Go with the flow
Well, I went to the Mountain T.O.P. year-end celebration today at Cumberland Pines. I wanted to get up there early, but it took forever for me to get a free washing machine at the apartment complex’s laundry room and get my laundry done today, and I didn’t get to camp until 3:30. Just as well; there weren’t that many of us adult-age campers there yet anyway.
I stuck my head into the lodge, but the lodge was filled with twenty-somethings who’d worked on our summer staff in recent years. Betsy Ruhlig, who returned for the occasion, told me that there were some people down at the dining hall. Normally, I would cut across the big open field from the lodge to the dining hall, but this afternoon, while the light was still good, I wanted to see where the slab had been poured for a new girls’ bathhouse which my church helped to fund. So I followed the path of the gravel road that winds through camp.
As I passed the old girls’ bathhouse, I heard the sound of water running.
Water was, in fact, running out under the door of the bathhouse. I didn’t want to go in and investigate by myself — perhaps one of the visiting former staffers, some of whom are spending tonight in camp, was taking a shower for some reason. I know that sounds unlikely — the bathhouse serves only some non-winterized cabins we use for our summer ministry. The winterized cabins where anyone would be staying tonight all have their own bathroom facilities.
I continued on to the dining hall and mentioned the water to the various folks who were in the kitchen working on dinner. Buddy Boyce from the Mountain T.O.P. year-round staff and I returned to the bathhouse and Buddy ventured inside. A pipe leading to the antiquated water heater had burst and was gushing water everywhere. Buddy and I returned to the lodge to fetch executive director Ed Simmons and Jeff Grammer, who tried unsuccessfully to find a shutoff valve at the water pipe going in to the bathhouse. They ended up having to call their maintenance person, who shut off the water to the entire camp for just long enough to cap the leaking pipe.
I’m not sure how long the water had been running — it could have been several days, since the hard freeze a couple of nights ago.
Anyway, it was a nice evening. We had chicken in a creamy poppy-seed sauce over rice, a long-time staple of special-occasion meals at Mountain T.O.P., and it was deeelicious. The praise and worship service was nice. There was a brief slide show, and we also got to see the recent community-access TV coverage of Mountain T.O.P.’s $60,000 grant from USDA to repair homes in Grundy County. Mostly, it was fun just to fellowship with old Mountain T.O.P. friends like Jan Schilling, Curtis and Elaine Piper, Reed and Deeda Bradford, Tom Bradford and Chris and Amy Smith. Andy and Edna Lee Borders from my church were there as well.
But the vast majority of the guests were the 20-something former staffers. At one point tonight, watching them fellowship, Elaine looked at me and said, “Don’t you feel old?” Yes. Yes, I did.
Unfortunately, Julie Duncan of the Mountain T.O.P. staff, who’d worked very hard to organize the event, was sick and didn’t get to attend. She’s suffering from a nasty bug that has also sidelined her husband as well as her father, Bob Willems of LEAMIS. Bob didn’t attend either, although Mary Margaret — Bob’s wife and Julie’s mother — is apparently immune to it, and attended the gathering in perfect health. (I hope she’s in perfect health, since as usual she was working in the kitchen!)
I’m disappointed in my photos. There’s a little switch on the front of my point-and-shoot digital camera that goes one way for normal shots, the other way for closeup. Somehow it got dislodged and was halfway between the two settings, which I assume is why most of my photos are out of focus. They weren’t badly enough out of focus for me to notice it on the camera’s little LCD screen, but when I moved them to my computer tonight I was frustrated.
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