Camel Riding

This week marked an anniversary of sorts for your humble correspondent, gentle readers. January 8, 2002 marked the 30th anniversary of the first time I made a new year’s resolution that I actually kept. On that date in 1972 I swore I would never again ride a camel. From that day to this, I have never again ridden astride so much as a dromedary.
I’ve told this story before in various settings, so if it is familiar to you, please bear with me. Also keep in mind that this episode occurred during the halcyon days of my youth in Memphis when I was prone to doing any number of totally inexplicable things just for the pure meanness of it. And I was a pretty mean guy.
On the night (well, to be completely honest, it was in the wee small hours of the morning) of January 8, 1972, while engaged in a fairly substantial bout of debauchery, a friend of similar proclivities and I decided we wanted to ride a camel. My friend was an experienced horseback rider, although I was not. The young ladies with whom we were keeping company at the time thought this would be a really peachy idea, which should give you some idea of the caliber of women I was fond of in those days.
The only place we knew of wherein a camel could be obtained for purposes of transportation was in the Overton Park Zoo. The fact that the zoo was not open at this ridiculous hour provided no particular impediment since it was a very simple matter to breach that institution’s highly inadequate security measures. Also, had the zoo been open for business it was unlikely that the zoo officials would have been willing to grant a request for a camel ride to four people in our rather advanced state of unsteadiness.
With little or no advanced planning we headed off for the zoo in my 1961 Chevy Impala. Upon arrival, we thought it prudent to park the car somewhere other than in the zoo parking lot since nobody was supposed to be there. Entering the zoo through a large storm drain that ran under North Parkway, one of the major thoroughfares which border Overton Park, we soon located the camel exhibit.
As it so happened, the zoo regularly offered camel rides to children under the age of 12 for a small fee, so the two camels in the pen were accustomed to being ridden, although not at 2 o’clock in the morning. One of the two females in our group, I forget which one, expressed the opinion that we should ride bare-back, and she wasn’t talking about the absence of a saddle. My friend and I had no objections, so all four of us left our apparel hanging on the fence, and proceeded to lead the camels around to the wooden steps they had there for the kiddies to use to mount these beasts of burden. Once we were all astride the camels, my friend was suddenly sized with the hallucination that he was Lawrence of Arabia and began urging his mount into a trot. This was incredibly unwise as riding a camel is very different from riding a horse. When a horse runs, no two feet are on the ground at the same time, but steps are taken alternately by front and rear feet. Left front, right rear, right front left rear, and so on. A camel on the other hand, moves both feet on the same side at the same time. Left front, left rear, right front, right rear, et cetera. This gives the camel a kind of swaying gate that has been known to make inexperienced riders seasick (hence the nickname “ship of the desert”). These two camels not only swayed a good deal, they swayed into each other, throwing all four of us to the ground with an unceremonious thud. I guess that’s why you always see camels in caravans walking single file.
Battered and bruised, we managed to evacuate the area without further casualties. I don’t know whether or not camels laugh, but these two were making quite a racket as we four bush league camel jockies retreated.