Pre-judging

Sometimes, we senior citizens get into the habit of pre-judging teenagers.  We can be dead wrong.

Last night, we had new neighbors at the Lost Lake campground, three young men.  They set up two tents and we began to think:  beer party.  We would give them until 10 pm quiet time and call the sheriff if needed.

Instead, it was lights off for them at 9:00 pm, a full half hour before we went to bed.  The sheriff's squad car circled the campground around that time.  Gary says that lately, that happens every Friday and Saturday night. There must have been some complaints.

This morning, two of the guys showed up at our campsite, asking where they could get some wood for their campfire.  The stuff they were trying to burn was too wet, and they'd noticed that Gary once again had a merry blaze. 

Gary pointed them toward the hemlock grove, which had been hit by a windstorm some years ago.  There were still logs that were burnable.  The forest service is happy when campers help them clean up the mess, so windfall burning is allowed. I pointed them to the Tipler Bar and Grill where they could get breakfast and information about obtaining more firewood.

The boys were factory workers from Beaver Dam.  One of them had relatives (the Olsen clan) in the Seymour area.  He told us his family had been camping at Lost Lake for years.  He understood the 10 pm curfew perfectly. Besides, they were shift workers and were too tired by 9:00 to party. We talked camping, campgrounds, and wood lore for some time. 

We had pre-judged them and I let them know that.   We thanked them for being good neighbors.