Page 187 - WhyAsInY

Chapter Fourteen
We’ll Err (but) Be True
SUMMERS OF 1964 – 1967
In which our author is subject to economic forces that he can’t control and is then subjected to a dialectic that, given sufficient effort, he can.
Irecognize that by turning now to the summer of 1964, when I started at Camp Brookwood, I am getting even more ahead of myself chron- ologically. By then, I had completed two years at Amherst, and my time
at Brookwood runs through and includes the summer of 1967, when I had already completed my first year of law school. But I prefer to treat the time from college orientation through graduation (oops, commence- ment) without, if you will, literary interruption (about camp, anyway). I also wish to speak of my fourth and final camp with my descriptions of Tribe War and Color War fresher in your mind.
Because I was equipped with my Rocket 88, I did not have to leave Kee-Wah by bus with the campers on the last day of the summer of 1963. Instead, for reasons that are not at all clear, I lingered on the porch of my bunk and just took in the scene after all of the children had departed. As I sat and gazed out at the empty campus after saying my goodbyes and my see-you-next-years, the din that constantly accompa- nies the presence of two hundred or so young boys was still there. I was convinced that the gleeful, high-pitched shouting, laughter, and just
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