29 miles off the coast of the continental United States, located southwest of Los Angeles, you’ll find the island of Santa Catalina, known simply as Catalina to Angelenos. The Glendale Y.M.C.A. has operated a week-long summer camp on the island at their facility known as Camp Fox since 1926. It was here that my father, who was quite troubled that I’d rather organize our neighbor Mrs. Budke’s pots and pans than go hiking with him in the hills behind our house, sent me in an ill-fated attempt to get me to “enjoy” the great outdoors at the age of 11 on August 15, 1977; I can pinpoint the date so precisely because no sooner – well, one day later – had we arrived on the island than news reached us that Elvis had died. I would like to stress that I am not now nor have I ever been a fan of Elvis; the date of his death is just seared into my memory because of the unfolding trauma I was enduring 29 miles off the coast of California.
The only way to access Catalina Island is by boat. We departed Long Beach, southeast of Los Angeles proper, on Monday morning, and I spent the first hour of my outdoor adventure vomiting all over myself as the ferry made its way through the choppy waters of a sea gearing up for a storm. When we arrived at “camp,” we were assigned bungalows, which were really nothing more than roofs covering 8 or so bunk beds each – in other words, they had no walls – so while we technically had a roof over our heads, we were for all practical purposes outside!
A storm had been brewing all morning, and, by the time we reached the island, had begun dumping buckets of rain while what felt like gale-force winds whipped the raindrops sideways into our bungalows. After about an hour of this and drenched to the skin, an adult finally realized all us “campers” were going to die of Exposure, so they gathered us in the cafeteria, which had the luxury – I’d call it sensibility – of walls, and broke us up into groups of four and gave us board games to play. My group got Connect Four, essentially just Tic-Tac-Toe only played with checkers instead of with paper and pencil. We spent our first day in the “great outdoors” huddled inside, damp and shivering (and, in my case, smelling of vomit) playing games most of us had in our nice warm rooms at home.
Day two was not much better. The adults had put up makeshift tarps made out of large plastic trash bags during the night to protect our bungalows from the elements while we slept in our bunk beds, but they were woefully inadequate, and it was freezing. After the remains of breakfast had been cleared from the cafeteria, and having us remain in our seats, indoors I might add, the adults, assisted by older kids, called Camp Counsellors, who had been through the ordeal of Camp Fox in years prior and for some unfathomable reason voluntarily returned to “help out,” passed out arts and crafts supplies and instructed us in how to make macramé key chain decorations, something every eleven year old needs! I seem to recall there was about an hour of “singing,” a kind of pre-teen Karaoke called The Camp Fox Jamboree, and marshmallows which, rather than being heated over an open flame on a stick outside, were served on plates placed in the middle of all our arts and crafts supplies.
Evening came, and morning followed. The third day.
After enduring another frigid and damp night in the bungalow, I awoke, yet again, to a wet and gray morning. As I lay in my bunk staring out at the Pacific Ocean, which was easy to do since the bungalow had no fuckin’ walls, a plan hatched and began to take root in my head. Now, many if not most of you will not know this, but I swam competitively on a youth team as a boy, and I was actually pretty good, if I do say so myself. Staring out at the vast expanse of ocean between me and the mainland, I tried to calculate how many laps it would be for me to swim to Long Beach; I hadn’t yet determined how I’d traverse the roughly 30 miles from Long Beach to Glendale once I’d arrived on the shore. First things first! Gotta get off this island!
I was disheartened, because even though I was highly motivated to escape Camp Fox, even I was sane enough to realize Long Beach was too far to swim, even for an inveterate breaststroke youth champion like me! Plus, sharks! Then a large cargo ship came into my field of vision. The sea between Catalina and Long Beach is a major shipping lane, with Long Beach actually being the site of the official Port of Los Angeles – called San Pedro. My heart started racing. I didn’t need to swim to Long Beach, I just needed to swim to one of these freighters putt-putting along, hitch a ride into port, and I’d be home free!
So while everyone else was waking up and performing their morning ablutions, I retrieved a pair of Speedos from my duffle bag, the only pair of swim trunks I had which I’d brought along because the brochure said there would be diving and swimming off the Camp Fox pier. I made my way to the landing at the end of the pier at what must have been around 7:30 in the morning, changed into my Speedos, and sat down cross-legged waiting for a cargo ship to appear on the horizon, and when one did, I dove into the ocean and began my watery trek home.
But, unbeknownst to me, a Camp Counsellor had clocked me sitting on the landing. He probably thought I was homesick (he was right) and that I’d taken up a spot “nearest” I could get to my home at this godforsaken island camp that made Guantanamo look like a Club Med. My Speedos must have given my true intentions away, as no sooner had I hit the frigid waters of the Pacific (I had neglected to factor in sea temperature to my survivability calculation) than a little rubber dingy with an outboard motor attached pulled up alongside me and I was scooped out of the water.
When we reached shore, most of my fellow campers had assembled on the beach. Wrapped in a blanket, I was shivering like a bed in a cheap motel you’d just spent 25 cents on activating the Magic Fingers vibrating feature (Google it! They still make it!). As I saw the crowds of pre-teenagers assembled on the shore, I prepared myself for a “walk of shame” past them as they shouted out rude things. But to my surprise, as I looked each squarely in the eye, I saw admiration, as if they were saying, “almost!…we all want out of this hell hole…good on you for trying.”
The rain never let up. The clouds never parted. I spent the rest of my week-long sentence indoors making lanyards, singing at the Jamboree, and playing Connect Four. But I had been accorded celebrity, rock star status amongst the campers as the kid who tried to swim to Long Beach. Trust me, it was the only time in my life, then or now, when I was considered “the cool one” amongst my peers!
Safely back home, I discovered my parents had used my week away as a time to get our kitchen remodeled with new cabinets, tile, and linoleum. So, much to my father’s chagrin, the first thing I did when I got home from my week camping in the great outdoors which he intended to “cure” me of my affinity for well organized kitchen cupboards was organize my mother’s pots and pans.