Ah, Summer (Camp Warnecke)

The lingering twilight of recent summer afternoons often calls to my mind, old memories of summers long ago. Back in my childhood days, the 1950’s, there were six of us in a three-bedroom house with one bathroom and no air conditioning—in sultry Austin, Texas. How’d we do that? By today’s standards, we may have been living below the Federal Poverty Line, but we didn’t know or care-- we were having way too much fun.

Dad worked up in the control tower at the Austin airport and that’s where I loved to hang out, watching the planes come and go from that lofty perch in the sky. In those days, air traffic controllers were not allowed to work overtime, so Dad never worked more than 40 hours in a week. That gave him considerable time to coach our baseball team, with our purple tee shirts provided by our sponsor, El Patio Mexican Café. Every player got a free coke after each game, and a free enchilada dinner after the season. Life was good in the 1950’s.

Once a year, we would load the car and head for Camp Warnecke, a family resort in New Braunfels, Texas. They had little cabins all along the shady banks of the Comal River, which was fed by springs over in Landa Park. These were true “cabins,” and didn’t have refrigerators. I remember Dad taking the boys into town and buy blocks of ice, which we would set into the “icebox” that kept our milk and eggs cool. Those 20-pound blocks of ice were heavy to tote, but we boys enjoyed learning to use our ice picks to chip out chunks for everyone to put in their cool-aid. Cool-aid is a lot better if it’s not at room temperature.

The river water was crystal clear and just right for swimming, and the river still had an old mill dam that partially blocked the current at one point,. This created a “white water rapids” effect that made for great tubing –long before anyone invented water parks. Most of the river was a “lazy river” which was also great for tubing. I have now decided that heaven is bound to have such a river, where you can just float along on a hot afternoon, without a care in the world, exerting no energy and feeling no stress.

After Connie and I married, we returned with our own kids, but Camp Warnecke has long since been replaced by a mega-water park, The Schlitterbahn, and San Antonio has overrun the little Bavarian town of New Braunfels.

But the summers keep coming, every year, and I hope you take the time to visit some favorite summer place that will produce the same effect for you. It doesn’t have to be fancy or far away. The key is to find a place where you can just “float along” for a few days, without a care in the world, exerting no energy and feeling no stress. I think that’s why God made the long, lingering twilights of summer afternoons.

A Blessing on Your Summer,

Jim