, dusty trail, all two hundred of us.

We all made it to the top with a good twenty minutes to spare before the polytechnics would begin.  So, we waited.  Nine o’clock came and went and we still waited.  Maybe the time had been moved to nine-thirty or ten, Greg advised us and so we waited some more.  Once ten o’clock had come and gone, so were we. There were no fireworks that night.  Turned out, they had been shot off the night before for some unknown reason.  Greg came to breakfast in disguise the next morning and had changed his name to Rudy Begonia.  But at least the trail markers had not led us astray.

Over the course of that summer, along with so many to follow, I would come to know some of the trails in camp very well.  Not a week went by in 1968 that I was not leading one group of kids or another either up the Red Trail or down the Deep Creek Trail.  The Red Trail had the advantage of being all downhill on the return trip, with a pretty view of the surrounding country at the top.  Deep Creek was all downhill to start with and had the advantage of a great swim once we reached the bottom.  The bummer was coming back up the switchbacks.  I bet I have done that hike at least a hundred times over my life, and not regretted it once.  Well, perhaps regretted it a couple of times when I had to endure stumbling amongst the giant boulders and icy water late at night.

Those evening hikes were not planned, but occurred when kids were reported as “lost,” and the staff  went on a search.  I can recall being assigned (or was I stupid enough to volunteer?) to the Yellow Trail on at least two search party expeditions.  I guess my knowledge of the path put me front and center.  Of course, they both commenced sometime around nine or ten in the evening.  I tell you now, it was spooky covering those five miles in the dark, not to mention menacing, as one was jumping from boulder to boulder by way of moonlight or flashlight.  As it turned out, on both occasions, the lost kid was found somewhere close to camp while those of us down in Deep Creek were still calling out his name.  Somewhere around midnight, scratched, bruised and hoarse, we would emerge from the edge of Inspiration Point, having reached the top of the trail, only to be told of the boy’s safe return.  Well, shit-fire, another fun night in the woods, we would tell ourselves.  But it was a good feeling to know that we had tried and hadn’t required a search party of our own.

Today I still dream of hidden trails in Ahwahnee.  Like many dreams the landscape is a bit bizarre and the paths are never quite what they were in reality.  But I instinctively know that I am at Ahwahnee and the trail always seems somewhat familiar.  I guess it’s the stuff dreams are made of - especially when an old Rascals’ song  lulls me off to sleep.