Hello Mother, hello Father

In praise of summer camp.

I’ve talked before about the beauty and simplicity of a GenX summer. It is such a part of the lore of our generation, that one cannot see a garden hose without equating it to GenX. We were wild, free and feral creatures, but for most of us there was one week each summer where we had something to do.

Summer camp.

Some of us went to day camps, some of us sleep over. They were not fancy. They were not themed.

No one was going to Horse Camp, or Dance Camp.

We went to camp, and we did camp things.

No frills. all fun. Girl Scout camp 1978

Day camps—and these we went to when we were children— were held in church basements, or some sort of lodge. Did that mean they were religious, yes, and no.

Yes in that during the story time there were bible stories told. And during craft time, the craft projects sometimes referenced the Lord.

The biggest and the baddest of those were the God’s eye. A few sticks, and colored yarn was all it took to weave one of those babies. Though, I am inclined to believe that making them had more to do with the supplies being cheap and easy to come by. And the craft itself simple to do than it was to have a symbol of the divine to hang in our rooms at the end of the week. I’m pretty sure I made one of these at Girl Scout Camp day camp, too.

Day camp structure was pretty much the same no matter where you went: Story time, craft time, lunch, outdoor play, snack, songs, the end. We brought our own lunches, and snacks were generally ants on a log or stale popcorn one of the leaders popped the night before and brought in a grocery bag. We dug in with our bare hands. No hand sanitizer to be seen.

These only tasted good if you were hot and sweaty and in a church basement or picnic table in the sun.

In the most GenX thing to ever happen, when I was in fifth grade, our Vacation Bible School class was tasked with painting all the Sunday School Rooms during camp. I cannot remember if we only painted during craft time, but nothing screams religious education more than child labor in the heat of the summer. At least in the 70s. Not that any of us complained. Painting was a valuable life skill.

Now sleepaway camp, that was a real treat.

All the thrills of day camp, but also lake activities! And bonfires! And sleeping in cabins!

At sleepover camp we learned the basics of all water crafting—rowboats, canoes and sometimes paddle boats. We swam in a lake. We fished in a lake. We hiked around a lake. We mailed home pre-addressed postcards that arrived after we got home sayiing how much fun it all was!

A staple of 70s sleepover camp

All of it barely supervised. We were still allowed to run wild and feral, just under someone else’s watch. And our parent’s paid for this shady amount of supervision. We learned how to build fires, shoot archery, and most importantly play pranks on other cabins. That last one was always billed as a “morale booster”.

The counselors in charge of us were barely older than we were. And they were usually wrapped up in their own drama-either friend drama or, in the case of co-ed camp, romantic drama, to pay much attention to anything going on. Unless you were homesick. Homesick campers got lots of attention.

And, if you were lucky enough to get to go to a co-ed camp (mine was a church camp but once again, not a ton of talk about the Lord) you also had the grand finale night of camp that included some sort of mixer or dance. And you plotted your dance partners all week long. It helped that you were matched up with a cabin of the opposite sex for activities. Bonfires, and meals and field activities. IE archery or obstacle courses and other “outdoorsy” types of things. Mostly you alternated between being completely mortified by not being able to start a fire, or hit a target and flirting.

Summer camp was glorious, and when it ended, we cried at having to leave these newly formed best friendships and crushes. We produced autograph books to be signed, and we swapped addresses so we could keep in touch. New pen pals that lasted for at least a year after. Sometimes you went back the next year and got to see them again, but more often than not, it was a one and done.

Available at Ben Franklin. Why was everything this brown color in the 70s?

No discussion of summer camp could be complete without touching on camp as a setting for the iconic 80s horror movie, Friday the 13^th (plus the little known but equally creepy Sleepaway Camp). We had a love hate relationship with all slasher films, but this one was more love than hate. Because we’d lived it. We could smell the mildew in those cabin bunks. We shivered at the memory of those cold open showers. We smiled at the thought that we would have made the same bad choices if the cute boy had asked us to go down to the lake for a moonlight swim.

Don’t worry, babe, I’ve got this giant flashlight to protect us from the killer.

But deep down, we knew, we could have outrun Jason, without falling down. Because we’d done that plenty of times already in our wild, feral summers as children.

Cheers to summer camp. I’d go again in a heartbeat if I could. How about you?

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