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 countryouting when we arrived at Morton's place. The weather was perfect—thefirst chill of autumn had arrived in the form of a fine, needle-showerrain of the type that doesn't look very bad through a window, but whenyou get out in it, it seeks out every tiny opening between the warpand weft of your clothing and runs through your hair and eyebrows,under your collar and over the surfaces of your body until, as thoughdirected by some knowing, invisible entity, it finds its way to yourbelly-button.
It was beautifully timed: the ancient motor-bus had two blowouts on theway up the last half-mile of corduroy road that led to the place, andof course we were obliged to change the tires ourselves. This was a newexperience for both of us, and on the very first day! Everything was asadvertised, 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 ofthe other folks at work in the swamp that surrounded the camp proper.They were digging out stumps with mattocks, crowbars and axes, and someof them stood waist-deep in the dark water. Bertha had said "Lookythere!" and had made some remark about the baggy gray coveralls theywore—"Just like convicts," she said. The driver, a huge, swinelikecreature with very small, close-set eyes, had yanked the emergencybrake and wheeled around at us then.
"You shnooks might just as well get outa the habit o' talkin' righthere an' now. One more peep outa ya, 'n ya git clobbered!"
All we could do was look at each other and giggle like a couple of kidsin the back pew of Sunday School, after that. Bertha looked ten yearsyounger already.
The gate was exactly as the brochure had pictured it: solid andmassive, it was let into a board fence about ten feet high whichextended as far as you could see in either direction and lost itself oneither side in a tangle of briers, elder bushes and dark trees. Therewere two strands of barbed wire running along the top. A sign over thegate—stark, black lettering on a light gray background—read:
Silence!—No admission without
authority—No smoking!
*** MORTON'S MISERY FARM ***
30 acres of swamp—Our own rock
quarry—Jute Mill—Steam laundry
Harshest dietary laws in the
Catskills
A small door opened at one side of the gate and a short, stocky,well-muscled woman in a black visored cap and a shapeless black uniformcame out and boarded the bus. She had our releases with her, fastenedto a clipboard. She thrust this under my nose.
"Read and sign, shnook!" she said in a voice that sounded like rustyboiler plate being torn away from more rusty boiler plate.
The releases were in order. Our hands shook a little when we signedthe papers; there was something so terribly final and irreversibleabout it. There would be no release except in cases of severe medicalcomplaint, external legal involvement or national emergency. We werepaid up in advance, of course. There was no turning away.
Another attendant, who also looked