Ann's Brother

Generally, the staff members at camp fell into three age groups: 1. Those under 25, were typically either college or high school students who worked at camp as sort of a fun summer job; 2. 35-45: These people occupied the leadership positions at camp, some worked for the boy scouts full time; 3. 65 and over: Generally retired people, almost all worked as volunteers. Then there was Landers (first name withheld, and because we typically referred to him as Landers). He was in his mid 30s, but was not in a leadership position. This was just one way he was a bit different. Landers had been initially hired to supervise the waterfront. However, on one occasion, he jumped into the water with his two-way radio still attached to his person and the radio did not survive. Landers was fired from his position, but not from camp. I don't think this happens with most companies. Generally, if you screw up as an accountant, they don't just move you to sales. But, Read was not like a company. If it were, most of us would have been fired very early on! Amazingly, once Landers was fired he was assigned as a "floater", he would move to different areas that needed him. I don't think camp had envisioned this position until the moment they created it on the fly. I had a number of adventures with Landers - all of them quite comical. Most of my summers at camp were spent as a guide, taking out week long canoe and backpack trips. One trip that we often did was a portion of the Northville Lake Placid trail. This is a trail that not surprisingly runs from the town of Northville to the Town of Lake Placid. It did not have a lot of redeeming features. It took you from point A to B. The trail passes through the high peaks, but does not climb any of them. In fact, the trail kept to the lowest elevations. Consequently the trail was always wet and muddy, but generally flat. The entire trail is about 122 miles, but most trips covered between 35-50 miles. One summer we had a group sign up to do the entire trail. The kids were all in good shape and about 14-15 years of age and it looked like it would be a fun adventure. Due to problems with child molestation in the Boy Scouts, there was a strict policy that there always had to be at least two adults on these types of trips. The guide was one of those adults and usually a father of one of the participants was the other adult. On this trip, the other adult was the mother of one of the kids. She hadn't done much hiking before, but she assured me that she had walked around her town with her backpack on. The tough thing is that the amount of gear you need to carry doesn't really vary based on the person's weight. A 185 pound man needs roughly the same gear as a 120 pound woman. 45-50 pounds of gear is a lot tougher for a lighter person to carry though. The trip started out pretty well, but it was clear who the slowest person was. It did not help that the rest of the group was quite a bit faster than normal. She may have been able to keep up on a regular trip, but not on this one. After the second or third day, she gave up. She later wrote a letter claiming that the entire camp was a testosterone fest and those that can't keep up are ground into trail dust. We adopted this as our creed. Her departure left us one adult short of the magical number needed to avoid child molestation though. What we needed was someone who had experience hiking that could pinch hit. What I got was Landers. Landers had very little experience hiking. He showed up with gear that he had cobbled together from various people. He became the anchor of the group, but seemed to relish it. There are not a lot of places to get lost on the trail so there is no problem getting spread out. Landers really hated mud. He would take enormous detours to avoid even the smallest patches. The combination of him hiking slower and further than the group meant that we would only see him for portions of the day, but he was always a good sport at camp and enjoyed putting the youngsters in their place. After this trip, he became an unofficial part of our camp. Even though Landers was older than all of us, we picked on him a lot. We would wrestle with him, hide his stuff etc. He did not tolerate this too well. He referred to a number of us as "knuckle draggers". His constant refrain was "that's taking a joke too far." Perhaps the thing I did that annoyed him the most involved some retro camp gear. Landers had some uniform items from the 80s, in particular a hat that he really enjoyed wearing. On one occasion, I managed to get his hat and I dumped it in the toilet. The toilet water was clean, at least as clean as a toilet can be, but this really got him angry. Even though the hat would dry out, I believe he threw it away. He must have said "that is taking a joke too far" many many times. At one point, he had partied a bit too hard and was unable to make it down for breakfast. He gave me strict instruction that if anyone asked about him the verbatim response I was to give was "I don't know shit about Landers!" It worked suprisingly well. Another great thing about Landers was his tenuous grip on reality. That year, someone had opened a liquour store in town. Not surprisingly it did pretty well. The owners, Ron and Cindy, were quite the characters. Particularly Ron. He enjoyed drinking at a bar called "country side" (The one with the Keno board) So much so, that he referred to himself as "Ron Countryside". Landers and I got to know Ron and Cindy pretty well. Ron was probably in his late 60s and Cindy was likely in her mid to late 40s. Although neither Ron or Cindy ever discussed it with Landers or even made any comments that could be interpreted that way, Landers got it in his head that Ron wanted Landers to sleep with his wife. He would constantly bring it up and explain how we were missing the obvious clues. These clues would consist of cryptic things like how she would order a drink, or Ron making some comment about how he enjoyed a certain town. Landers was sure he was right and we were just missing the obvious. As far as we know, Landers never did close the deal. I am sure he would have let us know.