"I wanted to talk to you about what happened in the pool," he said, walking up to our campsite nestled firmly between two neighbors, but still with enough room to not feel completely packed in. "What happened?" I asked, oblivious to the events earlier that day. "About why your wife and the kids left," he was the campground host and rode around the grounds on an electric scooter he called a Hardley-a-Davidson. Smiling and jovial, I'd spoken with him the night before when he told me not to worry about paying, someone would be around to collect my credit card information. The story unraveled. Apparently a kid--someone else's--had thrown up in the always-85 degree pool. She hadn't told me yet, but this prompted my girlfriend to remove herself and my son, and as the tale would have it, several other swimmers as well. He felt bad, quite so judging by the way he went on and on. The pool costs extra, $10 or so depending on your age, and he was quick to refund us. "I still haven't paid for camping though," I mentioned. "Someone will take care of it," he assured me. Our stay came and went, and we were all packed up and ready to leave. I looked around for the hum of his scooter and surely enough he came whistling around the corner. I inquired again as to how I might pay. "I called the phone number but they're not open until 11 and there's no answering machine," I told him. He leaves on his scooter and shows up a few minutes later. "They'll take care of you in the office now," he assures me. And then goes on to tell me about great horned owls that hunt quail in a cypress tree that's part of our spot. He talks of a young hawk that's trying to compete, unsuccessfully, with the owl. How they drain and clean the pool every week. How the local high school kids get hired for the summers to work the place, but as soon as they finally get it down, it's time for them to head off to college. I like him immensely and if it weren't for the price tag--higher than that of all the free BLM land but on par with the various other campgrounds in town, all owned by someone named Brown--I would stay longer. As I go in to pay, the girl working the office tells me she swore we already paid. Then she checks the register, and apparently we weren't ever even recorded as having been there. I feel like a ghost in the desert. A combination of remorse for announcing my desire to pay and satisfaction at upping my own karma ensues. She gives us a slip of paper good for a discounted dump at the nearby Browns Town Campground ($5 instead of $12). I spent the entire time working, sucking up the gracious AT&T service and campground wifi, and so never even got to experience the hot springs or pool for myself. I hear the mother of the kid who puked in the pool never 'fessed up. If we're in the area again, I'll gladly return for the same experience again, next time hopefully that mom and her poor nauseous child will have scheduled their vacation plans differently.
3 days ago