A Mighty Oak
A family’s religious retreat ends in a comic and natural disaster in this poignant child’s memory story
In the summer of 1964, my father called a family meeting and announced that we were leaving soon on a week-long vacation. We had heard about ‘vacations’ but had never actually experienced one.
Anywhere.
I began imagining a long car trip in the back of the station wagon, laying on my back, and watching the telephone lines endlessly rise and fall through the big side windows. This trip would probably be followed by several nights in a Motel with a swimming pool. Maybe a Motel near an amusement park — with rollercoasters!
But, like everything my father promised, this vacation was not going to be quite what I had imagined. Trading rollercoasters for Jesus, this vacation would be located a mere 20-minute drive from the ramshackle house we lived in. And the only swimming to be had would be in the less-than-healthy, cold gray waters of Lake Ontario.
Camp Troutburg was a summer camp on the Lake at the western edge of Rochester, NY — and it was run by the religiously-fervent Salvation Army. This was a Christian Camp. We were going to live in a family dormitory.
For a week.
And we were going to have Jesus pounded into our heads — whether we liked it or not.
A Christian Camp? With officers of the Salvation Army? I could only hope that I would NOT be forced to attend classes on how to ring a little red bell.
I was a precocious, scientific kid — one of those annoying little boys who’s always asking, “But why…?” At only 7 years old, my views on religion were skeptical, at best. I had already been exposed to a lot of Bible Stories, and I was having a hard time trying to understand all the various contradictions of the Biblical rules. These rules were supposedly handed down to us by a lot of very old men with long beards from Judaea — wherever that was.
Everything in the Old Testament seemed to be canceled out by everything in the New Testament. All I could figure was that a different set of very old men must have somehow figured out how to replace the Vengeful God of Fire and Brimstone with the Peaceful and Handsome White Jesus.
My father was in the middle of one of his religious phases (i.e. not drinking himself into a nightly stupor). And he was constantly on the lookout for “messages’ and ‘signs’ from either God, His Son, or any card-carrying member of The Heavenly Host. His constant search for ‘signs’ became a sort of treasure hunt for the rest of us. He told us to be always ‘on the lookout’, as you could never tell exactly when (or how) you might receive an important message from The Almighty himself.
So, while he was excited as ever to receive one of these divine messages at Camp Troutburg, I and my siblings were silently lamenting the loss of swimming pools and rollercoasters.
When the day of departure arrived, we were tossed into the back of the white station wagon. My mother packed us in with all the stuff we would need for the camp. There would be absolutely no getting out of this now. At least we got to watch another 20 minutes of telephone wires going by. And, for once, my carsick sister didn’t throw up.
We arrived at the camp by a bumpy dirt road off the main road that runs by the Lake. As we approached, through the clouds of dust from the cars ahead of us, Camp Troutburg came slowly into view.
The Camp, built as an Army training facility after World War II, consisted of a series of low-slung cinderblock buildings, stepping up a hill. This hill ended in a steep, 200-foot drop-off right at the edge of the Lake. Like in some twisted Victorian novel, the Dining Hall and Main Hall sat at the very top of this towering cliff.
And above all the buildings and the dormitories and the cliff, stood a centuries-old enormous oak tree. This tree stood as a lone sentinel, a sole-surviving witness to decades of winter and summer storms that must have constantly attacked it.
I had never seen a tree that big. It was utterly magnificent.
After being greeted by numerous blue-suited Officers of the Salvation Army (many of whom were actually preachers and their wives, down on their luck and working for room and board), we were led to our spartan digs in one of the dormitory buildings. As the wooden door creaked open, we were instantly hit by the pungent smell of both mildew and rotting wood. This pathetic room contained only five small Army cots and a single folding chair. The walls were painted beige and there was not a single piece of art or decoration on them. There was also no radio or TV.
My mother, ever practical, opened all the windows, got a pail of hot water, and started scrubbing. My father went to the Main Hall to meet and pray with some of the other Christian Dads.
We ran up to the Main Hall, to get a lay of the land and meet up with a bunch of other unlucky Vacation Bible School kids. Like us, most had been forced to come here by fanatical religious parents. And, like most kids, they kept busy by play-fighting and by running around at the edge of the cliff, trying to push each other off.
As the rest of them roughhoused, I walked directly up to the Mighty Oak. I leaned against its trunk with both hands and looked up through a vast network of sturdy limbs and branches, and I could see thousands of leaves trembling from a light breeze coming off the Lake.
I was already daydreaming about how I might escape from Bible Class, climb far up into this tree-tower, and gaze for hours out across the water, wondering about the places lay beyond the Lake in ever-mysterious Canada.
For the next few mornings, we sat inside sweltering cinderblock classrooms, as well-meaning Evangelicals made us memorize the books of the Old and New Testaments. Every day, we’d be marched into these heat-coffins to blindly recite the names of the Sacred Books — until we could recite them all on command and in order. “Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, etc. etc.”
But, by the early afternoon, we were released from our rote learning and went to play down by the cliffs and the Mighty Oak while our parents were being indoctrinated into the Rules of Christian Marriage. My mother was told she could no longer wear either shorts or makeup, and that my father basically owned her. My father was told that God had pre-ordained him to be the head of the household, which meant he could do whatever he pleased to whomever he pleased.
My mother was not very happy with this heavenly arrangement.
One night, towards the end of our stay, after the 6 pm dinner in the Dining Hall, the adults moved once again into the Main Hall for their nightly Revival Meeting. Since this was an adults-only affair, all the children were given blanket instructions to just ‘go outside and play’. This was the 60s so no one was really worried that we might be abducted by roving pedophiles or maybe fall to our deaths from the top of the cliffs.
So we all ran outside, grateful to be relieved from even more religious indoctrinations. As we ran around the tree at the edge of the cliff (what else was there to do, really?), I began to sense that something was different in the air. I picked up the distinct smell of approaching rain as swarms of invisible ions began to rush in from the Lake. Black clouds gathered and a huge storm started to build.
Now, one thing I had learned early on is that you should absolutely NOT be standing under (or even near) a tree when a bad storm approaches. Lightning might strike the tree — and, by association, you. I’d heard all manner of horror stories. How you would be instantly reduced to a pile of ash. How the electricity would course through your body and come out both your ears. How a ball of lightning called St. Elmo’s Fire might be formed and go straight through your body…
The main gist of all this was that you’d probably be killed. Instantly.
It got darker and darker and I continued to keep one eye on the storm. More clouds were building, and the storm grew even more ominous. I could hear faint rumblings and see flashes of light playing up through the now towering thunderheads. A line of rain started pelting down on the Lake not far from the beach.
This storm was coming straight for us. And we were all playing right under the biggest tree on the property.
“We need to get inside!” I yelled. But the other kids were still trying to push each other off the cliffs and paid no attention to my scientific warnings.
I ran back into the Revival Meeting to get my Father to come help get the smaller kids to shelter. I made my way through what seemed like waves and waves of praising, fainting, tongue-speaking Evangelicals. I finally found him — eyes rolled back into his head, arms waving wildly above, crying out in some unknown (or maybe completely made-up) language. He was caught up in the ‘rapture’ of the meeting. My mother, pretending to be ‘enraptured’ herself (she never believed the whole religion thing, either), saw me approach and bent down to hear my plea.
“A gigantic lightning storm is coming!”, I yelled in her ear. She shook my father until he came out of his rapture-trance and the three of us ran outside to the big porch facing the Lake.
By this time, the storm was just upon us. The gale-force, God-driven winds were tossing the limbs of the Mighty Oak in a hundred different directions. Leaves were whipping off the tree and whirled into the air and the rain was pelting down in sheets.
The three of us watched the mighty storm bear down on the Camp. Without any warning, my father bolted from the shelter of the porch and ran straight towards the giant, flailing tree. I started to run after him, but my mother yanked me back by the collar to the safety of the porch. The rain was pelting down so hard now that it actually hurt my arms.
“Oh God, oh Heavenly Father…Please, show us a sign that you are here!”, screamed my now-drenched father to the vengeful sky. Lightning was coming in ominous Zeus-style bolts that struck the surface of the Lake as thunder crashed above. The sound and fury of the storm deafened my mother and me to my father’s pleas to his God.
Then, in utter disbelief, I saw a single bolt of lightning hit the top of the Mighty Oak.
And cleave it utterly in half.
The force of the electricity and the soundwaves from the instantaneous clap of thunder threw my father at least a hundred feet back towards the porch as what remained of the Mighty Oak began to burn, fanned by the winds of the storm.
My father laid motionless on the ground. The raptured Evangelicals were still inside and never did come out to see what had happened. The fervent noises of the meeting must have completely drowned out the catastrophe that had just played out before us.
The storm moved on as quickly as it had come in. The rain suddenly stopped, but the tree continued to burn and sputter, sending up acrid plumes of black smoke.
My mother and I finally ran out to see if maybe my father were dead. But as we approached, he got up, shook himself off, and decreed that God had indeed sent him a sign. “You see?”, he said, wild-eyed through wet strands of his jet-black hair, “The lightning split the tree as a sign that I’ve been chosen to preach the Gospel. PRAISE JESUS!”
My mother looked at him, her mouth wide open, and then looked back at me. And, for just a split second, I thought that maybe she wished the lightning had done more than just show my father a ‘sign.’
We picked my father up off the ground. Soaking wet, we made it back to the family dormitory and found my two siblings there quietly reading big books of children’s Bible stories.
My mother wasn’t having any more of this — the horrible camp conditions, the religion, the marital rules. She gave an ultimatum to my father that we leave the camp immediately.
I can’t say I was disappointed. We packed up our stuff, said goodbye to our sad little room, and quickly loaded up the car. My father drove us all away into the night — a day early.
As we left the camp, I pressed my nose up to the cool back window of the station wagon. The lights from the camp slowly receded into the dark of night. Like almost everything, this vacation had to end earlier than planned.
I would miss trying to throw my new friends off the cliffs. I’d miss stealing rolls from the dining hall. And I would miss climbing up into the magnificent Mighty Oak, reduced now to an ugly smoldering stump.
I could feel a tear rolling down my cheek.