There it is. Forstmann's cow barn, which we first used as our dining hall (1958, '59) and then as our beloved "rec hall" for many years. The "rec hall" was essentially our only indoor space other than the dining halls. Somehow--unbelievably--we held all-camp evening programs in there. On a rainy night, once in a while, we'd crowd in there to watch a reel-to-reel 16 mm movie. Calamity Jane (a western already old then) was one I remember. We held Kangaroo Court in there too. I got at least one pie in the face in there, as a "defendent" in the K Court, Judge King presiding. During sunny days it was quiet in the rec hall, but when it rained we all flowed in. During some summers there was a little library of old adventure novels (e.g. Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island). For a few years there was a random never-in-tune upright piano.I came of age as an extrovert in that building.
One torrentially rainy afternoon in '66 - I was a camper in Forest - we found ourselves sopping wet, standing around in the rec hall. Maybe a hundred kids and counselors, waiting out the rain. But it just wasn't going to stop. It was maybe 3 PM and surely we'd be stuck in there until 5. What to do? One of my counselors, the legendary J. C. Pony, sat down at the piano and began to play loud, melodramatic, lugubrious mystery-movie music. Instinctively, I grabbed a book from the shelf. It was Stevenson's Kidnapped. I began to read its overheated boys' adventure prose in a loud radio-drama voice. Between J.C. and me we were creating a story time. People started to listen. Then they went quiet. Then they sat down and gathered around us. And as more people came in from the rain, they were shushed and sat down too. I don't know how long we did this, but we dramatized Kidnapped for some time. And we hadn't planned to do it, we hadn't even cued each other - it just happened. I felt the feeling of having flair for the first time in my life. I was gumbo. I could invent something to do on an otherwise dreary day.
By the early 70s the rec hall was really falling apart. We had Arts & Crafts in there. In the winter, it was the x-country ski shop. Then in '75 "Chuck White came with the world's largest shovel" (as the song goes) and "knocked it all down for the progress of camp." And Margetts Lodge was built. See the photo below.
Mr. Carey, by the way, was Dick Carey, Wawayanda's executive director when we moved from NJ to Frost Valley. So I sometimes refer to the rec hall as "Mr. Carey's Old Rec Hall."
(Jim Wilkes, on seeing the above about Dick, reminds me that Ray Grant was the Executive Director in those days. "Carey [was] the Camp Director my first summer," Jim writes, "along with Marion Schreck, and Al Parsons who met my bus in Woodstock.")
In the photo at the top of this entry: it's holdover weekend (visiting day) and the boy in the bottom right is me. The kid from Forest.
