The Zeitgeist with Howard Barbanel

       

The late Allan Sherman R.I.P. and his famous comedic song about camp. Road signs pointing the way to Equinunk and a view of the main campus.

Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah.

This week The Five Towns has seen a large exodus of our young people. No, they’re thank God not off to war or anything terrible – quite the opposite. All week long, anxious and relieved parents have been trundling their kids off to sleep away camp.

Anxious because for many parents this is their first extended separation from their kids and there is a element of post-partum depression especially for the first child. Anxious also because camp these days costs a fortune, or at least it seems to relative to the old days. Relieved because for many parents they finally get a break from the rigors and stresses of raising good kids and have passed these responsibilities off for a time to the camp professionals. Relieved also because some parents actually get some alone time as a couple to rediscover one another (for better or worse).

Those off to enjoy the fresh mountain air range from five to 21 whether as campers or counselors. My next door neighbor’s teenage son just headed out for four weeks as a lifeguard (I didn’t know he could even swim) and I have a niece who is experiencing her first summer as a C.I.T. and discovered much to her shock, horror and chagrin that working at camp bears no resemblance whatsoever to being a paying camper. But this will probably be good for her character development. A bunch of other family, neighbors and friends’ kids have also been loaded onto buses or were driven up to the Poconos or Catskills.

I freely admit to a case of “camp envy.” I wish I were headed off to camp too. They say that “youth is wasted on the young,” Well, not for me anyway. I really enjoyed being young and very much appreciated the many fun things I got to do including camp.

When I was a kid back in what are now deemed the analog Paleolithic ages of the 60s and 70s, sleep away camp was a whole two month experience, not four or six weeks. We didn’t have access to phones or email. Communication with the parents consisted of the daily three-line letters from my father (where he said next to nothing but wanted me to get a letter every day anyway) and the once or twice a week opuses from my mother, who told me everything often in excruciating detail. There were visiting days where chips, candy and the coveted kosher salamis appeared. We were awash in parental food and it amazes me to this day that raccoons, squirrels and field mice didn’t feast on all these provisions we stuffed into outdoor cubbies.

My lifelong love of sports comes from camp. A lot of kids in our area now go to camps heavy on religious and/or ideological orientations. Some go to specialty or cultural camps. I went to a “jock camp,” meaning camp was all about playing ball, morning, noon and night with some lakefront activities like sailing and waterskiing thrown in. My love of sailing and boating also hail from camp. 

Camp Equinunk in Wayne County, Pennsylvania was where I spent the majority of my camping years. This was (and still is) a place full of Jews, but it wasn’t a Jewish camp. The extent of Jewishness there were the 20 minute Friday night services and the quick prayer over bread before each meal. This was (and still is) a place steeped in traditions that span nearly a century. Extended families of cousins went there and it wasn’t unusual for your bunkmate to be a third generation camper.

Never a “natural athlete” or gifted, I became a solid “B-level” player by virtue of the patient instruction and attention of a lot of great counselors. The two who are foremost in my mind were Jon Kigner and Henny Goldman. Kigner (or “Kig” as we called him) was my counselor for two consecutive summers. All my bunkmates flat out loved him and we expressed this by cheering him on in the mess hall and building a constituency to propel him to color war chief within a few years of his arrival at camp, which was no mean feat as Kig had never been a camper there. Kig taught me how to hit a baseball well, and more significantly, how to place and aim the ball to find the gaps and holes in the field which is a skill I still retain to this day for which I’m most grateful.

Henny was the Head Counselor and had been so for decades before my arrival there in the summer of ’69. He was a high school football coach in Brooklyn and could best be compared to the Burgess Meredith character in “Rocky.” Rough, gruff and tough on the outside he was a sensitive and warm guy on the inside who loved the kids and really cared about them. He was a paradigm of the early 20^th Century guy – a man’s man who brooked no baloney and was all about imparting character to make a man out of you. Legions and generations of kids loved him as well. He always called me (or shouted at me) by my last name (never my first) but you knew it was out of affection.

Aside from being able to decently play just about any sport, camp also taught me about sportsmanship – how to win graciously and how to accept defeat and come back from it; how to treat teammates and opponents and even how to accept authority be it in the form of the umpire or your counselors. You learned how to live apart from your parents and co-exist in a group environment and deep friendships were formed. You learned about group loyalty and fighting for a cause in color war and inter-camp games (and how Luden’s and Dr. Smith’s cough drops could ameliorate a sore throat from all the shouting and cheering) and you learned patriotism at the morning and evening flagpole ceremonies.

The late Alan Sherman had a monster hit on radio in the 60s with his song lampooning sleep away camp called “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” which in the space of just a few minutes hilariously encapsulates the entire gamut of camp experiences and emotions. You can hear it on YouTube. Still as funny as ever. Everything seemed hyper real, hyper new and hyper important as a kid and it are those sensations and emotions that seem so remote all these years later. But on a week when we see so many board the camp buses it brings us back again to those days and engenders wisps of nostalgia for the carefree and privileged childhoods so many of us were afforded by generous parents who surely worked hard and sacrificed greatly to provide us with those treasured experiences and wonderful memories.