Tent City

I saw this Texas tent city for immigrant children and it made me think about camp.

However these kids got there, there was someone assigned to monitor a group of lads or ladies sorted by age and assigned to a bunk.  In this case, the government was then given the task to bed, clothe, feed, teach, maintain order, entertain, exercise, etc. all these kids until it can figure out what to do next.

In scouts, we’d have jamborees where hundreds of kids from all over would come together and camp for a week. Of course we had to pitch our own tents and chop our own wood and cook our own food and sleep on the ground. A few had folding cots but nothing fancy. It was a learning experience without parents.

Now camp was much more like the Texas tent city. A parent or family member or bus ticket would deliver you far from home with a bunch of strange boys. A counselor would divide us up and assign us to a cabin. Each cabin had rows of bunk beds and we’d place all our worldly belongings at the foot of the bed. There was no air conditioning or fans.

These were times where as a young lad, I’d been dropped off in a unknown place with a bunch of strangers and no mom or dad. There wasn’t a guarantee they would come back to get you…ever, so it was deal with the situation. This was a learning experience too.

We were told when to go to sleep and when to wake up. We were told to make our bunks (hospital corners) tight enough to bounce a quarter off of, like the army. We would be marched off to the dining hall (that doubled as a basketball court and dance floor) and then a trip to the outside latrine. The rest of the day in our uniforms of tee shirts, cotton shorts and soft shoes our counselor led us through the preplanned agenda of sailing, shooting, archery, water skiing, canoeing, and a game of knuckle ball. An outdoor shower, usually clothed and an evening of counselors sitting around a bon fire singing college fight songs and the Four Lads and telling tales of Black Beard the pirate who used to hang around here. After weeks of the same chores and routines this gritty sandy salty lot was bonding into the “Lord of the Flies”.

Then one day, the counselors would smarten us up, line up rows of picnic benches, and gather us for a group photo. Off in the woods there was a cloud of dust and down the long dusty road came a caravan of parents coming to retrieve their boys. Drag the big wooden army footlocker full of dirty laundry and whatever we’d swiped or traded and dropped it in the backseat.

The long ride home was fairly quiet. Leaving a world of independent freedom and back to a control environment of school and church and wearing shoes.

I can empathize with the immigrant kids and hope they come away from all this crazy with stories they can tell their kids. Probably won’t have any stories of skinny dipping and being caught by a boatload of girls or having your first dance with the same girls from another camp.

Good luck campers and welcome to America.