Sue Whirty, Ellen Hart, John Mumford

Bob Whirty was mentioned in a recent post. Bob's daughter Hanna is in camp this summer (session 4) and it was great to see him. I asked about his sister Sue, who is a bit older and also spent many summers with us. Here is a photo of Sue Whirty (at right) and Ellen Hart (left) in their Goldrush Day get-ups in the mid-1970s. A summer or two later Ellen Hart was the VC of Susquehanna and worked closely with the VC of Susky's brother village, Forest. And that gentleman was the unforgettable John Mumford. I have lots to say about Mumford, a guitar-playing hipster from Montclair, but these few things will suffice for now: (1) it was John who brought to our village--for I was a counselor in Forest at the time--a real mascot...a goat named "Bozo"...who joined us at flag raising and even came into the dining hall to help us with our village cheers and performed as himself in the Forest skit in the staff show; (2) wrote with me, in 1974, the song that's come to be known as "The Hird Song" (or "Easy Chair" in the 90s). John had a fine voice and was a wonderful guitarist. John's favorite expression was "Lemme go!" Meaning: give me a break; you've got to be kidding; get out of here.
John Mumford in 1978

social levelling

Goldrush Day (mentioned earlier) was momentarily a Topsy Turvy Day, Frost Valley's Feast of Fools. Each summer, during the goldrush carnival on this afternoon, there were two events where the high became low and "the people" ran amuck: Dunk Bozo and The Stocks. The latter was sometimes called "Ye Olde Stocks." Some village chief or, best of all, director was grabbed and put inside the Dunk Bozo cage, whereupon campers and counselor tried to knock the bucket of cold Biscuit Creek water on their heads (by knocking a wooden arm on a hinge so that it swung back and knocked the bucket over). As for The Stocks: they were set up in the middle of the Olympic Circle, and we sought the highest FV authority we could find. Halbe Brown, typically in his office making fund-raising phone calls or meeting with someone about a potential grant or new project, willingly submitted to this. He was brought out and clapped into the stocks and remained there for an hour or more as folks came by and gleefully imagined all manner of rules (his own rules!) he might have transgressed. Camp was the one place we knew where social levelling was actually possible - and not just possible but hilariously positive. And while on the other days it wasn't a gimmick or carnival booth, there was a palpable sense of common purpose, and the common touches our leaders used to achieve it, the long impromptu conversation sitting in the field during a staff soccer game, a visit to CQ just to talk about...well, everything, the surprising moments in which one was brought into complete confidence about some large direction in which we were going (a renal program next year, a new idea to bring indigent kids to camp, and maybe we should open up a special all-year school for the kids who have no home to go home to...). Hierarchy was real enough here, but it never seemed merely to enforce difference. Idealism evens things out. We were the same; it's just that some were older and more experienced...but finally no wiser than we were or could become. We felt we could make the change, together, on the level.

Halbe's favorite poem, which he recited for us many times, began this way:

I'd rather see a sermon
than hear one, any day.

there's gold in them thar hills!

The all-camp program that for many years took place during the first two-week camping session was called "Goldrush Day." A few directors would walk around the hills and along the trails leading down from the villages, with cans of gold spray paint. They painted little and medium-sized rocks - and once in a while, as a tease, a large rock--a boulder even. Some years the horsebarn staff rode around the villages on horseback before dawn, dressed as '49'ers, shouting the discovery of the Wawayanda mother lode: "There's gold in them thar hills! There's gold in them thar hills! Campers, get up. Get the gold before it's gone!" The campers arose, grabbed a laundry bag or pillow case, and once the signal was given would walk around camp gathering "gold." (This was, for one thing, a way for the camp to get rid of hundreds of pounds of those awful ankle-twisting Catskills round rocks along the paths we all used every day. At the end of the morning campers brought their bags of rocks do the Assayer's Office (the laundry) where the gold was weighed and Frost Valley paper money was given out accordingly. After lunch we gathered in the Flagpole Field (now "Margetts Field") and spent our money at a carnival. There was the kissing booth, various races and contest, face-painting, a water-slide, a haunted house, and the "Dunk Bozo" machine (a staff member sat in a cage while campers threw bean bags at an arm; if the arm was hit it would swing around and known over a bucket of cold water, which fell onto the staff member). In 1975 Valerie Pluto (VC of Tacoma) was a terrific reader of futures (I mean, aside from Goldrush Day, she predicted my future) and so she became the gypsy Palm Reader at the carnival. We all lined up to hear what she had to say about us. First in line was Paul Trela, shown here.

Here's more on Goldrush Day.