I went to camp every summer, beginning at a Campfire camp for one week when I was maybe… 8 or so? And going to a month-long one each summer when I was 12 - 15.
AWESOME. Loved it, loved it, loved it, and now my younger cousins and soon my nieces will have all gone to the same one. Wonderful place. I wouldn’t do childhood over again for any amount of money, but my memories of those times at camp make it at least a little appealing.
Yay Camp Nor’Wester!
I went 7-11 & loved it/hated it - fired a .22, shot arrows, rode horses, swam in the lake had overnights in the woods and hay rides.
OTOH the Counselors tried their best to scare the crap out of us with ghost/monster stories and when you are a kid, away from home and they burst in in the middle of the night it was pretty bad.
I guess on the whole it was positive, but a little more adult supervision of the counselors would have made it definitively fun.
Ha! Me too, Dangermom, it wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized that sleepover camps actually existed outside of children’s fiction. The only camp I ever went to - thank og - was a few days of Brownie (fledgling Girl Scouts) day camp. I did not like it one little bit. I too had (have) privacy issues, and wasn’t all that crazy about my fellow Brownies nor the troop leaders, but the worst thing was having to do the stupid crap that they wanted us to do: collect acorns and paste them to popsicle sticks or some such BS.
My philosophy was and is the same as TheLoadedDog’s: summer vacation is the time for fucking off and doing whatever the hell I want to do, not learning the lyrics to B-I-N-G-O.
Now, that making out some of you guys were describing sounds pretty cool, but I’d still rather do it on my own.
I didn’t go to camp till I was 19 and went to boot camp. I was the oldest of 5, only Dad worked, so there was no money for stuff like camp or dance lessons or scouts…
My husband went to church camp a few years, and our daughter has been to several different camps over the years. In fact, this summer, she’s a counselor at Camp Letts in Annapolis.
Lots:
I went to Camp Wawokiye for one summer – after 6th grade. I was originally going to be doing it for half the summer, but stayed the entire time. The swimming was OK, though it was salt water and there was some sort of insect that attacked you and raised red welts under your suit. The swimming wasn’t a big deal, since I went to the beach nearly every summer day from the time I was 2.
I did the usual, but remember the whittling the most. It wasn’t official, but one counselor was good with whittling wood (he made a chain with a ball in the cage at the end out of a single piece of pine), so we got knives and he taught us the basics. The other big thing was Nok Hokey.
Another summer, I went to day camp – Mamoweta. It actually was a sleepaway camp, but they picked up local kids who would go there for activities. It wasn’t well set up, though, since there was an afternoon rest time that ate up most of the time you were there. I swam both across the lake and back and also around the lake.
And, for five years, I went to Camp Kiwanis at Pinecrest Dunes. It was a special one-week session run by Kiwanis clubs before the regular camping season began. Lots of baseball, horseback riding, swimming in a muddy lake. Long Island Sound wasn’t far away, but we only went there once or twice a year.
All these camps, BTW, were within 15 miles of my house.
I went to camp with my twin brother and my sister, who is two years younger. I am now 35 and it was the most traumatic experience of my life and may remain so for many years to come. I am fairly stoic and not prone to dramatization so I will simply list some of my experiences. This was at Camp Mountain Lake in Pennsylvania, may every one of their employees and the owners burn in hell.
I was 13, my sister was just twelve. We went with a couple of friends, Bob who was my age, and Jeff who was in my sister’s class. Let me start by saying that their family sued and won a judgement against the owner of the camp. My family chose not to, and I still wonder why they didn’t. I was there for two weeks and I will just list a few incidents. Let us start with the:
Counselors -
The counselors stole food, or stood by while other kids took your food. They did this so they could sell it back to you. I will never forget that a warm can of soda was $2, a cold can cost $3. This was charged by the counselors to the kids. The camp instructed the parents to send the kids with money for incidentals. Each of us had $30 to start. The food they served was inedible and the only drink was water or some cut rate Kool-Aid variant. Just to get calories we quickly transferred our little bit of money from our pockets to the counselors. I bought back my bag of M&Ms for $2.
We were taken on a 7 mile hike up a deserted mountain with the intention of camping on top over night and coming back down. The counselors drank themselves silly and two were too hungover to come back down the mountain in the morning. The other two left without notifying anyone. I walked down with a kid named Clarence, we got terribly lost and the only way I made it back was to hitch a ride with some deer hunters. Clarence and I rode in the pickup bed with the dead deer.
A cute young redheaded counselor took us to the woods to shoot at targets with a .22 rifle. We were on a raised platform and took turns shooting at a paper target tacked to a tree. So picture a semicircle of kids from 9-14 with one person at the mouth of the circle shooting.
The gun jammed.
The counselor had never handled guns, so she first looked down the barrell. Next she held the gun by the barrell and started banging the butt end of the gun against the wooden platform. The gun fired and hit the tree that Bob and I were leaning against. The bark and wood chips cut the back of my neck and the bullett was within six inches of each of our heads. She begged us not to tell anyone. I doubt anyone there would have cared.
Some kids would routinely beat the other kids. The counselors made no effort to stop it. As I will describe, this was not light bullying. There were vicious fights and one counselor in particular delighted in egging on the participants. He especially enjoyed instigating “waffle butt”, which I will describe below. His name was Tom. He is the only person in the world today I would wish dead (wherever he is) if I had the power. Naturally he also ran the comissary and was the chief confiscator and reseller of food.
Kids
My parents didn’t know that most of the other kids in this camp were troubled children who were dropped off for the entire summer so their parents didn’t have to deal with them. Some were inner city kids, others were rednecks. None besides the five of us had relatively normal home lives. The favorite past time was to tackle on of us. They would then give us “waffle butt”. They pulled down our pants and pressed a tennis racket down on my bare ass. They then used a hard toothed brush and rubbed as hard as they could. They generally stopped when the victim started bleeding. It was bad enough that the blood stained my shorts and I couldn’t sit down.
Jeff had his arm broken when another kid hit him with a bat. I was pelted with D batteries for calling the wrong kid a hick. My lip was split and I had a black eye. I was in constant fear and tried to avoid calling attention to myself. It worked to some extent, but I was hit a number of times and spent most of my days tramping through the woods with my brother and sister to stay out of everyone’s way.
We wrote a letter to my parents midway through asking for more money and food and they could obviously tell from the tone that something was wrong. They sent a huge box, but we never just asked them to come pick us up. I remember this was because it cost $1200 to send us there, which was a ton of money for our family. We appreciated it because we had been begging to go to camp and didn’t want to quit. It is just the way kids think I guess. The whole story only came out over the next five years. When we are all together we still talk about the little humiliations and remember some half-forgotten moment in hell.
There is much more, but I would have to spend some time laying out the rest, so I gave a highlights version.
Thrice a year (Easter, summer, Christmas) from 13 to 18. And I regret not having been sent to camps before. Terrific. No parents (imagine that!), plenty of attractive girls (and sometimes even attractive boys), activities I wouldn’t have thought I could ever practice (spelunking, horse-riding, dancing with the aforementioned attractive girls, discovering where to find and how to eat sea urchins, smoking pot, etc…), a measure of autonomy (buying stuff, finding a place to stay overnight, cooking food,…).
The last camp might have been my best vacations ever. It was in Morocco and it was…eye-opening, fascinating, enthralling. Particularly since a very open-minded camp director, considering our age (we all were some weeks short of being 18), pretty much let us do whatever we wanted on our own, even handing us our “share” of the budgeted money, providing we were accounted for at nightfall.
You’re 17, you never or almost never left your country before, and now you’re wandering around in an exotic city with some friends, bargaining to buy your meal of grilled sardines or this nice copper bracelet, end up discussing with a Muslim student in religion on a beach, chat with a local over a tea in a place where you bring your own beverage and rent the seat and the right to keep your tea on the stove, are invited over by a friendly elderly man who ends up the meal sharing a pipe of kat, explore a huge “bazaar” or get lost in a maze of little street, etc… but also see not so nice things like the shanty town you mistakenly entered in, or plain cloth police jumping on a guy in the street and beating him up senseless inside their vehicle.
Easily the most formative two weeks of my life. It definitely had a huge impact on my views of the world and in particular of the Islamic world, and widely expanded my horizons.
Of course, nowadays, the guy in charge would be considered a completely irresponsible fool and fired as soon as the organization in charge would discover what is going on (actually, I suspect that even at this time, the early 80s, he would have been fired on the spot for letting a bunch of 17 yo on their own in a third-world country), but my god, it was worth it!!!
This account isn’t exactly representative of your average “summer camp”, but it was worth mentioning, I think.
I went to an old-fashioned boarding school too. And had been brought up in a very small rural village that many might have thought to be a fictional place from the 50s too.That might help understand why I wasn’t a very worldly guy, and was so favourably impressed by the summer camps, actually.
I went to summer camp for 3 1/2 weeks every summer for five years. It was an all-girls camp, so no sex (at least no straight sex–I’m sure there were a few first lesbian experiences at some point, but not with me), and I loved it. Learning to shoot target rifle at camp when I was 13 was a life-changing experience–it was the first thing I was ever naturally good at, and I overcame a lot of initial fear to do it in the first place. I quit going to camp to get my first job, and I actually regret it–I could have worked at camp when I was 15 doing the same thing I did for my first job (waiting tables) and I would have still been a camper, too.
Camp Alleghany. If I have a daughter, she’ll be going there, and a son will be going to the brother camp, Camp Greenbriar.
I didn’t go to summer camp until I was 16. Before then we lived in a small town, then we moved to the city and Mom got some info about sending us to camp heavily subsidized.
I begged Mom to find a camp where they had horseback riding. Well, the camp was 2 weeks long. You had the choice of horseback riding or canoeing as part of the experience and the other was hiking and was not optional. Both were 4 or 5 day out trips.
We basically got to camp, then the next day were ferried out to Kananaskis and we hiked from somewhere on the side of the highway to the base of Sunshine. It was horrible. I was (and basically still am) horribly out of shape. I had trouble coping, and I have mild asthma but that was only recently diagnosed… I’ve had issues with my breathing since I was a kid but not enough to be more than brushed off as ‘oh she’s out of shape, needs to get out more’. Those five days were hell, but by the end of them I was in better shape and I knew a lot more about myself. I also got a lovely picture from the highest pass we hiked that reminds me I can do stuff. I may hate it and bitch about it the whole way, but I can do it.
Then they brought us back to camp for 2 days, then we went horseback riding for 5 days… which more than made up for the hiking. It was the most wonderful time I ever had. The only problem was my sleeping bag got stolen (a very expensive rented one that they basically said you must have on the packing list and my Mom had to pay a lot for), so I slept huddled under what blankets the counselors scrounged for me.
After that I decided I didn’t want to go back there. So I ended up at a week long camp just outside of town. It was a Christian camp, but not very regimented and I had a blast there. I went for three years and I am on the facebook group (which is how I found out they are selling the land which will be done after this summer and will be looking for a new place for the camp). I wish I could go back for the summer, and I’d volunteer except y’know… work and single mom I can’t exactly jaunt off to childhood memories.
Did Boy Scout summer camp off and on from when I was in Cub Scouts to when I graduated high school. Summer of my Junior Year, I got to go to Philmont, which is like Mecca for Boy Scouts, and spent a week and a half hiking in the mountains there. The same summer, I also spent a week at Summer Leadership School with the JROTC, which is like a military summer camp, and a week at Band Camp at UTA (University of Texas…Almost). So that year, I got a three-for-one deal.
Summer before college, I attended “Fish Camp”, which is a sort of summer camp for incoming freshmen at Texas A&M where they teach you all the traditions and let you make friends before going to school and such.
And lessee, last spring I enlisted in the Air Force, and spent pretty much the entire summer in Basic Training at Lackland AFB, partially due to a knee injury delaying me. One week of this was spent at Field Training, where instead of having to be in the dorms folding t-shirts and rolling socks and dusting and making beds and doing pushups all day, we got to go live in tents and crawl around in the dirt and lug rifles around and put on chem warfare suits in 90 degree humid heat in central Texas and get CS gassed.
Bestest summer camp ever 
In 6th grade, I went to Camp Cuyamaca in the mountains east of San Diego.
Camp and I didn’t get along. Back then (as now) I was quite happy doing things on my own…the whole cabin/camp spirit thing wasn’t my bag. Plus, they confiscated my flashlight away when I used it after lights out. Screw that. I was so pissed off that I pretended to get sick so I could go home. That wasn’t a big hit with Mom and Dad!
I did grow up to be a camper, though…it must have had some kind of influence on me!
If you haven’t seen it already, I highly recommend the documentary Summercamp.
My God, fruitbat, what a horrifying experience! I am so sorry you had to endure such abuse. It makes me feel almost guilty for having such a wonderful camp experience, knowing there was another kid in the world suffering as you all did. Truly, truly unbelievable.
Boy Scout camp once. Hated it.
I did, sorta. Boy Scout camp, too. (I’m female). The husband half of a couple who were good friends of my parents was a troop leader. He took them up to Idyllwild, CA for a week. The wife took their three daughters, the youngest son who was not yet old enough for Boy Scouts, and my sister and I; we camped just down the road from them. We would walk over for campfire at night, and I learned to make hobos. We had a great time! During the day we would splash around in the little creek that was just behind our campsite. It was a blast!
Nnnnnnnope. Didn’t miss it either.
Twice
Ok, I went to Catholic middle and HS. My brother, one grade above me, one summer went with his friend to ‘Camp Lutherhoma’. This was a Luthern summer camp in Oklahoma hence the stupidest name for a camp ever. (the friend was Lutheren)
This week was probably the best week of my life at that point as my brother was over 100 miles away and not bothering me.
The following year, at no prompting on my part, I was sent to the camp with my brother.
It was OK, because I hung out with the guys from my cabin. We almost got kicked out because we went wandering around in the night.
Because of that I didnt’ get to do the canoe class. BFD.
One of the things I remember was that they did a gossip newspaper, well it was spoken at lunch and it was announced that a girl had a crush on me. !!! She was kind of cute but the next day was the last day so nothing came of it. I was going to be a freshman in HS in the fall and on the way home the bus stopped at a McD’s and a much older camper girl suddenly grabbed and I had my first kiss/french kiss with a girl who’s name I don’t even know.
I also went to Drum Major camp.
When I was a kid my parents worked for Union Carbide, and Carbide owned some kids’ camps that were operated for the children of employees. For a nominal fee, we got to spend two weeks a summer at these places out in the middle of (what seemed to be) Nowhere, West Virginia. It was great!
We had riflery, archery, crafts, horseback riding, swimming and so on. The little kids (through grade school, I think), went to a separate, co-ed camp, but the older kids went to two other camps, Camp Camelot and Camp Carlisle, in a different location. They were only about a quarter of a mile apart, so there were plenty of co-ed activities, such as swimming (the pool was at Camelot), camping overnights, and dances. Of course, there were also surprise raids on each others’ camps and other not-so-formal activities involving the older campers. I have some great memories of the times we spent there.
I always wished that my kids could go to camp when they were growing up, but it seemed like what was available was always way too expensive for us to afford.
[singing]
I’m Carlisle born and Carlisle bred,
And when I die I’ll be Carlisle dead.
So hurrah for Carlisle, hurrah for Carlisle,
Hurrah for Camp Carlisle!
[/singing]
That’s horrible. I went to Rainbow Trail Lutheran Camp every summer from third or fourth grade until the summer after I graduated from high school - I loved it so much I just had to go that one last time. We had chapel (outside), sure, and we sang Christian songs, but aside from that, it was your standard summer camp. If anything, there may have been a little less bullying than a secular camp has because the counselors were all earnest young Christians who sincerely believed they were there to teach children the Golden Rule. I don’t recall even a mention of the possibility of hellfire or damnation.
I went for a week every summer, and if my mom could have afforded it, I’d have loved to stay for two weeks. I believe the Lutheran church we belonged to may have subsidized my attendance, since we were pretty poor.
Fruitbat, did Krusty at least show up to take you to Mexico at the end of camp?
Wow, I went there for 6th grade camp too. It was a blast. We did typical camp stuff already mentioned. But the last day there it kind of snowed a bit, sort of, but there was enough on the ground that you could scoop up into a snowball. So the last day we had a camp wide snowball fight and I hit my then best friend right in the testicles. It was great. What made that moment even better was the “cool” counselor was right next to me and he had seen it happen and he fell over laughing which made me laugh even harder. Ah, good times.
I also went to a couple of church camps. One of them though was better than the other. The first night there a counselor was talking about being safe out in the woods and stuff like that and the last thing he said was to remind us to be careful when using the port-o-potties at night because, according to him, a few years ago some kid was attacked by a bear one night when he went to go to the bathroom. So of course that first night I woke up and had to go but I held it until the morning which sucked because I never got back to sleep.
Also at the same camp they split up the boys and the girls into different camps. The girls camp was a whole less than a quarter mile away and there was a good sized creek just a couple of hundred yards from our camp and it ran by the girls camp as well. Well one evening towards the end of camp about 20 of us decided to go an a commando mission down the creek and to the girls camp. So we sloshed down to the creek, which was only a few feet deep, trying to be all quiet while we kept trying to push each other down into the creek. Once we got to the girls camp we didn’t really know what to do. So one kid, and only one, decides it would be a good idea to go and knock down some of the girls tents. So he took off and the rest of us turned back because we did not want to get in trouble. A while after the 19 of us got back to camp the counselors called us together and told us about the kid and what he did. Apprantly he messed up their camp pretty good and a counselor from the girls camp took him into town and called his parents to come and pick him up.