My Indian name was Running Horse. My son’s name was Straight Arrow. We were both members of the Blackhawk Tribe. My son being about ten years of age, someone had suggested that we join the local chapter of something called the Y Guides, a program loosely overseen by the YMCA. It was a father/son thing and we knew a few other families with boys that age and so I thought we would give it a go. Tommy got to pick our Indian names. I got mine because at the time I was jogging. Not sure where he came up with his, although considering he chose politics as his career, where one meets fewer straight arrows than some other career choices, it’s kind of ironic.

The overall “council” was composed of small tribes of about 10 boys and their dads scattered across the southwest Chicago area. Each little group was encouraged to meet once a month at a member’s home. There would be little projects we could work on, some snacks, a beer or two for dads, that sort of thing. There were no uniforms like in scouting, which made it easier.

The first meeting was in one of the dad’s basements in September. This particular dad liked to decorate his basement with posters featuring nude women with breasts that defied the laws of gravity, not to mention their proportion to the rest of their bodies. The boys got to the basement before the dads and it seemed to me they were being unusually quiet. What they were was transfixed by such magnificent displays of fictional female anatomy. We got them out of there over their grumbling and had a little talk with our knuckleheaded host, who insisted that boys had to figure this stuff out at some point. Not at ten years of age, we assured him.

Each meeting also featured a story by the tribe’s “sachem” or wise man. Ours was Pat Rohan, who never disappointed. Among our favorites was the touching story of a young Indian brave and his forbidden love for an Indian maiden; both swam to the middle of a lake to be together and drowned. Pat called the story “Lake Stupid.” It killed the ten year old crowd.

They held a Christmas party for the whole council, where each boy got a present from Santa, always the same item like a backpack or a flashlight. The gifts weren’t wrapped, but dumped out on a table and bulk issued to each tribe, with all of the Christmas magic of a military supply dump. The party resembled one of the rings of Dante’s Inferno, with about 120 little madmen screaming, running, shouting, and crying, as some of them told others the truth about Santa. And Santa himself looked pretty hammered, fake beard drooping and pillow augmented stomach lopsided.

And all the more experienced dads kept talking about the coming of the great spring pilgrimage to somewhere called Camp Pinewood.

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Camp Pinewood is a YMCA camp facility just outside of Muskegon, Michigan. It was one of the longest three days of my life. We arrived by car, me, my son and another father and son combo after a four hour ride. It started out well enough. A lunch of hamburgers, then a sort of rally with camping songs and exhortations by the staff to “enjoy and be safe”. Off to our little cabins we went. When we got there, I noticed that the cabins windows were just square holes cut into the walls. No glass, no screens, just air. And we were about to find out that we were in the middle of mosquito central. There was no plumbing either, save for a communal toilet and shower point about 100 yards down a hill. Fun at 2 a.m.

But it was still daylight and the fun was beginning. You had your choice of swimming, sailing, archery, fishing, or the rifle range. My son wanted to try fishing, but on the first cast the reel flew off the rod and hit the water. No problem for dad, I waded in and retrieved it. That was when I discovered the leeches on my feet and legs. The lake was leech ridden, which may be why no one was swimming. Thanks for the heads up.

After de-leeching with help of a cigarette, we decided on archery. That was when I noticed that most of the dads were gone. I was to learn later that the main reason the dads looked forward to Pinewood so eagerly was that they could dump junior off at the camp and head into town for a three day bender. So when we got to the archery range, we discovered arrows flying in almost every direction. No staff, no dads, just heavily armed kids turning the range into the Little Big Horn. Unlike Custer, we beat a hasty retreat.

What staff were on hand manned the rifle range, which I guess was the greater of two evils. Here kids were popping away at targets with .22s and pellet guns. I gave them credit for at least getting all the ammo going in the same direction.

We got eaten alive each night by clouds of mosquitos, arose about 4 a.m.to the sounds of the returning dads, who were mostly trashed.

Finally, the finale. The last night featured a visit from the Great Chief himself. There was to be a giant bonfire, which the now sobering dads built all day into a 14 foot high pile of wood. From the top of the woodpile ran a wire which sloped downward from a nearby tree. On the wire, at the tree end, was an oversized wooden arrowhead on a pulley that would allow the arrowhead to be lit afire, then roll down the wire until it hit the woodpile. This was to be the coming of the Great Spirit.

Logs for seating were placed all around the woodpile and at about dusk we began gathering at the site, awaiting dark and the arrival of the Great Chief. We heard the distant drumbeats first, coming from the lake. Then the low chant, indistinguishable at first, but clearly men’s voices. As they came closer to shore, we could see a man standing upright in a canoe, arms crossing his bare chest, the canoe paddled by two others. He was clad in a full chieftain headdress, his Indian loin cloth straining under a most impressive beer gut. Two more canoes followed.

It was the Great Chief himself, actually a neighbor of mine who shall remain nameless in this story, and he and his natives were chanting away. Finally we could make out the words they were chanting: “I want a beer, I want a beer.”

Up the hill they came, the Great Chief scowling and holding his folded arms across his chest. The loin cloth was beginning to lose the battle with the beer gut and his underwear band was showing. Thank God for the underwear at least. And as he reached the center of the circle, someone lit the arrowhead and pushed it with a stick. Now flaming, it slowly headed toward the giant woodpile. And as the flaming Great Spirit reached the pile, the entire woodpile exploded into about forty or fifty burning logs, each one flying out from the center. Dad’s instinctively grabbed their sons and ran backwards as the burning logs landed in and among us. No one was hurt, somehow.

As it turns out, the crew building the log pile wanted to make sure of a good ignition and so were pouring kerosene on the wood pile most of the day. I guess as the beers went down they sort of lost count of how much fuel they added, because they got the kind of ignition one usually associates with a launch at Cape Canaveral.

We packed up for an early escape on Sunday morning, glad to be out of there. The other dad and I talked all the way home, shaking our heads in disbelief and marveling at the entire experience known as Camp Pinewood. We never returned to the group and my son turned to scouting, which was run by moms and run as a pretty tight ship.

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I don’t mean to disparage the many good works of the YMCA, which provides affordable housing, recreation opportunities nationwide (their ranch in Colorado must be seen to be believed) and fun camp experiences for thousands of kids each year. I guess if anything, my Y Guides experience was one where the best intentions, left without leadership, can go off in some pretty weird directions. Clearly the inmates were running the asylum.

Men do a lot of things well when it comes to forming young lives. I have always been impressed by the many good volunteer coaches in all sports who dedicate countless hours to teaching their game. I have known scoutmasters who dedicate whole vacations to scouting. But when a void in leadership occurs, when we all hesitate to raise our hands and take on the job, invariably the wrong guys will fill that void and take us places we never thought we would go. Chaos follows in their footsteps.

You can draw all the comparisons you like on this one.