My parents were always finding great ways to get rid of me during the summers. The most noteworthy was "Lake Bavaria Mounted Troop."
To the parents it was a bucolic, magical place where kids got to ride horses and meet unicorns. In reality, it was a forced labor camp where kids slaved away in a plantation like setting.
We met in an old one room school house on a horse farm. It was run by a crazy old catholic woman who demanded to be called "Colonel Perkins." She always said I saluted with the wrong hand.
Role call was at 7am, lunch was at 11. The thing was, starting at 11, we were made to sit up straight, lunches in front of us for 2 hours as as Colonel Perkins read from the bible or told us about the demons that periodically appeared in the very house we sat in.
The only water came from a pump in the stables and if you didn't push the pump down all the way when you were done, the stables would flood. Then the Colonel would line us up in the hot sun until someone stepped forward and took the blame. Seems like I never saw them for a few days until they'd finally turn up looking exhausted and pale.
The head counselor Cathy, was a 17 year old sadist with this little white dog that followed her everywhere. I was obsessed with her and god how I longed to be that dog.
She employed a host of prepubescent thugs to run the day to day operations. There was a pen surrounded by electric wire they used to break wild horses. The middle school counselors would line us up against the fence and throw balls at us. This was "dodge ball." If we got hit, it threw us into the fence where we were electrocuted. They thought this was hilarious.
One summer was a record breaking drought for Minnesota. Temperatures exceeded 100 degrees and the grasses turned from green to crisp brown.
Cathy used this opportunity to make us run obstacle courses for hours on end. This was explained as "recreation" to the parents. Lake Bavaria offered many magical recreational experiences:
1. Professional horseback riding lessons every day!
-Actually, I hated riding horses but true to their word, they made us ride them one hour a day. Some sickly looking kid had a doctors note saying he couldn't ride because of his asthma. Cathy barked at him to get on the horse anyways. God how I loved her.
2. A full equestrian apprenticeship!
-Cathy approached me once in full riding gear, riding crop in hand, demanding that I saddle up a horse. "But I don't know how to do that!" I complained. "Learn!" she snapped. An older girl rushed over and did it for me.
3. Hours of outdoor education.
I think what they really meant by this was all the character building that goes along with long forced marches and shoveling manure.
That camp had everything. A gorgeous teenage sadist I was enamored with, middle school capo's that liked to see us get electrocuted and a crazy old women who was somehow getting paid through the final onset of dementia. I always liked to pretend I was a prisoner in a concentration camp which helped make the whole experience more magical.
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- Posted using BlogPress via iPod touch
Location:Minneapolis
