Creative Writing: The Meal Ticket By Leslie Davis
The Meal Ticket
By
Leslie Davis
My call to write came at an early age. At the time I was far too young to understand how my camp letters home would someday prove to be one of my earliest and truest forms of self-expression. Camp Desoto was a month long girls camp situated high in the Rocky Mountains of Tennessee. On a hot June Saturday in 1973, with me riding alone in the back seat, my parents took the three hour drive up from Atlanta to drop me off for the summer. Other than holiday weekends away at my cousins’ house in Nashville, my parents would have never allowed me in the past to be away from home and family for any extended length of time. I had just completed third grade, yet was not too young to discern how much had changed …show more content…
The three of us approached the sign-in table manned by a cheery college co-ed who pointed us in the direction of my camp section. My father backed up the family station wagon as close as he could to my assigned cabin and lugged out a green footlocker, which I’d been given that March for my birthday, along with a DeSoto brochure and card from my parents informing me they’d enrolled me in the June …show more content…
I went back to organizing my bunk area while my mother and father spoke with her in hushed tones near the cabin door. Later, with me settled into the cabin, I walked with my parents to the car where I said a tearful good-bye, watching them drive off until the station wagon was out of sight.
It was a camp rule and expected of all girls at Camp DeSoto to regularly write our families. However, history of frantic parents calling the camp office to check if their child was still alive had revealed a reality that youngsters will not take it upon themselves to sit down and write a letter back to their family. DeSoto’s leaders came up with the perfect incentive in which guarantee our parents’ receiving at least one letter per week. We were required to present a two page letter home to our parents upon entry into the meal hall every
By
Leslie Davis
My call to write came at an early age. At the time I was far too young to understand how my camp letters home would someday prove to be one of my earliest and truest forms of self-expression. Camp Desoto was a month long girls camp situated high in the Rocky Mountains of Tennessee. On a hot June Saturday in 1973, with me riding alone in the back seat, my parents took the three hour drive up from Atlanta to drop me off for the summer. Other than holiday weekends away at my cousins’ house in Nashville, my parents would have never allowed me in the past to be away from home and family for any extended length of time. I had just completed third grade, yet was not too young to discern how much had changed …show more content…
The three of us approached the sign-in table manned by a cheery college co-ed who pointed us in the direction of my camp section. My father backed up the family station wagon as close as he could to my assigned cabin and lugged out a green footlocker, which I’d been given that March for my birthday, along with a DeSoto brochure and card from my parents informing me they’d enrolled me in the June …show more content…
I went back to organizing my bunk area while my mother and father spoke with her in hushed tones near the cabin door. Later, with me settled into the cabin, I walked with my parents to the car where I said a tearful good-bye, watching them drive off until the station wagon was out of sight.
It was a camp rule and expected of all girls at Camp DeSoto to regularly write our families. However, history of frantic parents calling the camp office to check if their child was still alive had revealed a reality that youngsters will not take it upon themselves to sit down and write a letter back to their family. DeSoto’s leaders came up with the perfect incentive in which guarantee our parents’ receiving at least one letter per week. We were required to present a two page letter home to our parents upon entry into the meal hall every