They were probably already laughing over Carl Hess' rare display of his pale legs (he rarely wore shorts on camp property) when I took this shot. Carl said something satirical about me, and brushed his brush-cut back with one hand (then that little rub of the short hairs down toward the neck) while lifting his cap with the other. Carl's audience that late-summer late afternoon in the mid-70s ('74 or '75) was, from left to right sitting on the Olympic Circle: Carl's beloved, dependable, can-do wife and life/work-partner Marie Hess, the pseudo-grumpy and hilariously ascerbic long-time summer maintenance guy Carl Van Zandt, Ron House, walrus-mustached Lou Senor, and the immortally ingenious Chuck White.
All four of the men sitting worked for Carl in the maintenance department (although Ron House was a summer-only helper that year; he was a year-round environmental ed coordinator). Shortly after this, Chuck and Carl split the facilities responsibilities into two large parts: Carl leading maintenance and repairs, Chuck leading construction (we called it "development").
Fans of FV's storied vehicular history will recall the olive-green Chevy Suburban van in the background here. This one didn't last long. There was another green Suburban (no "wood" paneling on that one) that was fine for a while but then our camp driver Charlie Speck drove it into an old Forstmann-era concrete wading pool behind Biscuit Lodge. That's a story I'll tell another time, if and when I find a photo of Charlie Speck and/or of that ill-fated van.
We (the young camp staff drivers) were very hard on the vehicles, as Carl never ceased reminding me. Indeed, the wisecrack he'd just made at me when I took this shot might well have been about something I'd done (again) to one of the camp trucks.
