no more splinters

Yesterday, first full day of camp, waterfront period for all villages was taken up by what used to be called “dock tests,” then “swim tests,” now – more invitingly, especially given how cold the water is and thus uninviting to some – “swim checks.”

Ah but there’s something new at Lake Cole this summer other than the circumlocutious P.C. name for the job of sorting non-swimmers from swimmers. Yes, the docks are new – all new. The old old (old) ones were fixed into the lake – and, as I’ve written here before, created water-locked areas that filled with muck. The old ones, just now replaced, were floating docks, with wooden boardwalks. In recent years, despite good handling, these things started to warp a little and, worse, produced splinters.

Now we have docks of some kind of plastic. This reviewer, known for his fussiness about Old School matters, walked on this new-fangled material a few days ago in shoes and then barefooted, and while they are not nearly as real-feeling as wood, they are not bad to the touch, not bad for plastic. And they will last and last and last. And there’s a new configuration that allows for more activities and even a bit of lap-swimming for the good swimmers. Basketball court and volleyball courts, in the water. Yahoo!

While I’m talking waterfront, I have to report on one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard spoken at a VC program meeting. (These meetings have been happening weekly here since 1976 – geez, that’s 32 years – pretty much unchanged in format or duration. Earlier I have written about this brilliant programming system which truly decentralizes authority and responsibility for the activity schedules so that the village chiefs are really in charge of them. The downside is that a large long planning meeting must take place at the start of each week.) When it came time for the ’08 (and ’07) Waterfront Director, Brekke Holub, to make her announcements, she did her thing and readers of this blog can well imagine: (a) please be sure your campers wear bathing suits and bring towels, (b) please stay with your kids and counselors should be ready to swim themselves, (c) etc etc. With that, Brekke was done. But then, after a pause, another item occurred to her. “Well, there’s one more thing,” she tentatively began again, “and I don’t know if there’s any other way to put this. Well, boogers. I’ve been noticing campers with huge boogers dangling off their noses as they get out of the lake. Maybe they can be taught to check for this themselves. Or at least counselors should be on the look-out. I don’t really like myself to have to be the one to say to a camper, ‘Hey, kid, there’s a giant booger dangling from your lip.’” Silence, as the VCs, suddenly looking up from their half-done schedules, stare at her, wondering what practically could be done about this – this, just another of 999 things a VC has to think about, 750 of them rather absurdly. Then some and then all began to laugh, as did Brekke herself. Someone shouted out the suggestion that this “Booger Check” should formally become part of the already well-established and excellent “Buddy Check.” After all, safety and hygiene go hand in hand. There’s a reason under the sun for everything. Every last thing.

What haven’t we thought about? (That is why, in all seriousness*, I keep thinking that there cannot be a better intro administrative experience for a young talented smart person that being a VC for a summer.)

* I cannot believe I’ve created an unironic take-away from the Booger Check idea, but a few minutes after having typed it, I stand by it. If you think I’m sane, then you really understand or at least remember the value of what we’re doing.

building Lake Cole

Lake Cole is a man-made lake, as almost everyone knows or recalls. Wawayanda's first summer at Frost Valley--1958--was a lakeless summer. Harry Cole led the team that created our current stream-fed 23-acre lake between the summers of '58 and '59. This photo was taken in '59 or '60. The dock and swimming area you're seeing here is situated on the eastern edge of the lake, near the boathouse--not along the northern edge which is where the swimming area is today. (In this picture the boathouse would be off to the left at about 10 o'clock.) In the background you can see the grassless, treeless rim of the newly dug area. Later pine trees were planted all along the southern edge of the lake between the high rim holding the water in and the road. These trees are now tall and full. The blonde counselor on the diving board here is one of a number of staff who came from Towson State College--brought to Wawayanda, I believe, by Digger Shortt and/or other Baltimore-area folks. I can remember, as a camper, that my camp director (Dave King) and program director (Dick "Yo-Yo" Sommers) were both Baltimoreans. It's even the case that at dinner Baltimore Orioles scores were announced (they were of course a great team in the mid-60s*). Even later, in the early 70s, prominent staff members like Barry Dunkin came out of Towson State. By now the Towson connection has long faded, but my memories of the odd-seeming Marylandcentricity of Wawayanda in those days hasn't. (Someday, in another entry, I'll say something about another eccentric geographic pipeline: the Mississippi connection.)

* I suppose there would have been protests about this had the Yankees or Mets been any good then. The Yanks had just gone bad, starting in'65, and the Mets of course were perennial 10th-place finishers in the National League. My dad, Sam, mailed me short short notes when I was at camp--always enclosed with a Newark Evening News clipping about the Mets game the previous day and the National League standings. I'm not sure why I enjoyed this. My team typically lost 90 to 100 games and typically sent no one to the all-star game. But I can remember as one of the great pleasures of being at camp, this: rest hour, a cool breeze blowing through my own little crank-up window in my cabin, my green navy wool blanket (always tucked neatly into my bunk), resting my head on my pillow and gleaming white pillow case (I changed the case at least 3 times during each 2-week session), and the day's mail just brought in by my junior counselor, and I always started with the letter and news of the Mets from my dad. His letters read like this:

Dear Al, nothing much going on here. I don't see any of the neighborhood kids. You are lucky to be at camp. It's hot here. Must be cool there at night. The Mets lost again. What else is new? Ron Hunt was hit by a pitch twice. Love, dad.

in Biscuit Creek falls....

The other day I was looking at old photos of Wawayanda campers in the archive here in the "historical room" of the administration office and found several good ones of campers swimming and playing in the cold-water pool just below the Biscuit Creek Falls. Rather than post to this blog an old photo, I decided to walk out to the creek and see if kids were swimming there. Lo and behold: there they were, doing the same thing we've done for five decades: cooling off fast on a hot day, cavorting, dunking heads under the rushing water coming off those mossy, smoothed wooden planks. I took a photo and here it is. Makes you want to come here and jump in, doesn't it?

When I die let my ashes
flow down Biscuit River.
Let 'em roll on in water
the color of sky.
I'll be halfway to heaven
at a New Wawayanda,
sayin' Wawayanda spirit
it never did die.