Happy Camp

After we lived it up in San Francisco, we were on our way to Northern California to a charming little village named Happy Camp. Way up in logging and Indian territory. My dad was going to be doing a short term assignment on the Indian Reservation there. Yes, we were the minority. It was an interesting and rugged and wonderful place. It was indeed happy.

We had a great house in Happy Camp. I still wonder why it was there and why it was available for us for about 4 months. The town was small and there was a general mercantile there. I’ll never forget it. It had stacks and stacks of original red tag button fly Levi jeans. The kind of jeans that was all the rage back in the southern part of the state and difficult and expensive to find. But this was also the jean of the logger. The mercantile was exactly like you would suspect...a little of everything. It was fantastic.

Behind our great house in Happy Camp was a creek. The creek would be dammed by a couple downed trees and a pretty nice swimming hole created. Cliff on one side to jump from. Not bad. Populated on most days by other kids, including some native american kids and young adults. Our first day there, before it was dammed up, Kevin, Micki and I were walking along the creek. Somehow my footing slipped and I was being carried downstream. Quickly. Kevin ran along...he was all of 12 or so....and at some point was able to get to me and snatch my butt out of the creek. I was banged up, wet and forever grateful.

Soon, the kids came and got the creek dammed up, the rope swing tied up and all was great in Happy Camp. My sister was restless and we sometimes had Indians at our window at night, enticing us to come outside. Micki often did, and that’s all I know about that.

We were happy in Happy Camp. It was an adventure, a time warp, another world. It was beautiful and rugged and rough. We left there in October, sorry to go but headed to Bloomington, Indiana where my dad would be the superintendent to build the great Assembly Hall, which has a roof line that is patterned after a suspension bridge. After San Francisco and Happy Camp, a college town was about the next best thing! It was 1969, man had walked on the moon and the times, they were a changin’.