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8/6/2009 3:32 AM

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When July lasted much longer than 31 days, when time was measured in head-high pencil hash marks on a bedroom closet door, I was a Mohawk - a mighty, mighty Mohawk.

My parents were scraping by, but somehow managed to send three of us to camp for a couple of summers in a row.

Thanks, 4-H.

We were dropped off and assigned to our individual tribes. Mine came up Mohawk. I'd watched enough cowboy movies by the time I was 9 to understand what a Mohawk was - brave, strong, merciless and eventually dead at the hands of Glenn Ford or John Wayne by the second hour.

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As a member of the 4-H Camp Mohawk tribe, I would be expected to learn to identify trees by their leaves, pass a Red Cross water safety course and, most importantly, recognize that a full house does not beat four-of-a-kind.

Mohawks played poker.

Late at night (10:30 or so, I'm sure) the members of many tribes gathered at the council fire (a Coleman lantern) in the middle of the hunting ground (the cabin floor) and traded for beads (deuces wild, a pair of Jacks or better to open).

My sisters, a Delaware and a Shawnee, respectively, sang camp songs, glued macaroni onto cardboard and stitched together leather change purses while I followed the markings of the scavenger hunting trail, trading ribald tales of past exploits with fellow Mohawks while searching for the spirit stick (a painted broomstick adorned with feathers).

I have no idea what my parents did during those single weeks each summer. Three-fifths of their brood was away at camp and my two brothers were occupied with a high school summer job and Vietnam.

They always seemed happy to see us at the end of the week. We told about our new friends and tribe members and showed off our creations. When asked what I did during that first week of 4-H camp, I, for the first time in my life, became a fiction writer.

Some might call it lying.

In truth, what I did during that week in the summer of 1968 was learn to play poker, kiss a girl (a Cherokee!) and tell tall tales. Those are not the items your mom wants to hear coming from her 9-year-old. And so, when asked, I did what I'd done just days before during the scavenger hunt.

I made stuff up.

Or, I should say, I embellished. Did I enjoy feather identification and relay races as much as playing blackjack and walking in the woods with Brenda Miller, the cutest girl in the entire world?

Of course not.

Those things were not on the agenda sent to members' parents' homes months before. Those things were not what 4-H camp was all about.

Not to parents.

We were not yet parents. We were still the mighty, mighty Mohawks. And sometimes, when the situation called for it, Mohawks were not exactly truthful.

Ask John Wayne.

To hear Scott Paulsen's column, visit www.observer-reporter.com. He can be heard each weekday afternoon from 3-7 p.m. on 1250 ESPN Radio.

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1 comments

Mohawks : 8/6/2009
Are Mohawks and Cherokees allowed to kiss? Isn't there some kind of tribal law against that?

Captain Cocktail

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