All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [14]
Camp Wig could be amazing for exploring, being half-naked and wild, kept company by tomcats and playing in the fecund river mud, but it was not practical. It was buggy and hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. We did have indoor plumbing, which some of our neighbors did not: a toilet and a small, funky shower. (When a neighbor friend of Sister’s was over playing with us, she wanted to try taking a shower. It was her first, and she was so scared, we crowded in there with her.) I had the pervading sense that we were living without direction or structure, although I was unable to articulate the chronic, low-grade feeling of something being not quite right. There was a classic seventies hippie vibe at the camp: the Stones and Joni Mitchell playing on the stereo, grown-ups smoking pot. Although today I know they thought they were simply trying to correct the taboo around bodies and sexuality that had warped their parents’ generation’s attitudes, I was exposed to adult nudity (skinny-dipping in the river, grown-ups coming in and out of the bathroom naked), and it felt icky. Dad kept a copy of The Joy of Sex in plain view. (Well, plain view when Sister retrieved it from his bedside and showed it to me!)
Sister and I were quite feral, and in good weather it could be fun, even the time she pushed the lawn mower over a nest of yellow jackets. We made the best of it, sitting on the screened-in back porch eating graham crackers and drinking milk, with me commiserating while I carefully observed the backs of her knees swell up. But mowing was a rarity at Camp Wig, which at times bore a strong resemblance to an abandoned property—at least, compared with our grandparents’ homes and what I thought was normal and safe. Thick vines hung from trees in the undulating front yard, and I remember wandering around in grass taller than my head, eating blackberries off the bushes, chasing fireflies, swimming across the wide, powerful river, bravely climbing fences from which to leap onto any bareback horse I came across, gripping a section of mane, and squeezing my tiny legs till I fell off and got the wind knocked out of me again.
We were always well clothed thanks to our grandparents, and there was enough to eat. I have the most special memories of Mamaw and Papaw taking us to the shops in Ashland or fancy department stores in Lexington like Shillito’s for our back-to-school gear. They were so careful picking out and buying each item, making sure it was quality made, would last, and that we had “room to grow.” I also know they put cash in my parents’ hands. To supplement our meals, Dad would hunt rabbits and catch catfish for dinner, and I flinched in bed in the early morning at the sound of his hammer coming down on their heads after he’d picked the lines. In the winter, he would take me deer hunting with him. I remember the old-growth woods being so beautiful, with ice frozen in patterns over the creeks, the meadows covered in curtains of mist. Those were good times. Memories of shivering and huddling under cotton quilts with my mother and sister on frigid mornings were not as pleasant. And the river kept flooding that spring, threatening to ruin our sparse belongings and prompting several frightening middle-of-the-night evacuations. I don’t recall the moments of being awakened, grabbed in my nightgown, but I wish I could forget watching, petrified, as water began to seep through the floor and under the door of the MGB as we fled the rapidly rising river.
Every morning we rode the yellow school bus out of our backwoods enclave and past the elegant, beautifully maintained horse farms that ringed Lexington. I loved school and was an eager student, even though on the first report card I remember, my teacher wrote, “Talks too much.” It wouldn’t be the last time. But I was as much a reader as I was a talker and