Gin
As a kid growing up in Pittsfield in the 50s, I participated in a variety of established social groups. Clubs provided an opportunity for me to come up with new ways to act around people I just met. I never committed to a particular club for very long, but each experience gave me an opportunity to try out different aspects of my personality. I couldn’t have articulated using weeks at camp or activities at the Girls’ Club in this explicit manner as a child, but looking back, as the title of this blog indicates, The Past Remembered Anew, I can see this.
One example of camp-like activities happened at the Crane School playground where I spent time during the summers of my first and second grade years when we lived on Stanley Avenue. These adventures are documented in the published blog pieces, Neighborhoods and Neighborhood Cultures. However, my playground activities didn’t qualify as examples of possible personality changing experiences as they were lacking one of the main necessities; I needed to be with kids who didn’t already know me. The playground was across the street from the school, so the population of kids at the playground was the same as the kids I saw in school during the year. Whatever I was like at school, I acted the same at the playground or in the neighborhood. That meant sticking to the familiar pathways: not being daring, following the rules, trying not to make people mad, not showing off.
The first time I recall being in a place and consciously thinking about the way I behave was attending a Camp Fire Girls’ group meeting. I was eight or nine. We were living on Dewey Avenue. I imagine my mother suggested I join the Camp Fire Girls since she knew I missed the Crane School playground activities.
I don’t recall many of the details about the Camp Fire Girls but one memory is strong and offers an example of trying on new ways of engaging. The other four or five girls were all new to me, perhaps they went to one of the parochial schools in the area. In any case, they didn’t go to Tucker School with me. This was important because I felt I could behave differently than I did in school. I didn’t have a known personality with them. The leader said we were going to learn the Mexican Hat Dance. I decided to be an eager participant instead of holding back. I even said, ”Oh, I like this song,” even though I had not heard it before! I wanted it to be true, so I just said it. I was a bit surprised when my enthusiasm was met with cheeriness and not skepticism.
The leader gave each of us a straw hat with a large brim to place on the floor in front of us. She showed us how to step on and off the brim first with one heel and then the other in time to the music. Then we would to clap. When the music increased in speed, we would twirl around. I was loving this, laughing and moving in time with the tempo. I didn’t hold back. I gave it my all. My image was that I was very competent at the Mexican Hat Dance. The fact we did this in a room without mirrors likely helped me maintain this illusion. I began to think I liked dancing. All of this was very new behavior for me. In school in music class, I sung very quietly so that no one could hear me as I was unsure of my voice or ability to hold a tune. But no one in this setting knew me in that way. I have no idea what I really looked like doing this dance or how the leader or the other girls viewed me, but my self-image was positive. As soon as I got home, I showed my parents my new-found skill until my father warned me about jumping on the floor with so much force. After all our apartment was on the second floor of this three-story duplex. I can imagine what the neighbors thought.
Another positive experience with music at Camp Fire Girls involved learning a whole set of very old songs with hand gestures to enhance them. The motions you made with your arms were meant to illustrate the words of the song. “Down by the Old Mill Stream” was a favorite. When you sang “mill,” you rotated your hands around each other; when you sang “stream,” you moved one hand up and down gently to show the water rippling as it moved along. We also learned hand gestures for “On a Bicycle Built for Two.” Who taught us these songs from the early 1900s? I still recall many of the lyrics and gestures but the connection to camping is lost to me. Singing with hand movements to illustrate the words was fun but didn’t offer any skills useful in the woods, but those are the two activities of Camp Fire Girls I recall, singing and dancing. This sense of competence carried over into dancing I did in sixth grade.
We did not have gym classes during elementary school. I guess recess was considered enough physical activity. In sixth grade for a few weeks during the school year, the teachers joined two classes together in the afternoon so we could learn how to square dance. These sessions were held in the cafeteria which smelled vaguely of chocolate cake. Like the Mexican Hat Dance, this form of dancing worked for me. Once you learned the actions that matched each named routine, Do-Si-Do, Swing your Partner, Promenade Left, etc., it was up to the caller to make it coherent. As a dancer you listened to her calls which she timed to the rhythm of the music.
There was a kind of geometric precision to the dance that made it easy to follow. So even though this happened in school, I let myself be very engaged and active. After some days of practicing square dancing, we took on the Virginia Reel. It was different from square dancing, more like marching or a drill team. I was good at that too. Of course, it had my name in it!
During my junior high years, I attended additional square dance classes at the Girls Club. I never did admit to my friend Carole whose parents were ardent square dancers that I actually enjoyed this activity. Once she and I became friends, I went along with her making fun of her parents’ interest in square dancing. See the blog Carole, for more about square dancing and the classes she and I led on baton twirling also at the Girls Club.
At this time the Girls Club was in a wooden building on East Street in Pittsfield. This was just before the new addition in 1958. It was also before the Girls Club became Girls Inc. This happened when the Boys Club on North Street became coed and changed its name to the Pittsfield Boys and Girls Club. In the summers, I attended Camp Stevenson, a day camp operated by the Girls Club. I went for a couple of weeks each summer when I was about nine, ten, or eleven. To get to the camp, we rode a school bus from the Girls Club building. The camp site, still active today, was on Onota Lake.
Since I walked to school each day, riding in the school bus was exciting. It was doubly exciting when the bus turned down a narrow, hard-packed dirt road with woods on both sides. It seems like the leaves of the trees were brushing against the windows of the bus, as if we were entering some magic place deep in a forest like in a fairy tale. While there were lots of trees in the neighborhoods I lived in, feeling I was deep in the woods was new to me.
We got off the bus in a clearing before walking along a path to reach the site of the camp. The camp featured a flag pole in the center with seven or eight small tents off to the side. Each tent held six campers and a counselor. The tents were on wooden platforms a few inches off the ground. The front of the tents had flaps with rings sewn into the fabric. To hold open the flaps of the tent, you hooked the rings on stakes which were positioned along the ground. Since my family did not do any camping, this was all brand new to me. Exotic even. I remember enjoying the smell of the tent material that first day. It was a simple day camp experience. Each morning we gathered in our tents with a counselor before we joined the whole group of campers for opening ceremonies. Just like being in school in the 50s, we did the Pledge of Allegiance after a solemn raising of the flag on the camp flagpole.
During the morning, we did arts and crafts, making things out of gimp, creating collages by cutting and pasting colored paper in various shapes, and using small metal looms to weave brightly colored stretchy yarn into pot holders. I was my usual mediocre old self at most of that. Sort of like art class in school. I followed the same directions as those around me, but something, perhaps artistic ability, was missing. My projects never quite came out like they were supposed to. With one exception. The pot holders.
Their geometric precision made it easy for me to be good at making them. Weaving, under and over, under and over, under and over until you reached the end. Then it was a matter of looping the loose ends into each other as you took them off the loom, finally making a knot at the end. I wonder just how many pot holders my mother and grandmother really needed. They graciously took all I offered.
Before lunch there was an activity period in which we played games. These were the playground games I loved. Mother May I? Red Rover, Red Rover. Freeze Tag. Red Light Green Light. Simon Says. These games required no set up or equipment, just a lot of kids. The rules were simple and well known to us. I often wished I could play these street games in my neighborhood but most of the time there weren’t more than three or four kids around at any one time. Since these games were monitored by our older counselors, they didn’t dissolve into arguments- “You moved.” “No, I didn’t.” “I tagged you.” “No you missed.” - as the recess versions often did.
We also played kickball. This was our version of softball, but instead of a bat and pitching, the person who was up simply kicked the ball into the field and then ran the bases. The rules were similar to baseball. You tried to get to base before the opposing team members could throw the ball back to the person guarding the base.
At noon we returned to our assigned tent where we ate the lunches we had brought from home. I recall how most of the other girls sat with their legs spread out like a V with their lunches in front of them. Their backs were straight. I tried to emulate that position but found it not just uncomfortable but actually impossible to obtain. I could never sit that way. I usually knelt instead. Maybe I had undiagnosed scoliosis. If so, that was the only symptom.
After lunch, we had a quiet time in our tents. Our counselors were in charge of this. One of my counselors would have us lie down on our swimming towels while she told us a story. Maybe it was based on a book she had read because not only was she very good at keeping us entertained, she also made the story last until the end of the week. Each afternoon she stopped just when we wanted to know what would happen next keeping us interested in returning the next day to hear how it was all going to turn out.
After the quiet time, there was a period of swimming lessons and free swim before we gathered back at the flag pole. Now it was time to take down the flag but before that we ended the day singing songs as a whole group. This was one of my favorite parts of camp. Just as with the Mexican Hat Dance, I threw myself into these songs. “Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree.” “There’s a hole in the bucket.” “I knew an old woman who swallowed a fly.” Most of them made no sense to me. I didn’t know what a Kookaburra was, why he sat in a tree, or why an old woman would swallow a fly. The words didn’t matter, they were just interesting sounds to make. I always laughed at the abrupt ending to “I knew an old woman.” “She’s dead of course.”
But my favorite, my absolute favorite, was Kumbaya. This to me was an emotional experience. You held hands with each other as you swayed in unison. I didn’t realize the song had religious implications but it made me feel close to the people around me. To this day when people make fun of “singing Kumbaya” as a symbol of a meaningless act, I cringe a little. I want to yell at them. ”I loved singing Kumbaya. It made me feel good.” Still, according to those who disparage the song, why should just singing a song, not really doing anything to make the world a better place, make us feel good? A simple answer? Maybe sometimes a song is just something to sing.
My camping experiences sound great, right? The question is, how accurate are my memories? What do I really remember? How much did I fill in or even make up? Well here’s the truth. I recall the bus ride, the playground type games, not being able to sit with my legs in a V at lunch, the swimming, and the singing. All the rest is possible but not that clear in my memory. The arts and crafts projects are a mix of things I do remember doing. The questions is, did I do them at Camp Stevenson? Possibly. It seems likely. The counselor telling us stories is something that should be true but might not be exactly as described. That memory is quite vague. I know I enjoyed the camp enough to want to return. I described it in this blog entry perhaps not as it actually was, but as something that would have created the same emotional experience.
I applied to return to camp as a twelve-year-old, this time as a junior counselor. I had decided at an early age I wanted to be a teacher. I baby sat my younger sister and entertained her and her friends. I counted that as counselor experience. I figured being a junior counselor could lead into a paid position as a counselor in the future. It was also an example of trying on new personality traits. I never thought of myself as a leader. I usually found a way to be included in activities without being in charge or taking any responsibility. Offering myself as a junior counselor was a risk for me, but one I thought I was ready for. I figured they wouldn’t offer me the position if I wasn’t going to be able to do well in it.
Junior counselors were in-betweens. They didn’t pay to attend camp, nor get paid. I would be assigned to a counselor whom I would assist. In return, I would have the opportunity to learn how to be a counselor by observing what she did. Alas, my plans for this position fell apart. I had been accepted into the program, but a mishap prevented me from being able to participate.
In the blog piece, Working, I describe in detail what happened. A few weeks before I was to begin my job as a junior counselor, my efforts to impress one of my older brother’s friends by showing off my abilities as a pogo stick jumper resulted not in a new boyfriend for me, but in a blister on my hand which became infected. Staph, an infectious bacteria, was rampant that year. No one with such an infection could be around children. So that was the end of my Camp Stevenson experiences. It was also the end of trying to move into a leadership position.
Instead over the next few years in my Girls Club activities, I took on what would be my stock in trade for the next few years, find a way to be involved without being in charge. Here are some glimpses of those Girls Club activities some of which illustrate this persona.
At first, I tried whatever they offered, a cooking class, a class on how to apply makeup, the class on square dancing, sessions to play volleyball. I was just experimenting to see not only if I enjoyed the activity but also to see what I was good at. The sports activities turned out to be the strongest for me. In fact, at the same time I was participating in sports at the Girls Club, I was also playing on the after-school sports teams at the junior high and eventually the high school. But true to the persona I had adopted, I would volunteer to help out with equipment or attendance rather than offer myself up for consideration as a leader.
I started attending the Girls Club before it was renovated. I recall attending a Halloween spooky house the older girls and leaders had created. The old wooden building with its creaky floors was a great back drop to stage scary moments.. For this event, the building was darkened. Large spaces were broken into smaller ones with black backdrops and screens. The walk through the spooky house was circumscribed so that visitors needed to stay on a path which led through the various exhibits. On both sides of the path the lights were covered with cloths or dark paper. Halloween decorations hung on every inch of the wall. Jack-o’-lanterns with scary faces lit by candles were strewn about the floor lighting the pathway.
As we walked through in groups of three or four, we saw encountered various staged scenes. One was a mannequin dressed as a witch whose hands suddenly moved as if she were grabbing at you. Startled, you realized it wasn’t a mannequin; it was one of the older girls dressed up. Around a corner, you come upon a perfectly still vampire standing stiffly in a vertical coffin. Only, just as you passed, the vampire moved forward tapping you on the shoulder, leading to screams. As you were screaming you could hear similar yelling coming from those ahead of you in the line. So you wondered what else was going to happen as you made your way forward.
The walls were hung with white webbing and huge spiders made from black paper. Continuing through the spooky house, we saw a scene featuring Sleeping Beauty lying in a glass-topped bed. After a group of us had arrived at that location, she would slowly start to sit up pushing at the glass over her head with a scream. Then we all screamed while the lights flashed on and off. I had bad dreams about being trapped in a glass-topped coffin for weeks.
The spooky house pathway ended in a large room where everyone, now somewhat recovered from our frights, bobbed for apples, ate donuts and drank cider. I remember thinking when I am older, I’d like to play one of those parts to scare the younger children. It seemed to me that creating the exhibits and being a part of one of the scenes would make the whole experience even more interesting.
It was quite exciting when the renovated Girls Club opened in 1958. The new wing included a swimming pool and gymnasium. My swimming had been limited to lakes in summer. It was amazing to be able to swim in the winter. I’d also play basketball in the new gym when there were enough of us to get a game going. “Girls’ rules” of course. I’ll complain about that in a future blog entry when I talk about sports in junior and senior high school.
One day there was an announcement about planning a dance. Boys to be invited! It was a sock hop. In those days we wore hard-soled shoes. Sneakers were something you changed into for playing sports. That meant when a dance was held on a gym floor you took off your shoes and left them outside. To protect the floor you danced in your socks. Hence, the name, sock hop.
I wanted very much to be a part of this event. However, I didn’t feel comfortable dancing or didn’t expect any boy to ask me to dance. Knowing I didn’t want to miss the dance, but also knowing that I didn’t want to sit along the wall alone, I volunteered to sell tickets, collect coats, and work at the bake sale counter.
The evening of the dance I was in the thick of things, actively saying hello to all and being busy with my jobs. I got to attend the dance by being a part of the support group that helped run it. I took on similar roles throughout my junior high years, never chairing any committees, but usually on them. Carrying out logistical tasks was my way of staying involved without having responsibility with its attendant fear of failing or looking incompetent. I wonder how that might have changed had I served as a junior counselor and then full counselor. Would taking on that kind of leadership have given me more self-confidence?
Thinking over camp experiences as opportunities to test out new ways to present yourself to the world, I must describe one I have not yet talked about. Chronologically somewhere between Camp Fire Girls and Camp Stevenson was the Bumblebee Club. This was the ultimate opportunity to define your own personality as it was self-designed.
In fifth grade, Cheryl Huddleston and I decided to create our own club. It was a rainy Saturday afternoon. We were curled up in her bedroom when the idea came to us. “Let’s put on a show!” Well, really, more like “Let’s make up a club.” We’d design a uniform, make up the rules, and create a symbol. Since it was ours, we would be the ones to decide who to invite to join. What power!
For the next few weeks, Cheryl and I met to lay out plans for our Bumblebee Club. The uniform was to be a brown full skirt with the image of a bumblebee sewn into the left-hand side to go with a light-yellow blouse. Obviously, we didn’t even consider the idea of a co-ed club. We wanted to be different from the other kinds of organizations, so we agreed, no sashes for our uniforms. No badges to earn either. The Bumblebee Club was for fun. Why we choose a bumblebee, I can’t recall. Perhaps we wanted to show we were not scared of anything. What better way to express the person you want to be than to be in charge of a club, its rules, and its membership. We may have been too picky about who we let in or may simply have used all our energy designing the club because we had no meetings, events, or other kids participate. I recall fondly the planning process. That must have been enough.
I attended my first and only overnight camp during junior high school. I learned of this camp from the Unitarian Church youth group. I think our minister gave us a leaflet about the camp to bring home. My parents were glad I showed an interest in going. They not only submitted the application paperwork but also applied for a scholarship. To me the idea of a scholarship meant some kind of award. I didn’t feel any embarrassment about the implication that my parents didn’t have the funds to send me otherwise.
While I wasn’t particularly outgoing, I wasn’t shy either. I approached new experiences as if they might be fun. I was quite happy to go to an overnight camp where I didn’t know anyone. I usually could find one or two other kids to hang out with in most places I had been in the past. The camp was in Rowe, Massachusetts quite near the Vermont border. The fact that it was only one week so that I wouldn’t miss out on the rest of the summer meant it didn’t feel like an imposition.
I arrived on a Sunday afternoon. Once I dropped off my belongings at my assigned bunkhouse cabin, my parents and I took a casual tour of the campgrounds to locate the community building where meals were served, the lake for swimming, and the other buildings, some just floors and roof and canvas panels for sides, where activities took place. Everywhere you looked, you saw parents and kids wandering about just as we were doing. At some signal parents left and we campers were left to our counselors.
We started in our assigned bunkhouse cabins where we unpacked, learned the names of the other kids and were told about the general schedule for each day. There were about ten of us in each cabin supervised by a counselor. I think there were about five or six cabins in all, some for boys and some for girls. Then it was time for dinner.
Our counselor led us to the large community house where all meals were served. She pointed out the long table that was assigned to our cabin. “We sit together for all meals. That way we can get to know each other better.” The place filled up with lots of chatting kids. Once the tables were full, the people running the camp had a few words to say. They introduced themselves, had the counselors stand, welcomed us to the camp and made a few announcements. Then just before we were going to line up to get our trays for dinner, they called some names, mine among them, to come up and take a seat at a table near the front of the hall. I wasn’t sure what this was about. Some honor? Some random grouping? Why were we being called on to come forward? In any case I did as I was told taking a seat at the table indicated. The rest of the group soon joined me. Instead of a counselor, the head of this table was the camp nurse. She explained we’d eat at this table instead of with our cabin mates because we required special diets.
I was appalled. Special diet! I was allergic to citrus acid which could create skin irritation on my lips and fingers, but at thirteen I was quite capable of avoiding orange juice and lemonade when they were offered. I did not want to be singled out as odd or needing special treatment. I wanted to sit with my cabin like the rest of the campers. Interestingly enough my outrage didn’t go so far as to include the others at that table. All I was thinking about was myself. I told the nurse I didn’t need any special food preparation. I would just not eat the items which were a problem for me. She nodded saying soothingly, “We can take good care of you.” She seemed to be unaware that I was upset.
I felt humiliated. Singled out. Treated differently than the other campers. I was embarrassed to be at this table. I usually obeyed adults, but I didn’t want to do this. I am not sure if this is an example of trying out new behaviors in a new situation but I began to think I wasn’t going to sit at this table after tonight. I kept feeling this wasn’t necessary. I don’t know what I said when I returned to join my table at the end of that first meal before we all went to the campfire. I didn’t want to cry or even get red in the face, reactions I was very close to. I must have found some way to deflect their questions, but I stewed over this all that evening even during the camp fire singing, something I had been looking forward to.
As I considered disobeying the adults in charge, I thought of my parents. What would they think? This wasn’t the 60s when every teenager was a potential revolutionary. It was the conformist 50s when everyone, it seemed, yearned to be just like everyone else. The more I thought about it, the more I began to think my mother and father would be on my side in this. While they never actively told us kids it was okay to break rules, they were less conventional than other parents I knew. If we complained about a school rule they would usually talk about how it was important to understand the reason behind the rule. I thought that out. This rule was designed to keep campers safe, to make sure they ate the proper diet. I could do that on my own by avoiding the problematic foods. I came to my conclusion. I would sit with my cabin from then on. And that is what I did.
The next morning I walked to breakfast with my group chatting as we wondered what today would bring. I was also hoping I was not showing any of the trepidation I was feeling. What would happen when I didn’t go to the special meals table? As I went through the food line, I didn’t take the orange juice, thinking if someone was watching they could see I knew what I was doing. I returned with my tray to the table for my cabin wondering if someone was going to come over to demand that I move. Also wondering what I would do if they did. However, nothing happened. No one asked me to move. It was completely uneventful. I ate my breakfast there that day with my new friends and every other meal as well. All that worry for what?
As an adult I just have to shake my head. What were they thinking? Wouldn’t you think those who ran a camp for teenagers would understand about teenage emotions and the importance of fitting in? Looking back on this situation, I felt bad for the other campers who had been identified as needing special care in this way. I didn’t do anything to help them. It was the beginning of my realization, one that took a long time to develop, that many decisions that get made in institutions like camps and schools are not necessarily for the benefit of the campers or the students but ones that make it easier for the adults in charge. It was simpler to group all the campers who had special food needs together so the nurse could supervise their diet. So that was what they did with no thought to how that might make these campers feel odd or different and how they were excluded from the table conversations their companions might be having. The policy actually undermined the counselor’s contention that we’d get to know each other by eating together. I still feel good that I handled the situation well.
After breakfast we all gathered in a large hall for an all-camp meeting There were announcements and updates to the day’s schedule. Then the speaker launched into his story for the day. This was a daily occurrence. He loved to tell long involved stories that ended –not with a moral or a lesson- but with a pun. Here is an abridged version of one of his stories.
“In a small village, a man was talking to his wife about his job slicing bread. ‘We need more money. I get paid by the loaf for slicing bread. The more loaves I can slice in a day, the more money I can make. I work as quickly as I can, but I have reached my limit. I don’t know how I can slice them any faster.’ “ That is the set up. All the facts you need to know to follow the story, but the story teller would have embellished this with tons of details so this part of the story might have taken five minutes in all. The story teller continues.
“All during the next week, as he is slicing bread, he thinks and thinks. Then he goes to a market in the next village and finds just what he wants. The next day he comes home so happy. ‘I found a sword. I can cut two loaves of bread at a time.’ He had doubled his income. A few weeks later he arrives home jubilant because he has found a pirate’s cutlass. Now he can cut three loaves at a time. ‘We are going to be rich.’ “
The story teller offers great detail as to the shape and quality of each cutting implement and the market where the villager purchased it. I suppose he was trying to get us to pay attention to such details and not ponder the many questions his story raised. How many people lived in the village? How could the village population suddenly purchase three times as many sliced loaves as the previous week? Where are they getting the money? How can they consume that much bread? After a few more minutes describing the bread-slicer’s walk to a far-off village in his search for the perfect cutting implement, we get the punch line. The man returns home excitedly announcing, “Mama, mama. I am the luckiest man in the world. Today, I found a four-loaf cleaver.”
On cue, all of us in the audience groaned at the end of the story. And the story teller beamed! Each morning he would tell a different story. I began to try to figure out what the punch line would be. It was always a well-known adage tweaked a little. I also realized my father would love such stories, so I made a point of remembering them so I could share the puns with him. At this distance of time, sixty years later I do recall one of the other
punch lines. “You have to iron while the strike is hot.” Unfortunately I don’t remember the story that preceded this witticism.
As the week went on, I noted they used the cabins as ways to group us. There were contests each morning for which cabin was the neatest; in the afternoons at volley ball or badminton, the teams would be based on cabins. Some cabin activities were more prosaic. Times for using the showers would be allotted by cabins. The showers were barely warm water in stalls that were private, one person each with a door that closed, but open at the top, no roofs, like at a beach. Unlike many movies based on camps, there were no incidents of the boys trying to peek into the girls’ showers that I heard about. There was also no deranged camp caretaker killing us off one at a time. Movies about camps are quite unreliable in terms of my experiences!
The morning activities included arts and crafts. I recall two different projects. In one you began with any color of crayon which you rubbed all over a piece of cardboard until it was completely covered. Then you took a different color and did the same thing on top of the previous color until it was no longer visible. Several crayons were used until the coating on the cardboard was quite thick. Then you used an unfolded paper clip to scratch off one or more levels of the crayons making any kind of design you wanted. It was easy to make very nice-looking designs even if you couldn’t draw. It surprised me I could produce something artistic. Up to that point I thought art was about drawing, a skill I did not have. I never did well in any art class in school. But then again, we never made scratched-off crayon cardboards! In fact, this wasn’t just an abstract art project, it was practical. With two of these cardboard designs completed, I punched holes in one side of each and sewed them together with a colorful yarn. Ta-da. A handmade book cover.
The second art project started with a small wooden box, the kind that might be on a bureau to hold jewelry. They showed us how to use a wood burning tool to make a design on the box. Even though there were stencils you could follow, I was so buoyed up by my new confidence in my artistic abilities, I was committed to doing something of my own. I planned out a design based on circles and triangles, something symmetrical so it was easy to create. I drew the design on the top of the box with a pencil so I could make corrections before I started. I loved the smell made as the tool burned in the lines resulting in a darker wood color. After the designs were burned in, we smoothed out the box with sand paper before coating it with shellac or some other kind of varnish or stain.
I was proud of my work. As soon as I got home, I found appropriately-sized books for my handmade book covers. I gave the box to my mother as a gift. Of course, she offered me lavish praise for my accomplishment. How fulfilling it all was. Alas, my success in arts and crafts was a better match for the adage, “What happens at camp stays at camp,” than the construct of trying out new aspects of one’s personality. To this day these two projects, whatever landfill they are in, remain the highpoint of my artistic skills.
A routine morning at camp included time for swimming just before lunch. I loved to swim, but oh, was that water cold. Remember Rowe Camp was in western Massachusetts near the Vermont border. The water in the lake was enhanced each year by the winter snow melt. It never really warmed up. On a hot day, the shallow water at the shore’s edge did become heated by the sun so it was pleasantly warm. However, as soon as you got in up to your knees, you felt it. I guess the most positive term would be refreshing! The best thing was to dive in as soon as the water was deep enough. That way you would be all one temperature. Standing with your upper section warmed by the sun and your lower cooled by the water only extended the time until you became acclimated.
I had another reason for diving in fast. The bottom of the lake was full of plants. Your feet sank a bit into the soggy bottom. I never liked the feeling of things brushing by my feet and legs in the water. I would imagine there were live creatures hidden in the cloudy water trying to get me. Better to dive in, keep your body in the water away from the murky bottom. Between trying to make sure I wasn’t touching the bottom or feeling the plants brushing by my legs or lingering too long in the shallow water, I looked like a very eager swimmer. I just walked in until it was deep enough to dive and started swimming. No one really knew all the crazy thoughts in my mind.
Following lunch there was a quiet period back in our cabins, an hour break for reading or writing letters home. We were allowed to listen to a radio as long as everyone in the cabin would agree on a station. Some campers played cards. I recall liking this interlude, lying on my bunk, reading with some kind of pop music playing in the background.
Then it would be time for a specially planned afternoon activity. These were the best because each day was different. I remember three of them. On Tuesday the whole camp congregated in cabin groups in the main yard. We were going on a tour of the Yankee Nuclear Energy Power plant which was also located in Rowe. There were two school busses waiting. Each counselor had a clipboard. I remember thinking how responsible they looked holding those clipboards and checking us off as we climbed aboard. On the bus, I learned a new song, “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer. If one of the bottles should happen to fall, ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall…” We yelled this more than sang it. Great fun. I recall little of the tour of the energy plant. At this time nuclear power, and in fact atomic energy in general, was considered the newest, more positive source of energy. Skepticism and warnings of the radiation danger came later. In 1958 it was all about “Our Friend the Atom.”
On Wednesday afternoon, our cabin group walked through the woods following a trail with our counselor until we came to a small town. There was a paved road, a few houses, a white church building, and, best of all, a country store. We all went in and bought snacks. It was interesting to see what kinds of food each person bought after being away from home half a week. For some it was soda or potato chips. For others ice cream bars. I bought candy sticks of several different flavors, ginger, cinnamon, root beer, mint, cherry. I figured I could eat two a day to make them last until the end of the week.
Thursday afternoon was my favorite. We went river walking. I had never heard of this previously. We each wore our bathing suits and a pair of old sneakers. Now that I think of it, “beat up sneakers” must have been on the list they sent out to bring to camp, otherwise I wouldn’t have brought sneakers with holes in the sides. One of the camp counselors led us to a small river. The fun of it was the differing depths of the water. Some was only up to your ankles. Another few steps and you were up to your knees. I had such a sense of adventure, of being daring.
Because of the rocks you needed to look carefully to choose where to step next. There were plenty of times campers slipped and fell with lots of laughter. As we continued, he led us to an area where the water was as deep as our waists. We paused there to swim a while. Some lolled on the shore, laying on broad rocks in the sun. Others just watched the water rippling by. When it was time to go, we returned the same way, now moving from the deeper water to the more shallow portions, ending up where the flow was just a trickle. What a great afternoon. I longed to do it again.
The camp fires each night were fun for me. Full of singing. We sang all the songs I recalled from Camp Stevenson, Kookaburra, Kumbaya, and some new ones, Let Your Little Light Shine. The camp fire meetings ended with story-telling, some of which were intentionally scary, although most were just tall tales with some kind of punch-line ending. Friday afternoon was spent preparing for the Friday night camp fire, the final one as we would be going home the next day. There was to be a talent show and afterwards a dance. For the talent show each cabin prepared a song or dance number. It was, of course, going to be a competition. One cabin would win a prize. We practiced our routine that afternoon. Not sure what it was, maybe Down By the Old Mill Stream with hand gestures?
Before the talent show, each of the counselors also showcased something they were good at. One played a guitar and sang, another told a scary story, a third did some gymnastic moves, but the one that captivated me was the counselor who led us in a game of Simon Says. Now I had played Simon Says before but in a few minutes it was clear those previous games were amateur hour.
This guy was so tricky. He would get going in a rhythm with us following him. So far so good. But he was fast. So fast. When his actions didn’t match his words, we would simply follow his actions. Too late. You’re out.
Simon Says, “Put your hands up.” Simon Says, “Put your hands down.” Simon Says, “Put your hands up.” Simon Says, “Put your hands down.” “Put your hands up!” He put his hands up and so did a bunch of us. We were out.
Another trick was how he used his voice. After a few commands of Simon Says this or that, he would look at someone and causally say, “Step forward”, and they would! It is hard to convey the different ways he could trick us We were all laughing by the time he had eliminated all the campers. The other counselors had been playing too. There were still a few of them left. I suppose they had seen his routine several times previously and had become better at following only the Simon Says official actions and ignoring the others. He ended with: “Simon Says, ‘Jump up in the air.’ Then he pointing to the last competitor. “You’re out. Simon didn’t say ‘Come back down.’ We laughed and clapped for him.
Then each cabin did whatever song they had prepared. After that, the final activity of camp week. A dance. There was some kind of sound equipment playing popular music. The campers were my age,10 to 13. Like me, most had no idea how to dance like this. Mostly of the campers stood around in small clumps, girls on one side, boys on another. Maybe the counselors got into it, but what I recall was just wanting it to be over.
Dancing did not bring out a new persona for me. I was not the center of attention hovered about by several of the boy campers, nor the belle of a group of laughing girls. I stood to one side with a friend from my cabin just watching. Back to my usual “fade into the background” self. I would have preferred to be singing Kumbaya.
As I recall that awkward feeling of being on the fringes of that dance, my imagination turns to a different young woman at another camp with a different attitude toward dancing. Among the papers we found after my mother died were some notes and postcards she wrote to my father before they were married. One of the post cards exhorts him to come to a camp on Saturday night to visit her, saying there will be dancing. In her words, “There’s a dance and I do so want to dance with you again. It would be grand.”
It’s the summer of 1938. She’s about to enter her senior year in High School in North Adams. My father-to-be, older than her by a decade, operates a bookstore where they met. (See the blog entry Books for details.) Did he come to the dance? If so, it’s interesting to realize they were dancing at a camp in Northfield, Massachusetts not very far from the Rowe camp where twenty years later I was not dancing. I try to picture the scene. He would have been older than the counselors! No rock’n’roll. It must’ve been big band music. I wonder how he was accepted or did their dancing together sweep all those thoughts away.
The notes they wrote to each other indicate a passionate relationship. They married the following spring. By the time I was old enough to become curious about such questions, much had happened in their lives. Children, work, the toll of daily life. Also my relationship with them was bound by our roles. I was the child and they were the parents. This limited the questions that seemed appropriate for a kid to ask. Did my mother try on new personality traits when she was away from familiar surroundings the way I did?
Later in life my mother began working at a local hospital in food service. This was the first job she took on outside the house. By this time I was married myself and had a small son. I was surprised that when I suggested dropping in to visit her at work so she could show me around, she found reasons it wasn’t convenient. Each time I visited her in Pittsfield, I asked.
Eventually she agreed, but she wanted to tell me something first. “I am not who you think I am when I am at work. This is the first place where I am not John’s wife or someone’s mother. It’s as if I picked up the personality I left in high school. That is who I am at work.” She had been worried that her work persona was one I wouldn’t recognize, expect, or appreciate.
Remembering this story makes me realize that for my mother, and perhaps my father too, becoming husband and wife and eventually a father and a mother, meant adjusting to new responsibilities and tweaking their personalities to fit these new roles.
Those different behaviors I tried on are those I would draw from when I faced similar challenges as I moved from being a college student to a professional teacher and from having boyfriends to becoming a part of a married couple. My mother took a different path. The personality traits she set aside when she took on adult roles of wife and mother were waiting for her to revive when she was in a position to be just herself, not someone’s wife or mother.
My experiences with clubs and at camp, like my mother’s, offered both of us opportunities to grow into the people we became.
No comments:
Post a Comment