A Memoir: A Texan Looks at Luci

I went to camp with Luci Baines and Lynda Bird.

It was at Camp Mystic on the Guadalupe River near Kerrville, Texas.

“There is a camp on the Guadalupe Riii-ii-ver
It is the camp of my dreeeeams
Where the blue skies smile gently on
That lovely Texas streeeeam.”

That was in the summer of 1958, when Luci still spelled her name Lucy.

I did not know Lynda Bird well since she was a senior camper, although in later years my sister Sara had a friend at the University of Texas who knew someone in Lynda Bird’s poli-sci class who said she was real smart. However, Luci was, in those days, an actual personal acquaintance of mine.

She was in Chipmunk’s Hole, the Middler Cabin right next to mine (I was in Jolly House). The other girls in Chipmunk’s Hole said Luci rolled up her hair. Every night. No one rolls up her hair at camp.

Luci sat at the Diet Table all summer, where you got skimmed milk, diet bread and fruit for dessert instead of cake. But she never got any skinnier that I could see.

I first met Luci during the Middler Basketball Championship Play-offs when Jolly House played Chipmunk’s Hole. I was a forward and Luci was assigned to guard me. She never got her hands on the ball the whole game. (I was 5’10’’ by the time I was 11 and I was 13-½ that summer and not getting any smaller.) I stepped on her several times during the game. Jolly House won by 68 to 12, and Luci cried. She didn’t like me after that.

She was a pretty terrible basketball player, but credit where credit is due, Ol’ Luce was just one hell of a fine prayer. She was, in fact, Tribe Chaplain. (There are two tribes at Camp Mystic; the Kiowas and the Tonkawas: Luci and I were both Tonks.)

Luci was elected Tribe Chaplain by 57 dead Tonks who voted in alphabetical order, but she could pray up a storm. Ever Sunday morning at Camp Meeting she’d go on for 15 minutes or more, extemporaneous prayer, thanking God for the mocking birds and like that.

She was also a pretty fair singer. We used to work up an appetite before meals by singing the following:

“Great green, gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts
Mutilated monkey meat
Pasteurized porpoise puss
Great green gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts
And me without a spoon!”

Luci used to sing that with a lot of spirit.

Also, when Kiowas taunted us with the insulting chant, “Um cha cha, um ka ka, um skinny-winny-wi-o” Ol’ Luce was always among the first to respond with, “Ig de mini ga, honi ga za, de mute, de lay: Yoo-hoo– Ig-bom.”

Luci was in my swimming class, working for the Red Cross Intermediate Card (elementary back stroke, 50 yards; selected stroke, 100 yards; tread water, one minute; standing front dive and five minute swim.) Luci never went in swimming the whole summer. Every day she told Ann Ketchum, the head waterfront counselor, that she had her period. Every day for two-and-a-half months. She never got her Intermediate Card.

The day Sally Stillfox, who was a Middler in Belles’ Bunkhouse, stole Ann Ketchum’s whistle, someone squealed on her. There was no circumstantial evidence, but we all suspected Luci. Sally got five demerits and couldn’t be in the color guard that week.

That was the same week that Luci bawled me out after Camp Meeting because my white shorts were so dirty. I only had one pair of white shorts, which in actual fact belonged to my cousin, Susan Black. (Some will be interested to learn that in later years, my cousin Susan Black married Jimmy Walker from Beeville and that they have recently bought a small ranch near Palestine, Texas called Oleo Acres because it’s such an economical spread). Anyways, by the end of the summer, my one pair of white shorts was pretty grubby, and Luci told me I was a disgrace to the Tonkawas.

The next day, I found a letter Luci had dropped, addressed to Sen. And Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson in Washington, D.C. On the front of the letter, Luci had written, “To the postman: Deliver deletter, desooner debetter.” I threw it in a waste basket.

As Sally Stillfox (who in later years reformed her ways and became Tonk Chief) once said, “That Lucy Johnson is a poop.” Sally always had a real gift for expression.