Karen Rauter and others up at camp have been looking through old issues of the Wawayanda Wasp, which served as an off-season newsletter (for parents, mostly) and, during the summer, the camp newspaper written and edited by campers. (I was myself a "cub reporter" for the Wasp in '67 and '68.)Here's a letter printed in an issue of the Wasp dated 1964:
Dear Mom and Dad,
Could you please send my by book on snakes; that tells the difference between poisonous and non-poisonous snakes? A snake just bit me and…………
Love, Clem
I'm less worried about the snake bite (no poisonous snakes at Frost Valley!) than I am about the awful use of the semi-colon in the young fellow's letter home. What kind of grammar were they teaching up in the villages that summer?
