HANGING OUT AT THE ONE-TIME-ONLY QUASI-ANNUAL SHIPROCK PICNIC
The four years I taught for the Bureau of Indian Affairs brings up mixed emotions, but I was only 23 and full of adventure and my students were only too happy to get out of the dorm for the day—or the weekend. We travelled to a lot of wonderful places together. Parents had to sign a form giving me in loco parentis privileges to check students out. I’m sure the majority of the forms were signed by proxy. It is possible I signed a few myself but don’t quote me on that. Many of the parents in those days couldn’t speak much English, let alone read or write it. I eventually had permission slips to check hundreds of kids out of the dorm. I got a Government driver’s license and made friends with staff in the chow hall. Saturday mornings I would commandeer a van, check out half a dozen kids (sometimes more), and take off for the far reaches of the Reservation. The school had some Dodge vans the size of a small school bus and I had one of those folding shovels they used to dig fox-holes and an old fashioned blanket-wrapped five gallon canteen. I have never seen another one like it. The cafeteria was a seven-day-a-week establishment, so we would drop by and pick up supplies. Commodity foods in those days included huge bricks of
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January 2018
American cheese and large tins of Spam-like lunch meat. I really miss that. We would also get a dozen dozen boiled eggs, bread, and some kind of fake Mayo. We were set. Once we drove out of “The Compound,” we were in another world. Yes, they called it the Compound. One time evening found us at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Nobody kept track of where we went or what we did, as long as I delivered the kids back to the dorm by Sunday night. We had food and gas, but I didn’t have enough cash for a room. These kids were used to roughing it, but we needed a place to camp out. Keeping them all in sight was always difficult, and one of the boys was nowhere to be found. We came across Lionel wrapped in an “Indian” blanket, posing with tourists on the walkway overlooking the canyon – which was lit up by a spectacular sunset. Other folks were waiting in line for their turn. By dark, he had enough money to pay for a room. He was a beautiful boy. Once at Shalako, a famous New York dancer had hit on him. His hair was long enough to tie into a small bun, though he wasn’t
