Yes, Your Honor,
Vague as it is, especially many of the details, I now recall the watermelon affair and know it had been 1960 [when we were junior counselors], unlike 1959 when it would have been an "inside job".
As a matter of fact, there was that "inside job" to which I had alluded, in 1959 when your cousin [Mike Reiss] and I were [so ugly we could be?] kitchen boys. Food and snack were quite good that year, but we just didn't get our just desserts, literally. Pies especially were less than a delight to eat and a danger to serve, their fruit components being so liquidy that most of their contents would indiscriminantly "spill-over" into bunk mothers' sheitls and OD's tsitsit [or was it the other way around?], onto walls, floors and the porches, wherever, so by the time the poor campees got a serving, other than the crust there was only the aroma to salivate.
One day the baker had an epiphany: shortcake made from strawberry so good that even Darryl would have been proud. The entire staff, especially the elders [and in those days anyone over 40 met that criteria], looked forward to a novel [for 1959] nocturnal delight.
Unfortunately for them, fortunately for a self-selected few, and most unfortunate for the devious, fifth columnist perpetrator, the latter kitchen boy trying, it would seem, to curry favor with his colleagues in preparation for the next year's equal class standing as a co-junior counselor, figuratively over-turned the "apple cart".
Fifteen minutes before snack CIT's and JC's gathered behind the kitchen, I entered the walk in, a more less human "chain" was formed, and that prized and longed for evening snack highlight was despoiled at a rate greater than that which occured in/to Egypt as Moses led the Children out and to freedom.
But if you think the Children of Israel found the sight of the approaching chariots of Pharoah frightful, it ain't notin compared to hearing the footsteps of The Fox [our beloved Phil Bortnick, may G-d rest his and Rose's souls] approaching. Swifter than the parting of the Red Sea, all perpetrators scrambled, pies in tow, to parts unknown. All except one, that insidious, invidious "insider".
"Hi, Phil", I tried to, as calmly as possible, greet him. "What's going on?" he asked me while a plurality of my body was still in the walk in, my heart and soul having already departed. OK, I was a thief, or worse, why compound the felony by lying, especially when it wouldn't work. Without naming names [I still had hoped for comeraderie should I be nonetheless "invited back"] I confessed.
By then, one by one, staff started filing into the dining hall and, long before reaching "the trough" each bellowed: "Where is the short-cake?" I don't recall how Phil conveyed that there were barely any left [six, I believe] and who was at fault, but each speedily became aware of both realities. There was no place for me to hide and running away would have substantiated the cowardly the wimp that I was [am?]. So I sat there, at the same table with Rose and Phil, and as best as I can recall, with Eddie and Fritzi [may G-d bless the soul of this woman who had been one of my Mom's closest friends for scores of years] Goldman, and, after an all too short hiatus, Chief and Mrs. M [whose souls are surely united with the others, our beloved Mary Tobe, and everyone else, including grays!]
Classically, NOBODY [that I can recall] chastised me for this, to put it euphemistically, "indiscretion" [not even Eddie Goldman or Phin Tobe!] And classically and typically, our leader, The Chief, forwent being one of the six recipients, making sure, of course, that Mrs. M., a lady of ladies, was not similarly deprived.
Those were the days, but Mike, so were those that preceded 1959 and 1960 as well as 1953 when we first encountered Camp Alton in G-1. [Five counselors, in retrospect barely old than we, had to endure me, three of whom we had simultaneously, and of these three none survived to see this day.] Do you recall Bobby Reissman in our bunk? I ask because another [deserved] Alton legend - "Uncle" Neil Brier - provided me with a recent obituary of a "Providian" octogenerian by the same name [leaving a son "Jr."] who silently had owned a portion of Camp Alton Inc. stock, and possibly someone reading this megillah [gorillah?] can provide some info. Similarly, the ensuing decades were indeed great ones and I am sure it will surprise nobody that a night does not pass when the [souless] body of this immature sixty+ year old is not back at the shores of Winnie P at locations never far from Clay Point whose topography is emanating alternate yet simultaneous vibrations of tenuous surreality and resurrection.
May G-d bless and conserve.
mark@lgpltd.com