There is only one year round employee of camp. While his job would be best characterized as a caretaker, for some reason he is referred to as the "Ranger". There have been a few over the years, but the most colorful, by far, is Bob Newton. But you never called him simply Bob. You called him "Ranger Bob".
Bob was from the adirondacks and had what was called an adirondack accent. I have met a lot of people from the adirondacks, no-one else spoke like Bob. It is hard to describe the accent, like so many things about Bob, it was totally unique to him. It took some time to fully understand him, but it grew on you. I think part of what added to the accent was the wonderful turns of phrase that he had. He would call people "lappers" for "lap dogs". Not sure whether that was a turn of endearment or a turn of disrespect. Another favorite of his was "whoremaster". Again, not that there really is a traditional definition, but I was equally puzzled about the meaning of that phrase. On one occasion I was walking up the camp road and he pulled up beside me in his pick-up truck. He leaned over with a wry smile and asked "Boy, you want to see some Beaver?" and gestured with his thumb to the bed of the pick-up truck. Sure enough, underneath the tarp was a beaver that he had trapped. I hardly had time to laugh before he tore off to his next job.
I knew him when he was in his late 60s I believe. It was hard to tell, he was incredibly fit and strong, but he did have a few wrinkles and some graying hairs. He walked with a bit of a limp and always had his head cocked to one side. Just part of his charm. He could fix anything. One summer I was up early and there was a problem with the sewage pipe leading from the dining hall. So he grabbed the loader (not "The Load") and started tearing up the ground so we could get at the pipe. He had me jump in there with a shovel once we got close and he continued to dig around me. He had total control of that machine, he could have picked a dime off the top of my head without harming me. He was willing to teach everyone. He was the one who taught me with old vehicles it was necessary to check the oil every time before you started it. He had this kind of power that if you forgot to check it, it would inevitably run out of oil on you. However, there was a limit. Things that he kind of viewed as not particularly useful he never bothered to learn how to use. For instance a microwave, I remember him fiddling around with it and getting frustrated and just decided to drink his coffee cold - because that was how he rolled! He also had a unique approach to diet and health. His breakfast of choice was sausage. Nothing else. And, as the Load has mentioned, he enjoyed chewing cigars.
No-one was more respected than he was. His house was at the end of the camp road and you needed to pass it to enter and leave camp. If it was after dark, you would turn the headlights and the engine off so that you would coast by his house without waking him, or even coming close. Interestingly, if you happened to sleep in you could count on Ranger Bob giving you his classic wake up. By classic I mean firing off a shotgun a couple feet from your tent.
Finally, he was extremely cunning. One of the biggest jobs to do at the end of the summer is to take down all the tents so that they can be packed away for the winter. On the day planned for it, Bob told us that we better get her done quickly because it was going to rain later. It was a bright day without a cloud, but if Bob said it would rain, it would. So we worked extra hard to get it all done. I approached Bob after we had finished and told him it turned out he was wrong about the rain. He replied "tents are all down, aren't they", as he walked away. He took a few more steps before I realized what he had done.
No comments:
Post a Comment