Summer is here and that means it’s time to go to camp. Church camp, scout camp, sports camp, robot camp, whatever kind of camp kids and youth go to nowadays. But when they go, they often go on a bus. It’s been that way all my life, and the experience is thick with memories.
My first group bus ride was from the YMCA in Richardson to day camp for a week somewhere on the edge of Dallas. We hiked, learned songs, did arts and crafts and other typical camp activities. We came home every afternoon by way of the giant swimming pool at Vickery Park, a long-gone amusement park on Greenville Avenue across from Texas Health Presbyterian.
By that time, I was already an experienced bus rider because my parents had put my brother and me on a Greyhound to Sherman to spend a week with our grandparents. We were of an age that if that happened today, it would be considered reckless parenting, but back then it was no big deal. I’ll admit we were a little nervous about going alone, especially because the destination sign on the front of the bus said Chicago. But our parents told us just to listen for the driver to announce Sherman, get off there and Grandpa would be waiting. We did, and he was.
Later as youth we rode buses to summer church camps at Lake Texoma and San Marcos Baptist Academy, and weekend retreats at Mount Lebanon, Latham Springs and Pine Cove. While there we’d do what you’d expect including worship, study, prayer and play, but our youth minister Kenny Wood had a way of turning the ordinary into magic. One winter in high school we got snowed in at a weekend retreat at Pine Cove and came home a day late, but that just meant we had more great time together.
One morning last week we saw the youth at our neighboring First Baptist Garland boarding buses for camp, and LeAnn and I have a sort of twisted fantasy about that. The first year we saw them leaving, we never saw them come back. But later that summer, we saw similar buses at the church with senior citizens getting off, and we imagined those were the kids who went off to church camp decades earlier and were just now coming home. I think it’d make a great novel or movie by Stephen King or M.Night Shyamalan.
I’m just having fun with that, but it’s not a bad thought that if we get on the church bus early in life and stay on board, we’ll grow and learn with people who become friends and family and experience life’s ups and downs together.
I got a feel for that in 1971 when our family joined other church families for nightly bus rides to Texas Stadium for the Billy Graham crusade. Later in 1987, I rode with a busload of Catholics from Victoria to San Antonio to join 350,000 to celebrate mass with Pope John Paul II. I recall there was lots of praying and singing on the bus, and definitely not songs like “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer.”
As a religion writer for the Waco Tribune-Herald, I jumped on a bus with some other writers to tour New Orleans before the Southern Baptist Convention kicked off. That was the summer of 1982, and if you know Southern Baptist history, you know what a wild ride that was and still is.
Eight years ago we rode a bus with the Wilshire Adventurers from Calgary, Alberta to Banff and Lake Louise to see the Canadian Rockies. We made lasting memories and friends along the way, and saw some things we’d never seen before or since, like one of our men taking off his coat and shirt for a topless photo on a frigid glacier. I was especially impressed with the patience and kindness of the driver on that trip as we loaded and unloaded at each stop.
I knew something about that because a few years earlier, I volunteered to drive Wilshire’s minibus to pick up members at retirement centers for the noon lunch and Bible study. My first day to drive was in the heat of summer, and when the engine died at a traffic light, I was afraid the same might happen to my passengers as well. Thankfully, a phone call brought help quickly and the passengers – all women – were fine. In fact, witnessing my angst in the moment, they encouraged me to give it another try, and I did for almost two years. What a blessing it was!
Our Wilshire youth will board buses this weekend for their annual choir tour and mission trip. It’s a rite of passage and a time for growing in friendship, fellowship and faith. They’ll roll back into the Wilshire parking lot in time for Wilshire’s 75th Anniversary celebration. The timing is perfect because those annual trips have been a part of Wilshire’s history and have been vital to the church’s longevity. Many youth over the decades have stayed or come back to Wilshire to raise their families.
My life journey did not take me back around to the church I grew up in, but the memories of those youth trips on buses have always traveled with me.