FAR, FAR AWAY

The New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad camp train deposited me and several hundred other summer campers at Hyannis one sweaty June afternoon in 1958. Following an equally sweaty ride aboard an aging yellow school bus down the infamous Viking road, we found our cabin assignments. We had arrived!

Being away from home became the first of many adjustments to camp life. One measure of the transition’s toll was the one and only occasion when my mattress served as a late-night ‘head’. It was a blessing for me that we were instructed to change sheets the very next day. Remember? "Top sheet to the bottom, bottom sheet to…" How could any of us forget.

Not a year later my family pulled up stakes in Connecticut and moved to Florida. Florida! It was not enough that being away from home for the summer had meant a six hour ordeal by train. It now meant fifteen hundred miles. I returned to Viking in ’59 from the sweaty-swamp, mosquito-laden, alligator-infested never-never land, about as far south from Orleans as one could get. They had not even conceived of Disney World yet and it would be a few years before the south Florida rails would be laden with munitions for what became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. From my perspective, there was not another living soul who could claim arrival from a more distant point.

But here I was, returned to the familiar Viking environs, albeit now a resident of Cabin Five. There were a few familiar faces: Lodge McKee, Doug Franzen; and a few new ones: Marty Shober, Chris Poth. For that first week, I remained haunted by the ghost of distance: home was now SO far away.

Since it was only my second summer, I was still learning the ropes, literal and figurative. I had taken to the waterfront and spent most elective time under sail, though with jib sheet more often in hand than tiller. So it was an afternoon not a week into July that I was ensconced to leeward in a Winabout, tightly fisting a soggy jib sheet and feeling some pangs of home-distance sickness when a fellow crewman piped up, "Florida? You’re from Florida?"

I was amazed to hear another living, breathing human being utter the name. There was someone else on the planet who had heard of the place? I had to respond.

"I’m from there now. We just moved." My statemate sat to windward, his nearly-shaven head glistening in the summer sun. He was at least twice my size and an entire year further along life’s path. Neither of these chasms mattered. He knew about the Gator State.

"Where in Florida?" he inquired as our counselor announced, "Ready about!"

"Delray Beach," I yelled, trying to make myself heard over the shuffle of bodies.

"Hard alee," was the next command. The Winabout took a sudden lurch to starboard. I let go the jib sheet and prepared to haul in the line on the opposite side. The bow swung around and I could see several boats from the Quanset fleet. GIRLS!!

"You’re kidding," I was told. "I live in Delray Beach, too!"

If this were one of those Hollywood productions, at this point all motion would freeze and only I and this just-announced Floridian would proceed, most likely in slow motion for added effect. But this was Little Pleasant Bay.

"Garvan," our counselor bellowed, "get on that jib sheet!"

Nearly too distracted to differentiate Winabout from water, I groped for the line and brought the forward sail to discipline. We two Floridians had exchanged seats.

"Delray Beach?" I was incredulous. "That’s incredible!"

It was incredible, but there was more. For a moment we were all distracted by a passing Quanset Day Sailer and its crew of opposite-gender long hairs. Even this delicious mirage was insufficient to have me abandon my inquiry.

"Where in Delray?" I asked.

"Sea Sage Drive," he replied.

Now I was hallucinating. Two minutes earlier I was the only soul on the planet... well, at least within the shores of Pleasant Bay, who had ever heard of the Sunshine State. Now this stranger a thwart away announced the very street to which we had moved. Sea Sage Drive was at best three miles in length, so already we were neighbors.

"What number?" I was asked.

"812" I replied, having committed it to memory.

"I’m at ‘806’." We stared at each other like aliens discovering they’re from the same galaxy. Our respective houses were no more than ten car lengths apart. Somehow the universe had just shrunk to manageable proportions and Florida didn’t seem all that far away after all. For the next several years Ned Helm and I were fast friends. But it was not to last. It was not to survive that gorgeous creature from Cleveland we both met in Florida during spring break. We went our separate ways after coming together in what I recall as a most amazing meeting.

There were other friendships cast in Viking’s die, some of which were thankfully untested by female fidelity (or lack of). And with the birth of the internet site I look forward to renewing as many of those contacts as possible. Maybe even with Ned. He might be interested to hear I’m still in touch with that girl from Cleveland. But you know what? She dumped me, too.

-- Mike Garvan