Goldrush Day (mentioned earlier) was momentarily a Topsy Turvy Day, Frost Valley's Feast of Fools. Each summer, during the goldrush carnival on this afternoon, there were two events where the high became low and "the people" ran amuck: Dunk Bozo and The Stocks. The latter was sometimes called "Ye Olde Stocks." Some village chief or, best of all, director was grabbed and put inside the Dunk Bozo cage, whereupon campers and counselor tried to knock the bucket of cold Biscuit Creek water on their heads (by knocking a wooden arm on a hinge so that it swung back and knocked the bucket over). As for The Stocks: they were set up in the middle of the Olympic Circle, and we sought the highest FV authority we could find. Halbe Brown, typically in his office making fund-raising phone calls or meeting with someone about a potential grant or new project, willingly submitted to this. He was brought out and clapped into the stocks and remained there for an hour or more as folks came by and gleefully imagined all manner of rules (his own rules!) he might have transgressed. Camp was the one place we knew where social levelling was actually possible - and not just possible but hilariously positive. And while on the other days it wasn't a gimmick or carnival booth, there was a palpable sense of common purpose, and the common touches our leaders used to achieve it, the long impromptu conversation sitting in the field during a staff soccer game, a visit to CQ just to talk about...well, everything, the surprising moments in which one was brought into complete confidence about some large direction in which we were going (a renal program next year, a new idea to bring indigent kids to camp, and maybe we should open up a special all-year school for the kids who have no home to go home to...). Hierarchy was real enough here, but it never seemed merely to enforce difference. Idealism evens things out. We were the same; it's just that some were older and more experienced...but finally no wiser than we were or could become. We felt we could make the change, together, on the level.Halbe's favorite poem, which he recited for us many times, began this way:
I'd rather see a sermon
than hear one, any day.
