We didn't sing it like Alice Cooper did until after 1972, when the song debuted (yes, it's nearly 40 years; I looked it up) but from first grade through high school graduation, that last half-day of school was our birthday and Christmas morning and a new puppy all rolled up into one. We weren't given summer reading lists or summer projects that I can remember - if we had been assigned work, it would have gone undone. Because it was SUMMERTIME!
With both parents working full-time, I wasn't granted the freedom that my friends Debbie and Jennifer and Diane and Maggie enjoyed. I had to endure summer camp.
While Debbie and Diane and Jennifer and Maggie got to roam unfettered, swimming in Debbie or Diane's pool, exploring the swamps for burned golf balls (more on that later), playing kickball or just hanging out playing Hearts or War or Crazy Eights, I was shipped off, year after poison ivy filled year, to Camp Teepee.
If you've never been to summer camp, you can't imagine the agony of having to do arts and crafts, swimming twice a day in two Olympic sized pools (morning was for lessons; afternoon was free swim), and tying up with creosote-soaked twine every branch or twig that didn't move. Most of them didn't move. You can't empathize with the horror of learning archery or firing bb guns at little paper targets. You will never know the anguish and torment of organized games, sleep overs, s'mores, cooking hot dogs on sticks over a campfire, or listening to ghost stories as the rain pours down on the canvas roof of your tent. The sheer misery of taking row boats out on the pond, or frog hunts, or snipe hunts.
From the time I was six until I was 12, this is what I had to bravely withstand from 8:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m., five days a week, from late June until late August. Instead of doing 'fun' stuff, I went to camp.
You may laugh but this is really how I viewed it. I would have much preferred not attending camp, and let my feelings be known stridently every morning as I climbed aboard that big yellow school bus, bound for Monroe.
"I don't want to go to camp!"
"You are going to camp, and that's final!"
That was about the extent of the argument; I don't believe my mother ever lost an argument. With anybody. Over anything.
I did have a couple of best friends at camp, too. Although most kids only attended for a two-week session, Marlys Spieler, like me, attended the entire summer and we commiserated constantly about all the things we'd rather be doing, and the people we'd rather be doing them with. Robin Paradiso was another boon companion, but she was only forced to attend for the month of July. The camp was segregated, first by grade, and then by sex, so we had the female counselors and the boys had the male counselors. Of course, in these pre-politically correct days, the boys were the "braves" and the girls were the "squaws". We each had our separate areas of camp as well; the braves would walk further up the path and take a left fork, whereas our campsites were closer to the main camp and to the right. We actually only saw the boys at swim time, arrival and departure times and on the bus. We were all given to understand that the boys' sites smelled, because they all peed on the trees, but this was an unsubstantiated rumor.
We lashed together branches with twine to make tables, seats and other handy camp devices. We gathered rocks and made our own fire rings. We applied poster paint liberally to everything we could; not even the toads were safe. Each campsite had its own shelter but we also spruced things up a bit with as many lean-tos as the site would accommodate. We had a cook-out every other week; we had a sleep-over every other week as well.
The day was well structured; we began by gathering immediately after the buses regurgitated us and recited the Pledge of Allegiance and saluted the flag. Then, depending on the day and where you stood in the camp hierarchy (older kids got the better schedules), you would typically stow your lunch in a milk crate with the rest of your tribe, head off to your campsite to lash something, then sojourn to the craft hut to create a beautiful wallet, ashtray, pony-bead necklace or keychain from gimp (box stitch! butterfly! barrel!). After snack, it was time for swimming lessons, then maybe archery or riflery (oh boy! six year olds with arrows and bb guns!), and then back to the campsite for lunch. Afternoon would see organized sports, boating, nature programs and 'free swim'. And then back to the campsite to gather up all the cans of Off bug spray, wet towels and bathing suits, uneaten lunch particles, and then off to the buses.
Day after day. Week after week. Year after year. Camp Teepee, you still feature large in my nightmares.
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