One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest .... Way Over

I have briefly written about cranky Roger. This story is about another Roger, perhaps older than cranky Roger, certainly crazier, certainly more entertaining.

I wish I knew more of the back story on this guy. He was probably late 70s early 80s and he just sort of appeared one day. Most people show up at the beginning of the summer, but not this guy. I can't explain it any better than just waking up and he was there. The thing that caught my eye right away was his collection of old school hilarious t-shirts. In particular he had one that advertised a small chain of hotels on the front and the back simply read "IT STINKS". I don't think he designed the shirt. I think the owners of those hotels were just as crazy as him and thought that "IT STINKS" would be catchy and would make people want to stay at the hotel. They were half right.

He was assigned odd jobs around camp. Relatively straightforward jobs. For instance he was assigned to paint the side of a white barn. He came up with a paint scheme where he would paint a given plank half white and half off color green. The thing is, I don't think anyone even knew that we had any off color green paint. Certainly he was only provided with the white paint. Perhaps, like him, the off color green paint just appeared. He got fairly far into the project before anyone noticed. He had that rare gift where because he did work on something, he actually created more work for others than if he simply had not worked on it at all!

That summer, I did not have my driver's license. Hell, he probably didn't either. For whatever reason, he was assigned a vehicle though and would let me drive it. That made him extra special in my mind. He had some delightful turns of phrase, referring to people as jackals and angry birds (perhaps he was simply ahead of his time and knew that one day Angry Birds would be a thing). He also was wonderfully inefficient. Regardless of the job, he would always forget a key tool or piece of material. This meant driving back down to the maintenance shop, over and over again. The main road through camp was a dirt road that was relatively well maintained. It could support traffic driving at 20 mph or so. Crazy Roger did not trust these roads. He made us take the back roads. These really were back roads, really poorly maintained with huge rocks and ruts. They were more like trails that you could drive on. You had to drive at 5 mph maximum on these roads and you still feared you would break something. Due to his Rainman like fears of regular roads and his penchant for forgetfulness, we accomplished very little. We did spend a great deal of time driving without covering any distance.

He may or may not have been involved in some litigation. We never saw him at lunch. It turned out the two may have been connected. There was really only one building that had a working phone that could dial long distance. That building was our central office where the camp big-wigs worked. Typically someone was always in that office. But, not at lunch. Towards the end of the summer, they got the phone bill. Crazy old Roger had been calling someone, every day for months. Ostensibly it was his attorney. That, unfortunately was the straw that broke the camel's back. Just as mysteriously as he arrived, he was gone. Perhaps he wasn't crazy, but a genius. Maybe he was both. I miss him.