July 23, 2021
Our granddaughter Lina is headed to Great Books camp (for one week) at Haverford College this Sunday. Our grandson Elior started 3 days ago at Camp Ramah Wisconsin (for four weeks). Got me to thinking of my own childhood summers long ago; late 1940s.
I never went to a "summer camp". I just was not something anyone in my family considered, nor did any of my childhood friends. But my neighborhood friends and I did have great summers right around the block we lived on. This neighborhood, called Havertown, is about a mile or two from the Haverford campus where Lina will be.
Our bicycles were freedom for us. No one wore helmets to ride your bike. We would leave our houses after breakfast, and return only for lunch and for dinner, and then later after dark when our parents insisted that we come home. As far as I remember, my mother never asked me where I was going, who I would be with, or what we were doing. Of course, she personally knew all the families and kids that lived on our block. Mostly boys; I don't remember any girls in my age cohort.
About half a mile from where we lived was a large woods. (It seemed like a forest to us at the time.). Acres and acres of trees, with a stream running thru it, and an old dam which created a small pond. In the pond where minnows, which we caught in Mason jars. We tied a long piece of string to the mouth of the Mason jar, and put in a crumb of bread, then lowered the jar into the water. Soon enough, a minnow would enter the jar to get the bread, then we would yank it up quickly and the minnow was inside. Of course, there was really nothing to do with the minnow (about the size of a very small sardine) so we just let them go. But catching a wild animal of any sort must fulfill some primitive hunting instinct.
Some older kids had slung a rope down from one of the trees. You could take the rope, and climb another adjacent tree, and, holding on to the rope, swing down Tarzan-style. I was a risk-averse child (still am) so this took a long time for me to screw up the courage to give it a try. The older boys were much more daring.
Our street was on a slope (good enough for sledding down in the winter), but that did not stop us from playing football and baseball in the street. Almost no family had more than one car, so there were rarely any cars parked in the street. Sometimes we would go to the public grammar schoolyard three blocks away, and play baseball there. After the war (which ended in 1945), my father came home from the navy, and put up a basketball hoop over our garage door, so we could play basketball there as well.
Another activity we enjoyed was building model airplanes out of balsa wood kits. We would do this on Jimmy Dwyer's porch, which was very large, then try to fly them in his back yard. This usually ended in a crash, which destroyed all the hours of work we had put into them, but there were always more to build. We also had long games of Monopoly on that porch. (In those days, the average home price was probably $5,000 or so.)
My parents joined a private swim club called Martin's Dam, on a man-made small lake maybe 50 yards wide and 100 yards long. The membership was all-white, but in those days white people were all I knew of. The water was cold and refreshing. There was a platform on the edge of the lake with a long rope hanging down from a large tree limb that hung out over the lake. The rope had large knots in it, which you could sit on, as you swung out over the water, and then let go, plunging down into the water. There were docks you could swim to in the middle of the lake, and occasionally a water snake would swim by, usually near the banks. Large changing rooms for men and for women. Picnic tables and BBQ grills. So, it was sort of like going to camp (except your mother and father were there).
After dinner, we boys would reconvene back in the street, and play RedLight-GreenLight or HideAndGoSeek, or just sit on the curb and talk until our parents called us to come home. This was all before anyone had a TV. Although we did listen to a few radio shows, like Lone Ranger or Jack Armstrong; these came on about 5PM, just before dinnertime.
About the only summer "job" I had was mowing our lawn about once a week. Later, I would also do this for a neighbor, to earn a little cash for myself. I don't remember getting an allowance, but who needed money in those day; not us!
A big event for me for a few summers was August at the Jersey Shore. For several years, my grandparents rented a large house at Beach Haven NJ for the month of August. We would go down there with them, my mother, two aunts, one uncle, my four older cousins and my younger brother (born in 1944). The men might work the week in Philly and them come down for each weekend. (My father was off in the war until the summer of 1946.). These were carefree days on the beach and in the surf. ("Don't go into the ocean for an hour after lunch; you'll get cramps and drown".). Boardwalks and SkeeBall games, ice cream and cotton candy, bicycles and Ferris wheels.
So, that was summer in the suburbs of Philadelphia when I was a boy. And when it was nearing an end, we treasured each day that remained before school started (the day after Labor Day).
So, Lina and Elior, I hope and feel sure you will enjoy every moment of your summer camps.
Love, Zayde
And here is another boy's remembrance of his summer camp experience!!
