Daughter is back from camp. She loves it; what kid doesn’t? I wonder what she’ll remember – I went to the same place for seven years, and have about five or six memories.
Getting “suicides” at the canteen, which meant one squirt of every soda flavor. We all pronounced it delicious and exotic. I also noted that the PEPSI logo on the wax cups had a trademark symbol under the P, and since the logo was rather small, it almost looked like PERSI. This has occurred to me every other time I see the Pepsi logo
Trying to impress the girls at the “Dance” on the tennis courts by covering my face in fake blood and staggering out of the woods. To my horror the first person I met was the camp pastor, a fellow who reminded me of Donald Pleasance in “Fantastic Voyage,” who was horrified and said “what happened, my son?” I started to explain, and then Dean, the cool counselor dude all the girl counselors loved, came over and sized it up and took my fake blood away for good.
Massive crush on a girl who reminded me of the dark-haired woman who was in a Hawaii Five-O two-parter, as McGarrett’s erotic nemesis. She was also a Romulan, which made her even more desirable. I’d give the name, but I know some of you are furiously googling already, looking for that Hawaii Five-0 / Trek nexus.
Being sent on a snipe hunt my first year, and how thrilling the woods were when I was alone – terrifying, too, as if you could hear the silent trillls of Pan’s laughter echoing in the tall solemn trees. When I was deep in the woods and the eyes of the owls had bored completely into my soul, I ran back panting, and the wind moved the underbrush in the opposite direction, as if I was running into a fire from which all sensible creatures were fleeing. I figured there was a snipe in the grass. When I burst into the room the rest of the cabin was waiting, and there was something bright and barbed in the air; DID YOU CATCH ONE? asked John Larson, my tormentor, and I said “no, but I think I passed one on the way back.” They exploded in laughter. All was explained. I think I was relieved to know there wasn’t such a thing as a snipe.
John Larson was also the main bully at school, and distinguished himself at camp with a catch phrase: “I’ll tell you a thing or three.” He also got total awe and respect for calling everyone into the bathroom and showing them a stool with the length of a Burmese anaconda.
Tetherball, which always ended up with a blow to the head.
Talking to the camp nurse about diseases I’d seen on Marcus Welby. I was particularly keen on whether she’d come across a case of Spondylitis. Particularly Ankylosing Spondylitis. I had forgotten the symptoms, but I knew that Marcus Welby could fix it. To this day I remember the term, because the words were so melodic, so pleasurable to say.
Asking Pastor Pleasance if there would be a nuclear war soon. You know, the Revelations say the Eagle will fight the Bear, and that’s pretty clear, isn’t it? We know not the day nor the hour. Yeah, fine, but ballparks us on a month or a year, padre.
The night the counselor Charlie Brown told us were all going to die. We were down at the lake for evening services; he interrupted, called for quiet, and faced us with a grim expression. (Chunky guy, black glasses, unkempt beard.) He said that the Russians had launched their nuclear missiles and the United States had done the same and it was only a matter of time, and we had to look in our hearts and decide if were were right with Jesus. Let us pray. Stunned silence, sniffles, a few sobs, then: he said that didn’t happen. But if it did, would we be right with Jesus? In the cabin that night John Larson spoke for all: “I’d like to stab Charlie Brown in the guts and watch him float in water dead.”
Because it was Bible camp, we said: Amen.
Anyway, daughter had a great time. I told her to take a camera, but she declined. Pity. I took an Instamatic one year. All I have. Pillow fight in the cabin.
Best friend on the left – fellow comic-book, Pogo, Star-Trek enthusiast, can you tell? and my cousin. Haven’t seen the latter fellow in decades; he’s a pastor now working on environmental issues. Saw my cousin last at his brother’s funeral. Before that, his father’s. Before that, his son’s. All in the course of less than two years.
Whenever you face the camera, you’re facing the future. Which is why it’s important to smile.
Today: More GI Sweethearts at Comic Sins, HERE. Not about gastrointestinal complications. As far as I can tell, anyway.
Pass it along, if you wish
39 Responses to Summer Camp
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Ah, camp.
One I attended as an 11 and 12-year-old– “Pinecliff”, in Utah– is still there, including the bathroom/showers building which we called the “Taj Mahal” for its vaguely oriental roofline. I brought the term back with me, and 35 years later, the surviving members of my immediate family (who never went there) will refer to a call of nature as “going to the Taj”.
Took a camera to my last year as a camper. 1982, I think. I was 17. Don’t remember most of the people in the pictures.
Officiated as a cabin counselor in Arkansas twice in the 90′s. Lots of fun. Wouldn’t mind doing it again. I have video of those memories.
(first…)
I never got to go to camp but I did take my city cousin on a snipe hunt. It was worth the spanking that I received.
True to type, I Googled up the Hawaii 5-0 Romulan:
http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Joanne_Linville
I remember her as a very cute Romulan.
Never went to sleepaway camp. Day camp sucked enough.
My new favorite cry: Buh-huh-huh waaaaa! I will find something to whine about today just to use it.
Never knew anyone where I grew up that actually went on/sent someone on a snipe hunt, but we all knew what the expression meant(no summer camp in our working class ‘hood, either, except those BSA “Jamborees” that recent history suggests might as well have been called “To Catch a Predator”). By the time the suggestion came up on a choir retreat in college, I was so astonished that some of the innocents from Up North(who you’d think would know better than us city kids what this was) actually fell for it, I couldn’t form the words of warning I wanted to say to my friends among the marks.
I also always wondered what would happen when some moron sent someone off on a snipe hunt near a marsh with, well, snipe. The mark could easily come back & say, “Yup–saw one nesting by that big cypress.”
[ The best line in the 1990 Bergin/Thurman "Robin Hood"--the one that got ignored because it came out just before "RH-Prince of Dweebs"--is a perfect anglicism: Jurgen Prochnow, disgusted w/Jeroen Krabbe's lack of blood-lust in pursuing RH, says, "Baron, sometimes you are so wet, one could shoot snipe off you." ]
Maybe it’s the stage training, but those comic cover drawings that have a person in the foreground looking at what, in two dimensions, is a direct line of sight(but the spatial clues tell you can’t really be seen by them) never bothered me. That’s exactly what you do when you’re downstage, reacting to someone/something upstage–rather than actually turn your back to the audience. It’s not realistic, but the stage picture makes perfect visual sense.
Of course, in this case, that might actually _be_ some hooker speaking(picture the spluttered explanations to his bride later), & the actual sister is off-stage-right, staring psychotically at the war bride while testing the edge of a kitchen knife, & occasionally grinning while she makes throat-cutting gestures at the poor furriner. “Gaslight”, anyone?
I had never heard of a “snipe hunt” until I moved south at 14. I was never the “victim”–but it was confusing to me because in Massachusetts we had snipes in our marshy woods out back. So what was the big joke? I see on a range map they even winter in Georgia.
They are hard to spot and probably impossible to catch so–there’s that.
I went to my summer camp for. 4 or 5 years? Around that. In the 70′s. Camp Flintlock in North Carolina. Dad got some pictures, here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kitcase/sets/72157627188534754
Google for “432 Camp Flintlock Road, Zirconia NC 28790″ and you’ll find it on a map. Lots of good memories from those summers, before I was old enough to get lawn mowing jobs.
Boy Scout camp- food was supplemented with old Army rations, including peanut butter in cans. You cut both lids off the can, and then pushed the peanut butter out of the can using the bottom lid- stuff sliced off like baloney from the other end.
re: Tim’s “sister” from the comic page- what kind of idiot takes his gal to meet “sis” on the street?!? Run away FAST, lady…
Never went to summer camp. There were seven kids in our family, and I suspect that would be a budget breaker. Funny that out of the seven of us, five of us would garner best friends that were from single child families. The friends would always want to be at our house where all the kids were, and each of us would prefer to go to the friends’ house where we could shine outside the shadow of our many siblings. Many sleep overs at friend’s houses, or in our large back yard. Also, trips to the cabin at the lake in the summer where we would disappear between meals for hours on end. Or to the familial nest near Sonora CA where we would leave after breakfast exploring the mines and hills on my Uncle’s property, to return for dinner at the end of the day. Ah, the halcyon days of youth.
Strangely enough, I’ve always remembered that episode of Marcus Welby and the ankylosing spondylitis. I even remember the actor who was supposed to be afflicted with it: Ricardo Montalban, one of the smoothest actors of all time, and vastly underrated by Hollywood.
The phrase is one that sticks in your head. It’s a spinal disease, in case you were wondering. I remember, because many years later, my daughter suffered her first three years of puberty in a body-encasing back brace because she had a similar affliction, ideopathic juvenile scoliosis.
I went to summer camp for a week once. Hated it, never went back. When I was in scouting I went on a few camp outs. Once they took me on a snipe hunt, but by then I’d already heard the trick, so I circled back to camp and went to bed. The spent a couple hours looking for me.
At my first Boy Scout camp the older guys made a big deal about the annual hike to Iron Springs. For days they talked about it and finally the day arrived. We put on packs, got our walking sticks and headed out. After about 10 miles we were told Iron Springs was near. We turned a corner and there it was: a pile of old, rusty, mattress box springs. Ha ha!
I went to a bible camp when I was 11 years old and was completely miserable. No one at the camp read from anything but Revelations. Some of the counselors were ex-hippies who talked about all the drugs and casual sex they had, but now they were on the straight and narrow with Jesus and that we had to be straight and narrow too. Being only 11 and not even into puberty yet, I kept thinking, “Well, can I go do all the drugs and sex first, then get straight with Jesus?”
My best friend talked me into going, then abandoned me when his survival instincts kicked in and he immediately made friends with the bullies. I stood my ground and hung with the nerds and geeks. He was not my best friend anymore.
And I still have that stupid camp song stuck in my head!
My father convinced us to go snipe hunting in Yosemite Natl. Park, when we were staying near Wawona. There is a photograph of me, shining a flashlight into a paper bag and beating on a metal waste-basket with a wooden spoon. If I ever ran for President, and that photo got out into the public…
I don’t think the joke is that snipes are not real, it is being able to catch one with a bag and a flashlight.
I do believe they are fond of chocolate.
As a child in the late 70s, my friends and I decided to take our younger brothers (we each had at least one) out on a snipe hunt.
Unfortunately, someone’s mother spilled the beans to her younger sons that there was no such thing the day before the hunt was to occur and ruined it for everyone.
“Please, oh please oh please be my prisoner?”
@RPD: ooh, bet you got kitchen duty for that.
back with good ol’ Troop 231 (d) out of Carl Ben Elementary (d) in the good old days (d), my first trip to to Camp Wilderness (still there, took the wife a year or so ago when we were in the area). we got Crow campsite, next to Troop 202 of the church. last time we had a good campsite, dammit, they stuck us in the swamp forever.
anyway. we were telling campfire stories, and 202 one year set up for the PiPi Bird. it’s’ pronounced pee-pee. the tale is this rare bird that is feared, because they die suddenly… there is no output for all their input. just explode out of their tree singing their song.
and at this critical point, the guy who climbed the tree with a kettle of lake water was trying so hard to stifle the laughs that all he could muster was “peeeee… peeehahaha” and dropped water, kettle, and all on the tenderfoots.
much better laugh than a snipe hunt in which everybody but the greenhorns circle back to camp and have a feast.
Went to many camps in my career as a youth: YMCA, Boy Scout and Band. The “Y” camp was the most stereotypical: swim lessons, arts & crafts, ghost stories.
Boy Scout camps were more educational: canoeing lessons, cooking, orienteering, hiking, botany (is that poison ivy?), outdoorsmanship. We took it very seriously — you took more than one match to start that fire? For shame! (The more fundamentalist of us used flint and steel.)
Band camps were the most rugged. Marching, in the hot sun, from breakfast to lunch, after lunch (indoor music practice during the worst heat of the day, though), and after dinner. More indoor practice after dark. Polishing the instruments (by the freshmen) before bed. And of course, as much sex as we could talk the gals into.
Counting them all together, I must have gone to a dozen summer camps of all stripes, from ages eleven to twenty-one. Always had fun, even allowing for the tormentors.
getting to the point where everything I did, came from, went to is (d). but I’m still semi spry. but not very fly, I’m an old white guy.
@wiredog: is still taking in campers.
We sent our oldest son a few years ago as his first “extended overnighter” camp. We were a little afraid of how he would handle a potential bed-wetting problem, but he came through OK. While we were dropping him off we told him that he would have to clean up his own dishes. He doubted us so we got one of the camp managers to come by to verify. When we asked him again he said that the “women” would clean the dishes. Even though he took care of them at camp he still believes it is women’s work (in spite of me doing them at home).
Could it be that OGH has really not watched the “Captain America” movie yet? Maybe he’s waiting to take his daughter with him. It is more of a guy film though there is a bit of romance in it.
(@juanito: Yes, I was also puzzled about the Bucky storyline, but I figured that Avengers could not have sidekicks with them.)
My HTML tags didn’t work – it should be Camp Flintlock: campflintlock.com (is still taking in campers.)
I love it when the “R” symbol turns “P” into “R”. I see trucks with those “SnugTop” aftermarket bed covers, and I always yell “SNUGTORRRR!” whenever I see one. My wife thinks I’m perfectly nuts.
No snipe hunt in my childhood, but saw a horde of little girls taken in by a massive snipe hunt during an Indian Princesses weekend. I was “Silver Eagle” in the Huron Tribe, and my daughters were “Red Feather” and “Blackbird Dancing”. Anyhoo…the girls were run hither and yon for about half an hour, everyone with flashlights outdoors in the campground around 10pm. Finally, one of the Dads pointed up into a big tree and shouted “There he is!!!”. Another dad was supposed to jump down at that point, but something went wrong and he came down like a ton of bricks, landing on his face. Everyone jumped a foot in the air, except for Tree Dad, who lay there insensible for a few minutes while other dads debated whether we should move him or wait for the ambulance. In time, it became clear that there was no injury beyond what first aid and ibuprofen could fix. Good times.
@Terry Fitz: uhhhh, that is “snipe.”
not “sniper.”
“snipe.”
those poor kids.
Turning to look before you flush is one thing. Inviting others to ponder your pooh is quite another. Says something about that boy I’m sure. What, exactly, I’m not sure. I wonder how that bully turned out.
@spud,
Different Camp Flintlock.
I sit corrected, though both are in NC. Your Camp Flintlock, in a nice mountain setting, is up for sale at a reasonable $1.2M, including trails. My Camp Flintlock is “down east” NC (about 20 mi. below Raleigh) where the summers are nice and muggy-buggy. Just the thing to train revolutionaries.
@Spud: I would argue that freakin’ freezing and nothing to eat but Lutefisk seems to train anarchists and terrorists quite well, based on news reports.
I think in the end, Lutefisk will be the key. if you’re going to fix “food” like making meth, folks, it can’t turn out well.
Camp counsellor Charlie Brown was evidently a high-resolution, weapons-grade asshole.
@irish al, or he had one too many footballs pulled out from underneath him.
Do you suppose that snipes (family Scolopacidae) are aware they don’t really exist?
My fifth-grade teacher pulled a “Charlie Brown” false alarm on me. After the Cuban missile crisis, Highland Elementary School promptly increased the frequency and intensity of bomb drills. Instead of merely curling up in the fetal position to await annihilation, we were to line up in a quiet and orderly fashion (or the Soviets would hear us and bomb Highland Elementary School first — this was actually told to us by an adult). We would then collect our coats and assemble in the school auditorium (which was underground) supposedly to wait for school buses to take us home (and with a ten-mile commute,there was a good chance I would have been incinerated on the way.)
Somehow I missed that first upgraded drill. I must have been at the dentist, enduring a drill of an entirely different nature.
So, the first time I heard the bell ring for thirty seconds, (cue: Armageddon) I was (a) puzzled as to why the bell was ringing for so long; and (b) astonished at the cheerfully matter-of-fact way my classmates got into line and left the classroom. Stunned, I turned to my teacher for an explanation. It has to be said she had a very sick sense of humor because when I asked her what was happening, she said “We’re at war with Russia, get in line.”
She may have thought it was a joke but I believed her. I was a supremely gullible ten-year-old and at that moment, seriously terrified as well. I remember getting my coat in a frozen daze, wondering why all my classmates were romping and giggling (clearly they saw it as a welcome break from arithmetic). We marched to the auditorium and (as a favor to future archaeologists) sat down in tidy rows. The principal appeared and intoned some solemn nonsense about walking close to the wall QUIETLY in single file, do not go back for any forgotten pencils, lunchboxes, etc., etc., or you’ll die of radiation sickness, now you may go back to class.
Only THEN did I realize it wasn’t real.
After that, the principal decided that it would save time, paper, and ink if she just called a bomb drill whenever she had a general announcement. So, when the bell went off for thirty seconds, we figured “Well, it’s either the end of the world or a change in Friday’s lunch menu.”
JamesS: “One year, at band camp…”
The “Russians are bombing” story seems to have been a common one at camp. I remember reading the same thing described in one of Christian author Donald Miller’s books. His reaction to the trick having been played on him basically echoed your friends’ homicidal ruminations.
In short it probably wasn’t a very good evangelistic technique…
It wasn’t so much Joanne Linville’s big brown eyes; it was the smokey, sultry voice, like black velvet, that always got under my skin. I’ll always imagine her with pointed ears, though.
Funny that James didn’t bother to look her up, knowing a few of us would.
A common mistake when referencing the Bible is to say “Revelations.” The book of Revelation (as in, the public and unmistakable revealing to the world of Jesus as God at the end of the age) is singular. There is no “Revelations.” This common error is likely a false conformity to the form of the names of the Epistles, which are plural: the letter to the Romans, to the Galatians, the Colossians, etc., that precede the book of Revelation. But strictly speaking, there is only one Revelation.
The creation of untrue circumstances in order to get students or other groups to put themselves in the place of others (my middle school history teacher friend tells his students that they must pay for sheets of paper and other classroom supplies to help them understand the Stamp Act and other burdensome taxes that fueled the Revolutionary War: the students naturally rebel against being shaken down for their pocket change, and so can understand in a real way the frustration of the colonists) can be an effective instructional strategy — it forces one to leave the safety of intellectual detachment — but it must be used responsibly. I mean, you’ll never get an honest response with “If you had only an hour left to live, blah-blah-blah.” As long as you avoid excessive emotional stress, it’s valid in an instructional situation. Having said that, yeah, this counselor let kids believe they’d never see their families again, and that they’d likely be dead in a matter of minutes, so it failed that criterion. That’s too much to ask grade school-age kids to deal with.
Bye
File under “it does not follow”: Just passing along a bit of news I learned from the Ebert Club: Alex Steinweiss, apparently the creator of the illustrated album cover, died recently. I went to this website http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/design/all/01099/facts.alex_steinweiss_inventor_of_the_modern_album_cover_art_edition.htm and immediately thought of you. Click on the book and salivate. If we’re real good, someone will buy this for us!
p.s. Haven’t visited in a while. I’m so glad the internet is still permanent; lileks.com is a national treasure, except without Nick Cage.
I hated summer camp. My parents sent me to church camp, which was across the lake from where we lived. When that information got out, everyone thought I was some weirdo.