Camp and Jerry Clower.

Jerry Clower was a good old Southern storyteller. He was generally called a comedian, but that's not really accurate; he told stories in his Yazoo City, Mississippi way, and they sounded funny, but mostly they wouldn't be funny if anybody else had told them. I hadn't thought about Jerry Clower in quite awhile. His "heyday" was in the 1970's, and my buddy Russ played some tapes of him for me. What's the camp connection, you say?

In the Summer between my Sophomore and Junior years in college, I was a camp counsellor at Alpine Camp for Boys in Mentone, Alabama. I'd worked the previous Summer in an environment of faithful, caring Christians, and I'd actually prayed that I might be given another opportunity to work around loving people. Within a week of that prayer, a fellow football player, Woody Ledbetter (actual name. Woody also tried to teach me to play guitar and apparently still holds the long jump record at Sewanee. Hey, how 'bout that, my old fraternity brother, Herb Sparks, still holds the record for the hammer throw!), told me that about Alpine Camp for Boys, and that, for the first time in years, they had a shortage of counsellors, and would I like to work there? Sure seemed like an answer to my prayer. I still believe it was. Anyway, I digress. While at ACB, one of my campers was from Yazoo City, MS. I noted that Jerry Clower was also from Yazoo City. "I know. My dad is his friend and we see him all the time". "Sure you do", I said. Anyway, a few weeks after the end of camp, I got the autographed picture posted above. Jerry evidently liked his chainsaw story enough to put a chainsaw in his picture, so I guess that's the one I'll post: