Maine weekends with Dad

Between second grade and senior year of high school, my dad took me up to Maine every fall for a Father-Daughter Weekend at a camp that was affiliated with our church. Toward the end, we had to battle with band competitions and SATs, but we managed to keep up the tradition, perhaps out of sheer determination. In the first years, Dad and I took off after school on that Friday, and he equipped me with a list of landmarks, a pencil, and his digital watch. It was my job to record the time when we passed each spot on the list, which also showed last year’s time for each landmark, plus this year’s estimated time, adjusted according to the previous year’s data. I dutifully took down the time when we got on and off the Mass Pike, stopped at Bob’s Clam Hut, and finally arrived at the camp. Looking back, I wonder if this job was simply a tactic to keep me occupied during the trip, but I don’t put it past my dad to actually keep a record of our progress over the years.

For these weekends, Dad and I stayed in rustic cabins, ate hearty food at the dining hall, and participated in typical camp activities. We played tetherball, threw a Frisbee, and played checkers. Dad took countless pictures. Every year, we made some funky woodcraft including a birdhouse, a trivet, an inspirational plaque, a kite, and a wooden chest featuring my shaky wood-burning. When we got home, Mom always put on a good show of how nice the knick knack was, and it would stay out on display somewhere until I inevitably forgot about it a month later.

There was a tradition of making campfire meals for one of the lunches. We’d pile ground beef, potatoes, carrots, onion, and whatever else into a foil packet, and then throw it into the fire to cook. It was always a toss-up when distinguishing our charred parcels from anyone else’s, and if everything was cooked through, that was a bonus. Over the course of ten years with campfire meals, Dad honed his technique. He learned to bring his own (sharp) pocketknife, slice the potatoes thinly, make a thin meat patty, scatter cheese across the whole deal, and season liberally. Our lunches were the envy of our group for the last four years, and Dad was pretty pleased with himself.

One year, Dad and I signed up for canoeing as one of our afternoon activities. He put me in the stern of the boat to let me steer, as he put it, and we paddled around the lake without incident. Toward the end of the assigned hour, we prepared to paddle back to the boat house, but a strange wind kicked up and we were unable to fight it.  I wasn’t quite a powerless paddler, but we were no match for the gust, and we ended up drifting to a far bank.  We heard our names echo across the lake in mortifying proof that our absence was noticed, and Dad hastily tied up the canoe and grabbed my hand roughly.  He led me along the lake back to camp, and I did not take too kindly to the rough terrain and quick clip.  My slip-on Keds were hardly suitable footwear, and I was still wearing a life preserver!  Dad hauled me to the camp office to assure the camp director, a long-time friend, that we were fine, who nodded sagely at our description of our plight.  “Yeah,” he said, “if you don’t have the bulk of the weight in the back of the canoe, the wind can really push you around.”  Good to know.

On the drive back home to Connecticut, Dad always tried to persuade me that the speed limit correlated with the number of the exit we were passing, which was never less than 80.  During one ride, I remember bombarding Dad, a civil engineer and bridge inspector at the time, about asphalt and concrete.  Why was the road different colors in the different states?  How long did it take the pavement to dry?  What did they put on the top of bridges?  For a couple of hours, Dad answered my questions and showed me how they went back to his job.  Odd though it may seem, that ride home still sticks out in my memory, and I think of it every time I see a change in the road between along an interstate.  At the end of the day, when we arrived back home with duffle bags of laundry, Mom made a big to-do at the latest addition to her woodcraft collection, Dad set aside his rolls of film for developing, and we all looked ahead to the Father-Daughter Weekend next year.