Brian Doyle Murray
How he got to man the register at Colorado’s Kamp Komfort, we’ll never really know. Is he a seasonal employee, the only one who didn’t call in sick, or has the campground been his baby from the start? Did he build it from scratch, starting only with a few 2×4’s and a dream, or was it handed down through the generations, a family affair with sepia-toned memories to burn? Has he greeted thousands over the years, with a memorized schtick so second nature, he couldn’t possibly hope to deviate, or was this his maiden voyage, shoved into action to test his mettle with the summer rush?
Is he genuinely happy to see man, woman, and child alike, or has the stench of the tents – and the requisite cleanup, day in and day out – left him so jaded, he’d prefer a spin around the sun with as few tourists as possible? Profitable, or swallowed by debt? A man of vision, or beyond the reach of care and concern?
Whatever his background or current status, he is here. In the flesh, ready to serve yet another family of goofballs, even if, just this once, it’s one of America’s most enduring family units. He’s here for the Griswolds – Clark W., really, and an ever-shifting set of kids, with a wife more prisoner than partner – and he’d better bring his A-game. Or at least some sort of game. It doesn’t really matter. They’re buying whatever he’s selling, and the product needn’t be anything to shout about. Thirty-seven ever-loving dollars for three musty, moth-ridden, defecate-in-the corner tents? Yessir, and it’s a bargain at that. Includes scenery, wildlife fun, and the promise of a mailer that will be sent every other week until you relent. Maybe there’s a time-share of sorts built into the signature.
Still, at this point, Kamp Komfort Clerk is just your garden-variety roadside lunatic, all spitting seeds and F-Troop head-topper; nothing to see here, really, unless you’re one to think he may or may not bring an axe to your abode somewhere around 2am. Which is not impossible. And yet, what sets this man apart, makes him truly one for the Unsung record books, are the pins affixed to his shirt. Quite understandably, you might miss them, as you wouldn’t think to focus away from the watermelon rind looming so large in our field of vision. But please, do take a look. A close look. You wouldn’t be a fool for expecting silly sayings – “Why Be Normal?”, Kamp Kuckoo, what have you – so imagine the shock when, as your eyes focus, you see it all, maybe for the first time. Can I be seeing what I’m really seeing?
Yes, KKC is wearing a Nixon/Agnew button. That’s readily apparent. But immediately to its right (your left) is the kicker: Wallace/LeMay. George Wallace. Curtis LeMay. The ’68 ticket that offered America white supremacy and a nuclear winter, all in one bombastic duo. Until Trump/Vance, the nuttiest nuts ever to appear on a national ballot. Sure, GW got shot, repented, and reinvented himself as a man of love, but that’s lost somewhere near the back. In the pages that matter – the meat of the text – Wallace pushed, pulled, and fellated rigid segregation as a glorious dream. The only way out. And, as if to spare the American people even a modicum of subtlety, he chose as his heir apparent a hawk so hawkish, he’d have reduced Cuba to ash while JFK was clearing his throat. The most dangerous human being alive were it not for his running mate.
So yes, we might be inclined to inhabit these tents for a long evening, given the hour. Sticky and stinky, yes, but I’m all cramped up and Aunt Edna ain’t shutting up any time soon. But can our dollars really go to such a man? An unrepentant racist who, with clever cunning, is but two-thirds the way towards spelling it all out in the very name of his establishment? Clark, naturally, isn’t asking questions. But some might. And where would it get them? Maybe the clerk was warned before and soon left in a huff. Maybe more benign pins are under the counter, and he just plum forgot. Usually saved his ideology for after hours, but he got sloppy.
Again, no one’s talking. Here, then gone, and off to Walley World with Clark and his brood. But I’m still thinking about KKC. When I first noticed the pins somewhere around 1990, I pondered, then let it go. I pondered again in the years to come, now I’m obsessed. I have to know. Short of stalking Brian Doyle-Murray, I’m likely out of luck. I might be the only one who cares. But care I do. And care I will, until I have a full explanation. Random? Intentional? Sending a message? An inside joke to throw Chevy Chase off his game? Maybe all. Maybe none. But there, in South Fork, Colorado, circa 1983, was a proprietor of tent who openly, proudly, embraced the most openly despicable man ever to run for the White House. Today, we take MAGA hats and bombastic rhetoric for granted. Part of the landscape now, normal as breathing. Then, and before, it was astounding. The stuff of legends. And KKC carved the way forward.
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