…As with so many things in my life many of my best memories stem from me being involved in the fire department. My favorite Beaver Hollow camping adventure is no exception. Months earlier a group of us fire guys were playing a make-up basketball game against some of Josephine Counties local wheelchair bound athletics (The Rolling Rogues). Now don’t let the idea that these supposedly crippled guys being in wheelchairs gave them any disadvantage over us macho fire guys. I should have known we were in trouble when the fire boys were helping unload the wheelchairs the Rogues had brought for us to use in the game. As we were rolling them into the gym they all sort of creaked and it seemed like some of the round wheels were a bit square. Now on the other hand as the Rolling Rogues came whipping in the gym in their chairs they all sounded smooth. Their wheels slightly tipped in, so corners could be taken quite a bit faster then the artifact chairs that ended up being for us. The moral of the story is they kicked the fire guy’s butts, bad. After the game we all headed down to the local pizza parlor for some eats and refreshment. I got to talking with some of the wheelchair guys and found out they liked camping but not many campsites are very wheelchair friendly, which got me to thinking…
Hey Lauren, lets tear down the restrooms at camp (they weren’t very nice back then) and build some new ones that dudes and dudets in wheelchairs can get into. He just looks at me and says, ok, so we did. As normal I conned Jimmy O into helping too, since he was the real builder dude in my clan of big project helpers. I got a hold of some of the guys on the wheelchair team after we had finished building the new restrooms at camp and explained what we had done and that we could handle people in wheelchairs at Beaver Hollow.
They got a hold of some of their buddies, many being from the White City Domiciliary (housing for beat-up military guys) and before I knew it a big white bus was pulling onto the Beaver Hollow lawn, as the shhhhh from the air brakes on the bus were set. The bus door slowly opened and off came mostly older guys that had felt the ravages of war. A couple guys were missing a leg, one was missing both, an arm gone there. Some were just older gentlemen that needed assisted care. A couple of the guys was supposed to be crazy (meaning mentally unstable) which sort of sends a creep up your spine. There was even one guy that was blind. In fact right after this camping trip he was headed to San Rafel (place where they train the Seeing Eye dogs) to get presented a Seeing Eye dog. We ended up with about twenty guys and a couple of their helper personnel (nurses really). They all went to setting up their camp as a big white tent was laid out on the ground, staked down and pulled erect by the small army jeep they had brought for support. They began loading all their gear into their new home for the weekend. Slowly they began to gimp towards the covered camp pavilion where it was cooler, protected from the warm summer sun. The chess boards, checker boards and card games began to unfold at the wooden picnic tables, they swatted at the occasional bug flying by…
…I knew long in advance of them coming to my campground that I would need to come up with some special activities for them because they would not be able to do some of the customary activities, like use the aforementioned rope swing. I wanted them to be able to pan for gold but getting these guys down next to the rocky, slick creek bank would have been next to impossible, so I decided we would bring Graves Creek to them. I had enlisted my moms help in the weekend’s adventure for the guys and boy did she come through. She had an old bath tub set up with water running through it so they could pan for gold while still setting in their wheelchairs or on a big round of firewood. My mom had conjured up several small gold pans, some tweezers and small glass bottles to put their gold in, if they found any. I yelled towards the motley crew “who wants to pan for gold?” “I’ll run down there to the creek and load up this washtub with some fresh gravel and bring it up to you so you can pan for gold”. Some of the older guys just looked up from their card games and scoffed at me “there’s no gold in that creek sonny”. I said “well let me try and find a good spot then” as I climbed on my tractor pulling the trailer with the washtub on it. I went right down where they could all see me next to the creek bank and began to overly exaggerate digging the gravel into the washtub. Periodically making a grunting sound to make it sound harder digging then it really was. All the time my guests were yelling down to the creek side at me “sonny you’re wasting your time”. Washtub full of creek gravel, back on the tractor, out round the big blackberry bush where I can’t be seen from camp, I leap off the tractor seat, run to the washtub and dump the big vile of GOLD mixed with some black sand my mom had gleaned from someone, stirred briskly, jumped back on the tractor and acted like nothing happened as I drive back into camp. By now the war veterans were beginning to mock me about why no gold would be found where I had dug into the creek bank, hee, hee. Curve of the creek was wrong, current wouldn't throw it there, techinical stuff. Grabbing up a gold pan I scooped some of the raw material into my pan and said "ahh, let’s just take a look for sport”. I’m not real good at panning for gold so it took me a few minutes to work the heavy material away from the fines. Edging slowly over towards the disgruntled game players, swirling my pan around so they could all see nestled in the black sand, yep, gleaming GOLD. I was almost limped over by the pursuing horde as they began grabbing gold pans and heading to our make shift stream bed. I never did tell them I spiked the stew.
Ahh, everybody was happy now, so off I go to do some chores around camp. A couple hours later I come back and they are still over panning for gold. By now several of them were complaining about how bad their backs were hurting from bending over panning. I tell them “well come back over and play cards for a little while and let your backs rest”. They all yell at me at the same time, “are you kidding, there’s GOLD in this gravel you brought us”.
At this time in my life I was dating a young lady (Kaye). I never will forget the sight of her helping the blind guy pan for gold. Like the image of the old golfer man with both his arms wrapped around her body, helping the pretty young gal improve her golf swing. But in this case opposite. Kaye nestled behind him, she was pretty well endowed and his head fit perfectly between her breasts. His face just a grinning from ear to ear as she patiently reached around him and helped him swirl his gold pan. Slowly they would work the material down and then she would help him pick the pieces of gold out and put in his small bottle. While he could not see the actual gold he could hear and feel the weight of the gold in the bottle when he shook it back and forth. I’m not convinced he was too engrossed in the gold in his bottle either. To this day I have no idea where mom came up with all that gold.
About then is when I noticed one of the guys was missing, the one whom was missing one of his legs, was missing from camp…
It wasn't only the fellows from White City Dom. that benefitted from the weekend at Beaver Hollow that time. My brother, Blazes uncle Jack was a Viet Nam Vet that never really got over his Service time. Dinner was over, fellows were sitting around the camp fire, talking and counting the stars, when I head a ATV slowly coming down the road from the houses around the corner in the upper field. In the lights of Camp, I saw it was Jack with his little grandson cradled in his lap, who he was babysitting that night. They slowly came over to the group and stood listening to the conversations and although most of the men were Korean Vets, I felt a bond or a feeling pass between them as they were introduced. I took the little baby, Jack sit down and was included in their group. I didn't stay to listen what was talked about but entertain the little boy and watched my brother relax in the semi darkness of the flickering fire. Much later my sister-in-law came looking for Jack and the baby, where she also seemed to sense the need for Jack to sit with guys that knew and had gone throught things we will never know or experience.
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