My Real Memoir
For our last big event before we officially started our freshman year of high school, BFF Jeff and I took a YMCA Caravan trip, with a dozen barely-teen boys and two barely-adult leaders. The previous summer’s Caravan had had a few snags, but this one was truly the Mother of All Calamities!
The groundwork for disaster was laid when all of the official vans were booked. As a result, we were given an oxidized green airport limousine with eat-your-heart-out-Buck-Rogers fins that someone had donated to the Y after its odometer passed the 100 million miles mark. We nicknamed it the Green Dragon.
On day one, the brakes gave out and the Green Dragon sailed half a mile into the desert before finally nesting in a cactus patch. On day two, after just two hours back on the road, the Dragon’s transmission stopped…transmissing. We spent the next two days at a tiny gas station-slash-auto repair shop in the town of Tiny Gas Station-Slash-Auto Repair Shop, waiting for the Dragon’s transmission to be rebuilt. We laid our sleeping bags in the sand, but after the mechanic pointed at his scorpion-in-amber bolo tie and said, “They’re ever’where,” we slept in the Green Dragon like kippers in a tin.
By day five, our frantic parents were demanding that the trip be cancelled, but we voted to keep going. We were going to have fun if it killed us!
It nearly did.
We made it to Oak Creek Canyon in Arizona where, millennia before humans invented fiberglass waterslides, God designed the prototype: Slide Rock. We walked almost a mile on jagged pebbles, but it was worth it. Sleep-deprived and nerves ajangle, we hurled ourselves into this wondrous cataract with ruthless abandon, sliding down again and again. Finally, one by one we crawled up the bright red embankment like an artist’s conception of evolving amphibians, and fell asleep. For five hours.
In 113 degree heat.
When we awoke we were redder than the Sedona soil. We walked the crimson mile back, our sunburned soles pierced by flint fragments. O’er the path we went, screaming all the way.
We sat in a stream near our campground, hoping our dead epidermis would float away in the cool blue water. It didn’t. We lay in our sleeping bags that night, moaning, and despite being manly 14-year-olds, openly crying.
The next day, the worst of us were taken to a clinic to have their Buick-sized blisters lanced. It was the most severe sunburn the doctor had ever seen. We smeared our bodies with prescription ointment, weeping in relief. And then, somehow, we began to laugh again. We were brothers, we’d survived the unsurvivable and bonded big time. And that made the misery almost worth it.
We eventually made it to the Grand Canyon, after having all of our money stolen, our brakes fail (again), our trunk catch fire while we were searching for the doe we’d hit, and then speeding away (trunk still aflame) as her enraged mate charged across the space we’d occupied a moment before, and… (honestly, this is the condensed version).
20 years later, a patch of basal cell cancer—courtesy of the Arizona sun—was cut out of my shoulder. Now, when I see the scar in the mirror, I think, “Don’t ever do that again, you idiot.” But also…
Boy, I miss those guys.
My Real Memoir is a series. To read the next one, click here.
Mitch Teemley 
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My goodness. Tales of young disasters. I have had a few but, nothing like that.
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It became the stuff of legend at the local YMCA.
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I have a vision stuck in my head, now, of a green limo with fins, driving in the desert, trunk in flames and an angry deer in pursuit. 🐲🐉🔥🦌
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One small adjustment, Vic: By then we were in the National Park (forest land) near the Grand Canyon. Not that we could see anything; it was around 3 a.m. and pitch black.
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Mitch, I don’t know how you survived into adulthood, but I am so glad you lived to tell these tales!!!
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;>) Thanks, Gina (me too)!
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When you said “The Mother of All Calamities,” you weren’t kidding! OUCH!! I hope at some point the Green Dragon was pushed over a cliff to its death (sans passengers, of course).
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;>) Oh, yeah. Repairs notwithstanding, the YMCA would have been crazy ever to use it again. Although, I do think it deserves a place in the Smithsonian.
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Oh my gosh that sounds more like an over-the-top movie than real life! So glad you walked away ok (apart from the skin cancer of course).
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Me too, Kara.
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Some of our most fondest moments almost killed us. I have some as well.
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Yep!
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What Gina said above! Honestly. Boys!!
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;>)
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See, girls just don’t get it when we describe adventures like that as fun. Parents don’t get it either.
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Odd, isn’t it?
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Sounds like fun to me!! Maybe that’s why I was called a tomboy, growing up.
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temperature 138 feels age 11
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I visited Sedona in 2016 and went to Slide Rock. It looked too dangerous to go down, so I opted to stroll up on a higher ledge near tree-like bushes. I heard a rattler and raced back down. Kudos to your group of carefree campers who weren’t timid about having REAL fun and were able to make light of the calamities.
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It really was pretty amazing, Nancy.
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Did Ponce de Leon ever find that thing?
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Come to think of it, there was a little kid there in a conquistador helmet who called himself Ponce.
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You’re a true survivor! 😁
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So it would seem, PK.
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And here’s the point where I say something banal, like, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. What an adventure!
As for that skin cancer, well, we are very familiar in Australia. My husband needs to attend the dermatologist every four months, after having been a surf lifesaver in the days when they wore a skimpy swimsuit (aka budgie smuggler) and an even skimpier red and yellow cap whose sole purpose was to enable them to be identified.
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“Budgie smuggler!” ;>) Sad, though, that you husband’s heroic service left him with skin damage, Gwen.
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We take it in our stride, Mitch. As do many Australians. So long as the doc keeps finding them, and treating them successfully, we are happy little Vegemites (and that’s another Aussie colloquialism. I can explain if you are interested).
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I’ve had Vegemite (in the UK), but didn’t know it was also an Aussie collquialism for people.
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I’ll hazard a guess you had Marmite if you were in England. Vegemite is a uniquely Australian version, different recipe. (Sadly, the brand was acquired by your American Kraft company for a while, but it is back in our hands now.)
And I’ll hazard a guess you’ll enjoy knowing the origin of the expression, so here is a link to the jingle:
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=video+happy+little+vegemites&view=detail&mid=16A23BA812BFA640440116A23BA812BFA6404401&FORM=VIRE
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You’re probably right about my having Marmite in the UK, Gwen. I had Vegemite somewhere along the line, too, I believe, but it may have been the Kraft version.
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Just watched the Vegemite commercial. What a hoot!
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Cool story!
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Thanks!
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Of course you would do that again. Great memories, a band of brothers facing all the odds. I wish all children could have these experiences (except for the sunburn.)
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Mercy! I’ve had blistered sunburns too – fortunately I haven’t had any signs of skin cancer -yet. But I’m always checking!! I had to groan as I read the misadventures…
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Glad you’re clear so far, and glad you’re checking, Muri.
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I love this story, in total, but your reference to sleeping in the Green Dragon. “like kippers in a tin” was fabulously funny. Such imagery! 😉😉😉
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Aw, music to my writerly ears, Victoria.
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How are you even alive?
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BtGoG (By the Grace of God).
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The best part of these disaster trips is becoming blog post fodder. Your fans happily graze on your memories!
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;>)
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The adventures of youth–designed to give us wisdom. God bless, Mitch!
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“Whatever doesn’t kill me…?” ;>) Thanks, Nancy, you too!
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Great memory, Mitch! We’re now paying for those days of our youth, but boy was it fun!
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Memories can bring smiles or frowns, laughter or tears, sometimes depending on the mood you’re in or the attitude taken.
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Very true, Timothy.
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nice post!
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nice post!
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