Summer Camp Colors Wednesday. . .

Wearing the colors that I saw daily at my old YMCA summer camp between 1975-1981, when I attended for two weeks each July or August.  The t-shirts for Camp Conrad Weiser were the very same dark green as this particular polo number, and there were certainly many pairs of khaki shorts in amongst the pull-on athletic shorts of the era that many of us campers wore daily along with our white tube socks with a stripe or three of color around the top just below our knees.  

Hey, it was the 1970s!

At the time, CCW was all male although some of the senior staff had wives and small children with them for the summer, four two-week periods then along with week-long riding and tennis camps in August once the regular season was over.  There were also two-affiliate international programs -- Voyager and ICEP -- for small groups of older campers, who enjoyed traveling with their counselors outside of the U.S. 

Besides a number of camp friends who I saw, caught up with, and bummed around with each year, we also had a contingent of counselors from various other countries since we were a YMCA camp.  College-aged men from Britain, France, Denmark, West Germany, Japan, South Korea, Australia, South Africa, and Nigeria routinely made up the camp staff to supervise campers.  Among the numerous life skills we were taught, both implicitly and explicitly, were things like table manners, setting, serving, and clearing an eight-person table for fellow campers and counselors as well as considerate daily behavior PLUS more typical summertime activities like swimming, horseback riding, skeet and target shooting with live ammunition, archery, canoeing, sailing, soccer, trail camping, and the like.  

Besides the United States, many of my fellow campers came from other countries as diverse as India (Chandra, or "Charlie" as he preferred), Puerto Rico (Carlos), Ecuador (Luis), and Canada (Pete).  The was also a slew of kids from across the U.S., who I hung out with each summer for several years running (Stavely A., Tom K., Taub S., Peter A., Chris E., John B., Tim S., John R., Daniel G., Joel B., Mark and Jack G., Chip A., Daniel I., Michael H., Brian S., and many more).

The campers were sorted by age into six different villages, the Cubs, Pioneers, and Rovers for the younger boys, the Loggers, Trail Blazers, and Rangers for the older guys.  And if campers arrived not knowing already how to keep their footlockers in order, and their cabins/tents neat, we were taught and expected to do so with daily clean-up of our areas/belongings and subsequent inspections by our counselors, usually the chief counselor of each village while the rest of us waited quietly lined up according to cabin/tent.  These 45 to 60-minute sessions took place each day back in our six villages following breakfast and before we could disperse for morning activities.  

The cabin/tent with the lowest score had to clean. . .  THE KYBO (camp shorthand for village "facilities").  Oddly, there was one year where that fate became a strange badge of honor for the tent I was part of the year I was a Logger.  We ended up with that particular morning chore two or three times in the same week.  God alone knows why, but it still makes me chuckle whenever the thought crosses my mind.  

But CCW wasn't all fun and games either.  There was also my Officer of the Day experience in 1979 -- My name is burned onto a stylized wooden arrow for that year, which still hangs in the dining hall on one of the walls. -- when I learned, among other things, how to raise, lower, and (un-) fold the flag during morning and evening ceremonies outside the dining hall as campers and counselors stood to attention (with salutes) around the Big A field, answer the main camp phone and connect callers to various people in other offices using a multi-line switchboard, plus handle some other minor receptionist tasks like filing and helping the camp secretary.  "Stacy," if memory serves me correctly, was an attractive young woman with that late 70s feathered Farrah Fawcett hairstyle, and she certainly made an impression on the 13-year old me by virtue of her patience and kindness during that day in the front office with her.

I wonder if campers in 2023 even do things like the chores described anymore?

Combine all of that with amazing camp facilities amidst the beautiful southeastern Pennsylvania countryside, and it made for a truly amazing and formative life experience.  Why on earth I never opted for longer than the usual two weeks is anybody's guess since I always had so much fun that the two weeks blew by each summer before I knew it.  There was never time to miss my family and suffer from homesickness.  My parents, bless them, always offered the opportunity for longer stays, but I never took them up on it.  I have kicked myself, mentally speaking, many times in the years since.

My sister attended the similar YWCA camp for girls, Blue Mountain Summer Camp, about an hour away by the way.

CCW went co-ed about two or three years after I stopped attending by about 1983 or '84, and continues to go strong as far as I can tell from the website and quarterly newsletter sent to me.  But it's a different planet from the look and sound of things.  Still incredibly nice and reasonably priced for everything offered to campers mind you.  But the internet, technical gadgets, and societal shifts, not to mention the rise of hysterical helicopter parenting, mean that it is a radically different camping experience from the one I and my friends enjoyed 40+ years ago.

But the years I attended were magical.

-- Heinz-Ulrich