Swamp Tales, Page 2
Bill Russo
The first narrator is a teenager named Bill Ricci...................
“The best stories are told, not on Halloween night, but during warm evenings in early July, under the stars around a smoldering camp-fire. Six months before the new century began, I was seated with three companions at just such a fire.
We had cooked and eaten our 'Campers Stew' and were hunkered down, cross legged around the coals swapping tales. The sun had set. To the West, billowy clouds were dyed a delicate crimson by the remains of the twilight. A gentle wind swirled the smoke from the cooking fire in lazy circles around us, keeping us happily free of flying pests such as mosquitoes, gnats and midges.
Mist from a tiny kettle pond, less than 30 yards distant, was transported on occasion by the breeze to caress our faces with a spritz of cool, spring fed water.
It was one week before the beginning of the 1999 season of Summer Camp. At 15, I was the youngest of the Counselors and by far the least experienced. I did have the advantage of having spent parts of the last four summers as a paying customer of Camp Wild River. This year, having been selected as a Counselor in Training; I would spend the entire season at camp and be paid for it too.
I knew the 200 acres of woodland that was home to the camp as well as most of the Senior Counselors and I could hold my own in any sport. My Dad was short, but I had picked up some height genes from my Mom's side and was already close to six feet tall. My weight hadn't caught up to my height, being only 165; but I was wiry and fast and had won most of my matches as a member of the High School's Freshman Wrestling team.
As part of our job training, we were camping out in the open for three nights. There were three groups of four counselors each. My quartet was Delta - group four. My three mates were Bobby Butterfield, who was 18 and a senior in high school; Freddy Simpson who was a 21 year old college student; and Mr. Markens, a 28 year old history teacher.
After we finished our delicious stew, the talk turned to the spooky area that we lived in - a part of Massachusettts called 'The Bridgewater Triangle'.”
