Camps -- Fiction; Catskill Mountains Region (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories; Vacations -- Fiction
TWO WHOLE GLORIOUS WEEKS
By WILL WORTHINGTON
_A new author, and a decidedly unusual
idea of the summer camp of the future:
hard labor, insults, and hog kidneys!_
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Bertha and I were like a couple of city kids on their first country
outing when we arrived at Morton's place. The weather was perfect--the
first chill of autumn had arrived in the form of a fine, needle-shower
rain of the type that doesn't look very bad through a window, but when
you get out in it, it seeks out every tiny opening between the warp
and weft of your clothing and runs through your hair and eyebrows,
under your collar and over the surfaces of your body until, as though
directed by some knowing, invisible entity, it finds its way to your
belly-button.
It was beautifully timed: the ancient motor-bus had two blowouts on the
way up the last half-mile of corduroy road that led to the place, and
of course we were obliged to change the tires ourselves. This was a new
experience for both of us, and on the very first day! Everything was as
advertised, and we hadn't even arrived at the admission gate yet.
We didn't dare talk. On the way from the heliport we had seen some of
the other folks at work in the swamp that surrounded the camp proper.
They were digging out stumps with mattocks, crowbars and axes, and some
of them stood waist-deep in the dark water. Bertha had said "Looky
there!" and had made some remark about the baggy gray coveralls they
wore--"Just like convicts," she said. The driver, a huge, swinelike
creature with very small, close-set eyes, had yanked the emergency
brake and wheeled around at us then.
"You shnooks might just as well get outa the habit o' talkin' right
here an' now. One more peep outa ya, 'n ya git clobbered!"
All we could do was look at each other and giggle like a couple of kids
in the back pew of Sunday School, after that. Bertha looked ten years
younger already.
The gate was exactly as the brochure had pictured it: solid and
massive, it was let into a board fence about ten feet high which
extended as far as you could see in either direction and lost itself on
either side in a tangle of briers, elder bushes and dark trees. There
were two strands of barbed wire running along the top. A sign over the
gate--stark, black lettering on a light gray background--read:
_Silence!--No admission without
authority--No smoking!_
*** _MORTON'S MISERY FARM_ ***
_30 acres of swamp--Our own rock
quarry--Jute Mill--Steam laundry
Harshest dietary laws
in the Catskills_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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