The River

The Ogeechee River
I hope to make this a series of stories about a place long gone and a family that is very important to me. This is the story of Uncle Shed's Fish Camp and Tony and Betty Saxon, and my live as the prodigal son. This is Part One: The River. 

You couldn’t really see it in the pre-dawn hours, but you could hear it and definitely smell it. The current rushing past the bluff and the smell of fresh coffee as you got closer to the kitchen cabin. Tony was always up first holding court on the porch that surrounded the cabin. While Betty would busy fixing something for breakfast. These are my earliest memories of life on the river. And while things have changed over the years, the sight of Big T on the porch, coffee in one hand and a cigarette dangling from his bottom lip, never did.

I suppose you could say I was a part of the family, the adopted oldest son of a mixed mashed brood of three sisters and one other brother. Even today after nearly 40 years they still call me brother. Born of music, religion, and acceptance; the Saxon Klan at Uncle Shed’s Fish Camp was a motley crew to say the least. The fish camp was just that a fishing camp on the edge of Chatham County along the Ogeechee River bordering Chatham and Bryan Counties. The camp once consisted of a number of various sized cabins which individuals or families could rent out. The camp had stood of decades before I ever showed up around 1977. By then Tony and Betty had taken over the day to day operation from Aunt Bessie, Betty’s mother.

Things changed slowly during those early years, Aunt Bessie was sort of in retirement, but you would have never known it. In her mind she still run the place. All I can tell you of Uncle Shed was he started the camp and that Betty was his only child, although Betty had other brothers and sisters. Like I said the camp consisted of several cabins, including the one’s the Saxons used as bedrooms, a cabin as a kitchen, a boat ramp, john boats for rent, a shower made out of an old freezer, and of course several outhouses. Growing up in suburbia this took some getting used to, to say the least. I don’t think I used the bathroom there for the first several months.

But as got acclimated to the place it was nothing to walk out back with a flashlight or under the light of the moon to go to the bathroom. Also it became normal to take a shower in the open air shower with helicopters buzzing by from the nearby Army Base trying to catch a peek at the girls. Sorry, I was a disappointment to some of them. Yeah those were good times and great place to learn about myself. I had the fortunate pleasure of being able to grow up in two homes with two very different families. My own working-class family that lived in the suburbs. Where if I still eat my veggies and listened to Captain Kangaroo, I could get a mill job like my Dad or better. Or my semi-hippy Christian commune family at the river, where I learned about nature, God, good coffee, and acceptance.

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