GOOD TIMES REVISITED
For the last several years I've dreamed of
going back to Gary and reliving some of my childhood memories. In reality
I had pretty much concluded that would probably never happen. So I thought
of writing the "Good Times" story, enabling me to visit there through my
writings. Then my son Tim and daughter Teresa were in for a visit during
Christmas and read about my adventures of growing up there during the good
times. At their insistence we made that trip back to my memories in Gary
and I'm sure glad we did. They seemed intrigued at the thought of standing
on the same spot where their dad played when he was a little boy.
We arrived in Gary at ten o'clock on Tuesday
morning just two days after Christmas. We were warmly dressed for a trip
to the mountains and I had brought along a sharp machete. Although it has
now been condemned and barricaded, we first visited the Iron Bridge. Oh,
what memories of playing on that bridge and waiting for the train to come.
I remembered how we would stand on the top beams that were only about ten
inches wide and walk the length of the bridge.
I noticed that the old Sycamore
tree that once stood at the end of the bridge was gone. Only the rotting
main trunk, standing about ten feet high remains today. It was a very large
tree, perhaps 80 feet tall. When I was about ten we would wait for a really
windy day to climb it. As we neared the top, the main trunk was no more than
six inches in diameter and you could experience a great ride. It seemed like
it would sway five or six feet back and forth when the wind blew hard. I
sometimes wonder how I ever survived childhood.
Next, we climbed the hill to
where the Nativity scene was erected at Christmas. Of course there's nothing
left there today and it's all grown up. I did find the telephone pole with
the large light box mounted on top that represented the star that the wise
men followed. We were able to take some great pictures of Gary at this
location.
We then climbed up to the
water tank and discovered it's no longer in use today. I was surprised how
it seemed so much smaller than what I remembered. Then we began following
the ridge behind the tank until we came to Big Rock. I was really
flabbergasted when I realized Big Rock had shrunk from the size of a dump
trunk to that of a Volkswagen Beetle. It's amazing how large things seem to
an eight or ten year old kid. I still remember how we would crawl up under
the sides of it and pretend it was a cave.
As we continued up the ridge
you could see where a bulldozer had been through several years earlier and
changed the lay of the land along the ridge. It was obvious my mountain
playground had been timbered and the only evidence of the large oak trees I
remembered were now rotting stumps. For the most part the forest was now
thinly populated with young poplar trees. When we had climbed about half way
up the mountain we encountered an inch or so of snow on the ground that made
climbing a little more difficult. It's quite a long ways to the summit ad my
kids began to question if I was sure I could still find Camp Randy. Of
course there was never a doubt in my mind, but it did seem twice as far as
when I was a kid. I remembered there were times when we kids would decide to
go camping as late as eleven o'clock at night. On one occasion the
flashlight batteries went dead about halfway up the mountain and we managed
to find the campsite by only the light of the moon. After that I always used
a kerosene lantern. My dad is now 88 years old and he had that old lantern
when he was a kid and we still have it today. After a lot of huffing,
puffing and sweating we arrived at Camp Randy. My son and daughter really
seemed thrilled that we had found it. Tim even suggested that we go over the
hillside and look for that quart beer bottle that I had thrown as far as I
could after getting sick that night, but I wasn't about to do that :)
There's nothing
left at Camp Randy now. The lean-to and table we had built were long gone,
but in my mind's eye I could still see me, Gail Jasper, Tommy Herlovich and
many others sitting around a roaring campfire and listening to the night
sounds of the forest back in 1957. I will forever be grateful for my kids
insisting that they bring their dad back home to the carefree times of his
childhood. Places may change and never appear the same again, but in my
memory they will be captured in all their grandeur for the rest of my life.
By Buddy French
- Copyright 1006- budm16@juno.com
Thanks go to
Buddy French for his permission to post his Good Times and "Good Times"
Revisited on THE COALDIGGER website. bssims
