TWO WHOLE GLORIOUS WEEKS
By WILL WORTHINGTON
A new author, and a decidedly unusual
idea of the summer camp of the future:
hard labor, insults, and hog kidneys!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Bertha and I were like a couple of city kids on their first country outing when we arrived at Morton's place. The weather was perfect—the first chill of autumn had arrived in the form of a fine, needle-shower rain of the type that doesn't look very bad through a window, but when you get out in it, it seeks out every tiny opening between the warp and weft of your clothing and runs through your hair and eyebrows, under your collar and over the surfaces of your body until, as though directed by some knowing, invisible entity, it finds its way to your belly-button.
It was beautifully timed: the ancient motor-bus had two blowouts on the way up the last half-mile of corduroy road that led to the place, and of course we were obliged to change the tires ourselves. This was a new experience for both of us, and on the very first day! Everything was as advertised, and we hadn't even arrived at the admission gate yet.
We didn't dare talk. On the way from the heliport we had seen some of the other folks at work in the swamp that surrounded the camp proper. They were digging out stumps with mattocks, crowbars and axes, and some of them stood waist-deep in the dark water. Bertha had said "Looky there!" and had made some remark about the baggy gray coveralls they wore—"Just like convicts," she said. The driver, a huge, swinelike creature with very small, close-set eyes, had yanked the emergency brake and wheeled around at us then.
"You shnooks might just as well get outa the habit o' talkin' right here an' now. One more peep outa ya, 'n ya git clobbered!"