Which is kinda weird, even up here.
It was 48 degrees and the last week of July. As Phlegm rolled himself to work, I contemplated summers I had known. Warmer, hotter summers.
And thanks to the portable cup of the Elixir of Knowledge that happily sloshed over into the cupholder, my mind found that small, dusty file labeled "Summer Camps".
Summer Camp. The name conjures up feelings of heat, sweat, and the strange smells of concrete shower rooms and window-screened cabins.
The conestoga for the yearly pilgrimage across the prairie was the family station wagon, a station wagon about the size of a living room and made to seat 8.
Without seat belts or air conditioning.
Saturday morning, bright & early, folks would drop kids and suitcases in our driveway and speed off before the child could change its mind.
Mom would shoe-horn the 10 of us kids into the car while Dad quietly swore while trying to pack, stack and lash down a pile of suitcases as tall as the cab on a Peterbilt.
Off we'd go, enduring the two-hour trip to one of the small lakes that occasionally dappled the Iowan landscape.
And most of those small lakes had a Bible Camp somewhere on its shore.
We'd unload. Mom would makee sure everyone was checked in, registered, and had their suitcase while Dad kept the motor running and the door open.
(I never knew you could squeal the tires on gravel until I arrived at my first Bible Camp.)
Things were pretty much the same every year, even at the different camp grounds.
First, there was the Finding Of The Cabin.
Second, the Finding Of The Bed, then The Finding Of The Bathroom, and lastly the Finding Of The Canteen, (where the munchies and pop were sold).
Then the usual camp things needed to be accomplished.
Get to know kids.
Get to know the counselor.
Get to know how much you could get away with.
Which usually led to getting to know the Camp Director...
Supreme Commander of the Stalag.
I remember Iowa summers that liked to have the humidity and temperatures match.
And the numbers were rarely in the 70s.
More 80s & 90s.
Like a sauna with a view and no walls.
And the things I learned have lasted me a lifetime.
Don't eat two boxes of Hot Tamales before bedtime - it's hard to sleep when the Tamales make a run for the Border.
Either border, north or south. Doesn't matter which.
A good friend would tell you that you tore open the back end of your swimming trunks the first time down the slide into the lake.
So you wouldn't have to hear it the fifth time down the slide from a guffawing group of campers.
Campers that would bestow upon you the weeklong nickname of "Full Moon".
HIndsight that reminds me that sneaking under the cabin to duck out on chapel is pretty stupid. Rather than sitting in a chair in an airy building listening to an engaging speaker, Tim and I were on our sweltering stomachs amid spiderwebs and crawly things, trapped in that hot, dusty purgatory until kids started to mill about the cabins.
Yeah.
Rebels without a cause. Or a clue.
We made Alfred E. Neuman look like a Rhodes Scholar.
(If you get that reference, you might've been camping in the '60s, too.)
But there were other things I remember. Kinda important things.
Things that stick with a kid for a lifetime.
It's said that a week of Bible Camp is like two years of Sunday School.
I would have to agree.
We had Bible stories brought to life.
Scripture was applied to our lives in a way we could understand it.
And occasionally, there were moments of surprisingly deep contemplation and retrospection. For a kid, anyways.
All these things we took home along with a woven vinyl whistle lanyard for Dad and a painted plaster of paris Scripture verse for Mom.
Yeah.
These are the memories that can warm up a 48 degree morning in July.
Good memories.
And good times.
Even if I can't look at a box of Hot Tamales without gagging.
Or see a slide without checking for my back pockets.