Fond memories of Summer Camp

Moemg said:
I was just getting over my trauma about summer camp when I noticed it was Lake Winipesaukee . I think I need to call Dr. Leo Marvin for extended therapy !:):)
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Just baby step your way to getting over the trauma! Maybe he will write you a prescription for a vacation from your problems :)
 
My family didn't have much money but we found out about a camp in the Pocono Mountains of Pa. run by the Big Brothers charity call Camp Wyomissing. I went there for two summers as a camper and then 1 summer as a junior counselor. I loved it. The camp was almost totally sports oriented. We played a 7 inning baseball (not softball) game every day and a full court basketball game every day. The senior counselors were mostly college varsity athletes. We swam and canoed in the Delaware River.

During college I ran the swimming program at a summer camp for disabled children where one of my lifeguards later became Mrs. Grumpy.

So summer camp has lots of great memories for me.
 
YMCA's Camp Grady Spruce on Possum Kingdom Lake for me and my brothers. Good mix of kids, as they offered lots of scholarships.

Great memories. All boys - dodgeball on a tennis court was the nightly blood sport.

I looked up the web site and they are still in business. I believe my brother sent his kid up there for a session a few years ago.

They've gone soft, though:
Campers stay in climate controlled cabins with private bathrooms and showers.
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Back in the day, we had open-air structures on a slab. Kind of a big version of a highway picnic shelter with cots for 8 kids and a counselor. There were canvas walls that could be rolled down if a thunderstorm came through. The latrine / shower building had running water, but it was walk.

Hot as hot can be in that part of North Texas. We spent a LOT of time in the water. Nature hikes were like going to REWahoo's Texas animal parade. Shaking out your shoes to let any stray scorpions escape was part of the "welcome" speech.
 
Lanyard available here:
Recommended by Laneyards - Recommended by Laneyards
Lessons on YouTube (of course)
How to do the Square and Circle Stitch! - YouTube

Anybody else make one of these?
44148-25-L.JPG-x
 
Htown Harry said:
Back in the day, we had open-air structures on a slab. Kind of a big version of a highway picnic shelter with cots for 8 kids and a counselor. There were canvas walls that could be rolled down if a thunderstorm came through. The latrine / shower building had running water, but it was walk.
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That is what we had, too. Every morning we rolled the canvas up to air things out, and every night we let it back down. After taps, if we wanted to walk down the hill to the latrine we had to summon a counselor to escort us with a flashlight, I guess due to snakes.
 
Back in the 50s, I attended YMCA day camp; my parents didn't have the money to send me away to those sleep over summer camps. Day camp was OK, but probably nothing like what most of you experienced.
 
DFW_M5 said:
Back in the 50s, I attended YMCA day camp; my parents didn't have the money to send me away to those sleep over summer camps. Day camp was OK, but probably nothing like what most of you experienced.
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Maybe not. I guess it all depends on the camp, KWIM?

For example my daughter's (free) day camp was pretty much the same as what I experienced at a sleep over camp, except that she wasn't whisked a thousand miles away for it. There were some activities missing (like canoe and hiking), but some great activities added that we didn't have (like a rock climbing wall, gym/pool, and water park excursions). Most of the activities seemed about the same. Yes, she made those lanyards too. :LOL:

We invited some friends that she liked to sleep over at our house, as opposed to the random kids in one's tent at a sleepover camp, and they had a lot of summer fun together.

Of course as parents, we didn't get the time away from childcare that we would have gotten had we sent her to a sleepover camp. Even though we could have afforded the sleepover camp, we chose to save the money and not have the child free time. She really didn't want to be sent off like that anyway.

Let's face it - - summer camp is fun, no matter how you do it! :D
 
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I went to day camp one summer when I was 8. I hated it. The only thing I remember from it was when we were playing kickball and a kid kicked the ball high into a nearby tree which had a big hornets nest in it. The nest fell to the ground and the hornets were pissed and stung one poor kid who was too close by and did not scatter away from it fast enough (he was okay). Just glad I was far away from it beforehand.

I worked for two summers at two different day camps years later and it had a great impact on my life but not in ways you might expect. I was the computer specialist at one of them and that was a nice plus for my resume. It also cemented my desire to be childfree which has greatly shaped my life in the last 30 years.
 
Thanks for sharing all of your summer camp memories. What great fun you guys had.

We never had enough money for a TV or a car when I was growing up, though we eventually got both by the time I was in the 5th grade. Going to a summer camp was out of the question so I never even asked my Mom or Dad though I felt that if I really wanted to go they would somehow find a way to afford it, but I had 4 sisters also and that seemed to multiply the problem.

Instead of summer camp we rode our bikes all over town, played sandlot baseball for hours every day, built tree houses, made bows-arrows and had "wars" with guys in the "other neighborhood", went swimming in the river whenever we got hot, made rafts/boats to use on the river (though most sank soon after launch), camped out in the backyard whenever we wanted to...all with no supervision.

Come to think of it, we probably had a better time than those folks that could afford to go "camping".
 
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This one time..at band camp............:)
 
DW and I met at summer camp on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan at Saugatuck, Mich. First as high school age campers and later as counselors. As inner city kids, we thought it was a great place to spend some of the summer walking the beach hand-in-hand as lovey-dovey teeny boppers. That would have been in the early 60's.

We camped on Madeline Island, in Lake Superior off Bayfield, Wis., the past couple of summers. The state park there has a 1.5 mile beach we also walked numerous times bringing back sweet memories.

Where did the years go? Thank goodness for FIRE and the time and opportunity to experience some re-do's of life's past pleasures!
 
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youbet said:
DW and I met at summer camp on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan at Saugatuck, Mich. First as high school age campers and later as counselors. As inner city kids, we thought it was a great place to spend some of the summer walking the beach hand-in-hand as lovey-dovey teeny boppers. That would have been in the early 60's.
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As you may know, Saugatuck is a really picturesque little upscale resort village now, we visit once or twice each summer. The "orientation" may have changed since you last visited if you haven't been there lately. First time we visited I walked by a T-shirt shop and there was a shirt in the window with "Saugatuck - where the women are tough, and the men are pretty." Being a little slow on the uptake, it took me a few minutes to figure it out. DW likes going there, I always hold her hand there...

And I've enjoyed this thread too. I hadn't even remembered summer camp until this thread reminded me, fun memories.
 
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REWahoo said:
Being poor when your friends aren't really sucks, especially when you are a kid.
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I can believe that, but never experienced it:cool:. I was poor and so were my friends, but we always had a great time on summer vacations and all year round for that matter.
 
I don't think I knew anyone who went to camp when I was the age I might have wanted to go to camp (but with my imaginary Parent Trap camp visits, I was perfectly happy!) or in a social/financial position to be sent to camp. In high school my two best friends' families were well off, however, and not only was I never envious, I will always be grateful for those friendships and how they opened up the world and its possibilities to me.
 
O.K.--I'll do a couple of camp stories, but have probably mentioned them before. Went to church camp 2 or 3 summers. At the end of the week they had a big water-ball contest at the lake that was supposed to be the highlight of the week. They tossed a volleyball toward the middle of the lake, then all the boys from every cabin took off after it, and whoever brought it to shore under their possession won. Usually took about an hour of punching and near drowning to end the contest. Believe it or not, I was a pretty fast swimmer back in the day. So I tell my cabin buddy to just stand on the shore. Game begins, and I swim like a shark, get the ball, throw it to my buddy on shore--contest over--took about 2 minutes. Counselors were pizzed off big time--too bad. Another year I had a buddy mail me my 'forgotten' sneakers (each one with a 1/2 pint of booze stuffed in each shoe--but some jerk stole my stash). Think the last year buddy & I snuck off into town and I got a 12-pack using my brother's draft card. Buddy & I had to each snarf down a six-pack in about 40 minutes to make it back by curfew--didn't look too good on arriving and counselor was so mad he wanted to ship us back home, but had no way to do so. Also, wife to be got appendicitis and had to be taken to local hosipital for the operation. Super good times, and I miss them. God, we were carefree and didn't worry about anything.
 
I got forced into 2 years of church camp when I was younger. I remember raising a fit about it to ensure the consecutive years streak ended at 2. But I loved going and spending a month each summer with my grandparents. I was probably 10-12 years old and I would hop on the transit bus by myself for a 3 hour ride and grandparents would pick me up at the bus depot. I think they would call that parental neglect now, but I remember thinking it was fun and I knew which town to get off at. I don't think I would have got lost even if they hadn't shown up as it only had about 500 people living in it.
 
When I was perhaps 6, I was sent off to a day camp organized by the town we lived in. We were supposed to wait on a certain corner, and a bus to take us to camp would be along at 7:45 each morning. Well come the first day of camp, I arrived at the corner, along with a couple of other campers. We waited a little while, and along came a bus. It was a big white bus, and the sign in the front had the word "camp" on it, so we boarded the bus, found seats, and soon found ourselves pulling into a campground.

Now, while seated on the bus we noticed that all the other kids had on white shirts with "camp" on them, which were further decorated with a big cross and some ovals. We didn't have these neat shirts, but perhaps they would be supplied when we got to the camp. Or not...

It didn't take too long before someone at the camp noticed that not only were we missing our camper shirts, but we also didn't have our swim suits, permission slips, paperwork, or worst of all, our prayer books. All I knew was that I was spending the day sitting on a bench with a couple of other kids, while a bunch of grown ups took turns praying over us. I would rather have been running around playing with all the other kids, but the grown ups thought that what we needed was a lot of prayer.

Eventually it was lunch time, and the other kids were herded into an open tent full of picnic tables for their lunch. The grown up minding us brought us over to the lunch tent, and told us that as we weren't really in their camp, we weren't entitled to lunch, but The Lord wanted us to have these peanut butter sandwiches, and we should thank him properly. I looked around, but saw no sign of an older gentleman with a beard to thank for our lunch. Now, I don't recall all the details, but there was a fair amount of heated discussion at this point, largely from a couple of the grown ups. We kids were mostly quiet, while we tried to figure out what sort of responses the grown ups wanted. They did eventually let us eat the sandwiches.

We returned to our bench to wait out the afternoon, until the busses returned and everyone was loaded back on board. The three of us were seated in the front of the bus with one of the grown ups from the camp, who herded us off the bus when we got back into town. I was surprised to see our parents there at the bus stop waiting for us, as I figured that I'd just be walking home. Much later I had learned that the town camp had called them when we didn't show up, and there had been quite a fuss until we were tracked down to the other camp. My mom had kept the newspaper clipping of the event. (Hey, big news for a small town...)

The next day, there were folks from both camps at the bus stop, to make sure that we little heathens got on the right bus...
 
Great story, M Paquette.

My church camp experience was closer to Payin-the-Toll's, however.
 
Funny story MPaquette. Based on my personal experience anyways, you got off lucky only having to attend one day.
 
Summers my brother and I would pack up and go to Broad Creek Boy Scout Camp in Whiteford MD. Later as an adult I taught Herpetology at Science Camps in the Baltimore area.

My first outing was with about 6 young people in the Muskrat cabin. I always treated the brainyack kids as adults. So we were supposed to do a skit at the last campfire. I met with the kids and they all said that they could pull it off themselves, so I give it no other thought. Well the last campfire everyone does their skit, and its our turn. One kid stands up and announces that we don't have a skit, because Mr G wouldn't help us. I just sort of faded away into the bushes.

I did get asked back, because I found the kids lots of snakes, even a Copperhead.
 
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