This was the first time I was not with my family for Christmas...just past my thirteenth birthday, school closed for the holidays and the two or three other boarding students had gone home to spend time with their families. I really didn't feel lonely. After all, there were thirty some assorted Jesuit priests and seminarians and the singular Brother Pouisson.

Christmas Eve, I went to sleep with no thought that tomorrow was not to be a normal Christmas. I was where I was supposed to be....I had my work answering the phone for the house....there would be Masses to serve (I usually did two or three each morning before breakfast), there would be three good meals....the cook would go home after our noon turkey meal and, as we did each Sunday for supper, Brother Pouisson and I would set up the kitchen for an informal buffet meal where everone would fix their own sandwiches and stand around eating and talking. As they would leave, Brother Pouisson and I would clear up, clean up and put everything away. These buffets allowed me to see the priests as humans instead of some mysterious, holy beings.

I will never be able to adequately describe my total surprise and awe at the sight before me. I rubbed my eyes to see if the vision would disappear, but it didn't. Between my bed and the door was a pile of brightly wrapped presents....Santa had found me!! Actually, I could not imagine where all this had come from. I was sure my parents could not afford that much for me. They would have had a hard enough time buying that many empty boxes and the paper to wrap them, there was at least a dozen boxes, much less the expense of getting them from Baltimore to Dallas or bringing them.

Since the packages each had a tag showing that it was for me, I opened a couple before going to serve Mass, the rest I opened after breakfast. I don't remember what all the presents were but two of them stood out. One was a board game, the other was a pair of trousers which were too big.

The game was, "Camelot," a bit of checkers and chess, but not the same. I enjoyed playing it when I could get someone to play with. When I left the school to go home at the end of the school year, "Camelot" had to be left behind. Since I haven't found anyone else who had ever heard of it. Every time I went into a new toy or game store, I asked if they had, "Camelot." The usual answer was that they didn't, they had never heard of it --- was it new? In early 1963, while temporarily at Fort Knox attending some military classes, I visited a Post Exchange that was a dedicated toy store. Unbelievably, there, waiting for me, was, "Camelot." While paying for it, I told the clerk of my eighteen year hunt and my surprise and delight at having finally found it. The clerk said that they hadn't heard of it before, the game wasn't selling....maybe I should buy a backup copy. I didn't and, today, my copy sits on top of a wall cabinet in my living room in plain sight and hasn't been played since the mid 1970's. Until 2004, I hadn't found anyone else who knew of that game.

While looking through the website of Games Club of Maryland, I decided to check out their Game Reviews page and was surprised to find a review of, "Camelot." Almost unbelievably, I found that there is a World Camelot Federation, whose website has a great amount of information about, "Camelot." There has even been a 2002-2003 WCF Camelot World Championship. I'm happy to see others are continuing to enjoy the game and that it's not quite dead yet.