"Hey Buddy, what's your name?" I'm Jake," I stammer. "Hey I'm Scou, nice to meet you. You know everybody gets a nickname at camp mines Scou or Scouie you'll get one too."
Wracked with anxiety I made my way into that tour bus on Douglaston parkway eating Burger King with Perry Chudnoff.
But the first cat I met at camp was my guest. We probably didn't say a word to each other the rest of the summer. But what he said to me spoke volumes. I don't know you, your much younger than me, I have nothing in common with you but I want you to feel comfortable because your about to go away to a sanctuary for eight weeks whether you know it or not.
Treat everybody with respect hard to do and easier said but that is the resounding message of all my guests. Acceptance of someone you couldn't stand all summer, inclusion of all beings, good hangs with Greg Danford, philosophy with Doc Hamberg and some good old fashioned weight room shenanigans with The Deutsch Brothers. Weight room aside that's exactly what the JFS is all about.
My guest was already dwelling in a spiritual place before he found Scatico. A native of Englewood Cliffs, NJ the home of Donald Byrd and Babatunde Lea, The Isley Brothers and the optometrist Rudy Van Gelder playing blue notes over a New York Sky line.
But New Jersey has become a central theme of Scatico JFS what with the names Herzog, Holman, Maz Madorsky bus }•# 165 into Oradell, or the countless trips to Philly over the BF bridge.
My guest did it all at camp especially when he put on his sailing shoes with Jeff Bernfeld and Lowell George, getting off on Chum Brothers Like Jimmy Ostrov or transitioning to the watering hole named Howie's.
He's is a journalist who appreciates my vision because in order to get to where you need to go you need to have a vision. And like my guest I have had to chop my way out of thick dense wilderness for that vision to become clearer? Why, because I'm making this whole thing up and my guest is the same way. Make it up yourself, what do you have to say for yourself, know your strengths.