Fred Knutson

Fred and Gay Knutson were other neighbors who lived further down the street.  Fred worked with my father for PG&E, and Gay was a stay-at-home wife who had a real knack for gardening.  Gay was also a member of Sans Souci, and a close friend of my mother.

My father spent a lot of time visiting Fred on his little strolls down the street.  I think that the most important part of Fred’s friendship was that he always had a Kraft cheese glass of Gallo or Italian Swiss Colony dry sherry in his hand, and my father liked to have one of these in his hand as well.

Fred’s natural state was to be clothed in a short, short pair of jeans, a jock strap, and a pair of leather moccasins sitting in one of his canvas camp chairs.  He reminded me of a skinny Tarzan.  He also had a pipe stuck in his mouth that provided a repetitive cycle of tobacco tamping, match striking, a rythumic sucking that created a momentary cherry glow in the bowl of the pipe; then a repeat of the process. This created clouds of pleasant aromatic smoke between sips on the Kraft cheese glass.

My father and Fred maintained themselves in this alcohol and tobacco created haze well into many an evening.  My solace was that I knew that my father was nearby home and didn’t have to drive a car to maneuver himself home.

Gay frequently also imbibed in the grape, and it made her cheeks bloom with a rosy glow.  She was a pretty lady who usually wore a blouse tied up under her midriff along with short, short jeans and accompanying moccasins like Fred’s.

The most remarkable thing about Gay was her magical gardening ability.  Their home was located on the downhill side of the street.  The yard was heavily landscaped with rock retaining walls and flowerbeds.  The whole result was a cozy botanical nest that was very inviting.

Fred was the local scoutmaster of my school’s boy scout troop.  I joined after going through the ranks of cub scouts.  I guess I wasn’t made of the right stuff because I only made it to 2nd class and a few requirements away from first class.

Part of my scouting demise was my one and only trip to summer camp, Camp Pahatsi.  The camp was located southeast of Soda Springs off the old route Highway 40 a few miles from the Sierra summit and Donner Lake.  The camp was located near the ridge of the mountains with Lake Tahoe to the northeast of the eastern slope.  It really was a beautiful alpine place high above most of the trees amid the rounded and scoured granite outcroppings.

My adventure there was between the 6th and 7th grades in the summer of 1950.  The central camp was centered on a mess hall with several clusters of tents grouped into what they called “villages,” each with some stupid Indian name.  Each canvas tent was pitched over a permanent concrete floor, and housed three scouts.  My tent mates were my friend, Robbie Cranston, and another schoolmate, Lester Ruth.

One of the barriers to obtaining my 1st class rank was that I couldn’t pass the swimming test.  You were required to swill one hundred yards, and I couldn’t do it.

A few months earlier, I’d had my tonsils out.  Being in the sixth grade, and weighing 112 pounds, I was more like an adult than a kid when this happened.  Unlike my five and six year old pediatric ward mates who were up and eating ice cream twenty minutes after their operations, I was sick as a dog for a week, and didn’t fully recover for a long time.  Consequently, I couldn’t make the hundred yards; quite a physical wimp.

My main problem, however, was that I was homesick!  I’d stayed overnight with friends before, but had never been away from home for two weeks!  As far as I was concerned, this was a camp for displaced persons.  Adding to the horror of the place was what I can only describe as the multi-person pit toilets.  Each was a long, narrow permanent building with a bench seat running its length.  A hole was located every 18 inches or so over what could only be described as a gateway to Hell.  The fumes coming out of this pit only served to confirm my impression that these were miniature replicas of the gas chambers at the Nazi death camps.

The third major remembrance of Camp Pahatsi was the mess hall.  Breakfast had two alternating entrees, French toast and scrambled, powdered eggs.  I guess they got the eggs from war surplus.  The eggs had a chemical taste and a uniform yellow consistency of a chemical fertilizer.  French toast has always given me instant diarrhea, so I can’t explain further which was worse.

For some reason, it seemed that I spend most of my days on KP washing dishes.  Actually, they weren’t real dishes, but stamped, metal trays like the military used in those days.

My loneliness, coupled with my disturbed digestive system, made each day miserable.  After about ten or eleven days, my parents finally came up and took me home.  I’d wimped out.  I didn’t finish my sentence.  As my folks drove me away from the camp, my spirits lifted, and I couldn’t wait to get home.

I guess I stayed in Scouts for a while longer, but I don’t remember anything remarkable happening.  I finally just drifted away without any remorse or guilt about leaving.