Chapter 6: Doo-dah




      "Yo Zo," grunts Deb Lew from the pile after her Alma Wood team tumbles to the tug-of-war title. "We heard you're a pretty good announcer."

"I've only called the intramural basketball championship," I shrug, reaching a hand to help her up from the packed earth of the football practice field where Camptown events are being held.

"If you'll do the chariot race, I'll get you a date with Freida-Mae," she bargains with a coy grin, going right for the jugular.



     The truth is that I would have announced the chariot race just because a sweaty, athletic woman asked me to. Show me an inch of interest and I'll imagine a mile of magnetism. Her offer to set me up with FM was just gravy on the biscuits.

     The spring festival at Gibson-Henry College, like those biscuits and gravy, seemed a southern tradition, but the antebellum origin of Camptown was above the Mason-Dixon line. A young composer named Stephen Foster had passed through a coal camp in the mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania, chancing upon a raucous horse race between the miners. A few years later, in 1850, he penned the call-and-response for travelling minstrel shows. Originally titled "Gwine to Run All Night", the catchy song soon came to be known as Camptown Races. 

     When and why Gibby-Hank combined the minstrel tune with it's May celebration is lost to an exclusionary past. The first African-American was admitted to the formerly Methodist school in 1966, but Camptown continued as an annual event, though minus the blackface and stumpspeech of racist minstrelsy.




     "There are four contestants in the women's chariot race," I declare into a microphone beside the starting line to the dissonant cheers of drunken teenagers lining the hundred yard course. "In lane one is the Starship Smith to be warp-driven by two lovely lieutenants."

"In lane B we have the Party Bus yanked by two peelers from none other than Peele Hall," I proclaim to a smattering of catcalls and a few boos, the crowd playing along with my ridiculous embellishments.

"Roman numeral III holds the Appian Way, a Roman bigas wrested by two fine Marremmano from New Dorm," I enunciate to a round of fake erudite claps.

"Last but not least, in lane cuatro, the DE Flyer prised by the fleet-if-funky feet of Alma Wood Residence Hall," I croon as Deb Lew and FM shoot me the finger from their places at the crossbar.

     "On your market!" I cry out, stifling a snigger before yelping "Set!" and then howling "Ghost!"




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