Barry

During late summer of 1960, my second of three seasons on the vaunted Sandy Hill Boys Camp staff, there was a camper named Barry.
Barry was big for his age (only 14), and affected the image of a hard-rock macho wannabee. He used to dunk his sandy blonde hair with Wildroot Creme Oil, and combed it forward into an oily curl over his brow. He had the back combed in a greasy dee-aye.
Barry wanted very much to be on the camp staff; in fact, the stable-staff, which attracted macho wannabees. It was an image that appealed: the sullen cowpoke atop his tired nag (see Waco on Rebel in the J-D Jenkins story). That image flew in the face of reality; that horses were large animals that filled their stalls with stinking sewage.
Which is why I did well in year-one, when I wasn’t much good as a rider. I wasn’t afraid of work — like mucking stalls.
As such, J-D, the head-honcho, considered me his most valuable employee.
I don’t know as Barry ever made it onto the staff — at least not while I was there (‘59, ‘60 and ‘61). You had to be at least 15, which he would have been in ‘61; but probably his affectation did him in. I think he also smoked.
Actually the most macho guys on the Sandy Hill staff were the kitchen-crew; not the stable-staff. In 1960 that included Bob Mason, who I often canoed with on the muddy Elk so he could smoke his treasured Marlboros.
And a wiry little guy whose name I forget who blew a rod out of his ‘54 Ford. He and the kitchen’s head-honcho swapped out the blown motor and wrenched in a slightly larger Mercury Y-block. They did it with a tree next to the kitchen. (I observed, of course.)
The head-honcho of the kitchen was Lowell Hildreth, a big strapping dude personally hired by Dr. Palmer (“good food, and plenty of it”). Lowell, in his early 20s, was from south Jersey, and on days off he would ride the broncos at Cowtown.
None of the kitchen-staff had cabins. In fact, they stayed together in a large tent at the foot of a tiny meadow below the mansion-house. At least it had a raised wooden floor-deck, but they were always fighting mosquitoes. Many of them would sneak cigarettes on the woody cliff overlooking the waterfront.
I’ve always loved pillorying macho wannabees (ask Jack), so one night we decided to fix Barry (my idea, of course). All at Sandy Hill knew “the trick:” dip a sleeping person’s hand in warm water and they wet their bed.
So about 10 o’clock one night we snuck furtively with our flashlights into Barry’s cabin, and found Barry sleeping soundly in a top bunk. Gingerly we dragged his hand out from under the covers, and dipped it in a glass of warm water.
Naturally, you’d never know if it worked until the next morning when the embarrassed cabin-counselor removed all the bedding for washing, and tossed the soiled mattress atop the cabin-roof to air out.
“Who’s mattress is that?” I asked innocently.
“Why hard-rock Barry,” I was told.
“Imagine that!” I said. (Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk..... )