As I was in my backyard, doing one of my biannual excavations (You know the ones that follow "Honey it’s coming up in the tub!). I decided that my time could definitely be better spent telling stories.

My first recollection of meeting Max was in the early 70’s. I was at one of those work parties where our Troop (419) earned the right to put our name in for a drawing to attend winter camp. I don’t really see the trade off anymore for working all day for the right to come back to some typical Cascade concrete, which some tried to pass off as snow, although I likened it to ice, and slide down some hillside with the name of suicide run. (Not really sure the origin of the name.) It wasn’t really the slide that got you as much as the trees, which could withstand an 80 mile an hour collision from a 10,000 LB vehicle and only have a scraped knee to show from it. It sure seemed as though we hit the 80 mile mark and this presented a problem in the fact that the we had no "BRAKES, WHOA!!!!

I don’t really recall what we were doing at the time Max showed up. I didn’t know who this guy was as he rolled up in that well traveled green truck. He hopped out with some sort of spring in his step and a smile that said "Hi friend", not friends, he was saying hi to individuals not a group. He gave some words of encouragement and then departed on another task.

The things that stuck with me are the authority with which he presented himself, yet the non-authoritative way in which it came across. The urgency he had to go somewhere, yet he had all the time in the day to chat with us. The appearance of being the boss, yet dressed to work. I think that I somehow got my first answer to why I liked Camp Sheppard. As he departed I then noticed that he really had to step up to get in the truck, the guy was smaller or the truck was bigger then they appeared.

When I think of Max I would sum things up to say that "He could shorten the dictionary by a few pages." It is really quite simple, if the name Max Eckenburg were to be replaced for a few definitions. The words that would come to my mind are (not in any priority order) Friendship, Mentor, Dreamer, Trusting, Teacher, Pal, Leader, Honesty, Helpful, Entertainer (just listen to one of his stories), Visionary, Passionate, Compassionate…… the list goes on. Then I think that for some we would have to write a reference book, this is where I run into a little snag on the idea. The book would certainly exceed the amount of any pages removed from the good old Webster.

Max always had something to say or a story to tell. I did however become leery of one thing he had to say. "It was about right here, last time".

The first time began on one of those fall work weekends. It seems that the summer folks had pretty much filled the septic system and it needed to be dug up for the honey wagon. Good old 419 to the rescue, I think we were chosen due to the few numbers of us and how many could it take, Max would be by soon to show us "exactly" where to dig this little hole. Now I’m sure some of you have had experiences with a phrase that starts "Well, as I recall, It was right about ……………..HERE, last time?

Someone handed some shovels out and we began to dig, if you can call digging moving previous parts of Mt. Rainer that had been washed down the White River some eons ago. As we began to acquire something similar to Mt. Tahoma, it became apparent that there was no tank "Right here".

Max I believe came back by at this point. As the discussion began to evolve, with a few trips to the back of the dining hall, I was certain that the issue was not really if the toilet was still there, however, everyone seems to always check this first. I do recall some wisenheimer saying "Do ya think ya marked it with a rock (previous part of Mt. Rainer)"? One did not have to look far to ask the next question "Which one’’?

At this point I believe that Max entrusted us to be "Challenged" and knew we would be successful without any further imput from him. We, after a few more exploratory digs and probs with a rock bar, located both lids. I’m sure that if this was needed today I could play Max’s part quite well.

The second time was right after he had back surgery, again in the fall. I had come up over the weekend to just kinda hang out and do whatever he needed. He needed to hook up a new oil tank at the house and this required finding the line to the buried tank so that the above ground tank could be installed. "As I recall it was right about……..HERE, last time."

The previous adventure did not immediately come to mind, however, it should have as I tinged the shovel into the first piece of Rainer. "I remember we damaged the oil line and had to repair it once. I think it was when we put the sink in" Max was heard saying. I soon had a trench about a foot or so wide and 5-6 feet along the wall. I thought will it couldn’t be deeper then the tank, so we measured down the fill hole (30 some inches) and decide we didn’t need to dig deeper then that, so down we went.

Max patiently, as much as he could anyway, watched as I dug. We had now been at this for a good hour, that’s a lot of parts of Rainer. I had noticed that we had not come across any plumbing normally associated with a sink. I checked to see if the sink was there, after all that’s what your suppose to do (I had learned this a few years earlier), it was still there. The third or fourth sink check I happen to notice that to the side of the sink there appeared to be a separate concrete slab. I ask Max if he had added on to the garage. "AH HA!! It was when we put the forms in that we hit the line. IT’s RIGHT THERE" I promptly excavated to the right about 8 inches and down about 5 inches, or two small pieces of the mountain, and there was a repaired oil line.

I knew he would get it right, he always has.