The Council Room

[Jim Culleton]

dried out and put away and the cabins secured for the fall and winter, I've always wondered what it would have been like to have been part of the Wyanoke opening and closing crew that did so much to get camp ready for the new season's opening and the work necessary to close down camp for the winter.

I never had the opportunity, nor did I ever ask, but I'm sure that it would have been an experience. I'm sure Dave B can shed some light on the work required on both ends of the camp season. I'm sure that Mike, Pat and Dave A. may have participated as well.

Freddie was probably responsible for turning off all of the water to the various Pines, bubblers, dining hall and midget chapel in the fall and then turning it back on in the spring. Come to think of it I don't think any of the buildings on the camp property had heat (except water heaters for the Pines), except maybe the 2 guest houses. I don't remember the dining hall, Boyden Chapel, midget chapel ever having heat so that may not have been an issue in the opening and closing of camp.

Just some thoughts as Labor Day approaches and all the "kids" head back to school. I was always amazed at how ready camp was when our parents dropped us off for a new season and when the Boston & NY Parties would arrive by bus in mid June. Few of us are probably aware of the work that was involved with camp opening and the equally difficult task of closing at season's end.

Just a few questions:

1. Where did they store all of the kerosene lanterns and water buckets at camps end?
2. What did Irving Vaughan do with the left over candy from Candy Line?
3. Where did they store the canoes, rowboats and sailboats during the winter . . . Boyden Chapel? That would have been a "haul" up the hill unless they used Freddie's truck to transport them from the Carry Beach.
4. The sugar donuts and "Sugar Pops/Frosted Flakes" left out for councilors after taps?

Just some great memories of times gone by.
_________________
'56 - J-9 J. Moulton
'57 - J-11 J. Moulton
'58 - J-4 E. Web Dann, S. Hood
'59 - S-6 P. Leavitt
'60 - S-2 F. Avantaggio
'61 - JA-1 RK Irons
'62 - C-9 JC with P. Freeland
'63 - C-1 JC with S. Borger
'64 - C-6 Councilor

[DavidAyars]

I never did post-camp, or stayed late, but I did pre-camp once or twice in the 1970s and that was a lot of fun. It was a lot of work raking leaves, clearing brush, painting tent platforms, setting up tents, getting the waterfront ready etc., for not much money, but it was a lot of fun. Freddie would be the foreman. You really got close to the guys you did that with and formed some lasting friendships.

Having worked in the store, I do know what happened to the leftover candy. One year, I was responsible for ordering the candy, and I didn't do a good job of timing it. I could see, a week out, that we were going to end the summer with way too many Good N Plenty's, I think. So I did what any good store would do and announced a clearance sale, two for one, or three for the price of two, or a free GnP with any purchase, something like that.

A day or two into my clearance sale, Irv dropped in, and I told him what I was doing, certain that he'd be proud of my initiative. He gave me one of his over-the-glasses looks-- both he and BMB were good at those, and I saw them more than once-- and Irv said something like, Hey, Don't do me any favors. He went on to say his deal with the supplier was that he could return all unopened boxes of, typically, 24 units of candy, for full credit, just losing the cost of postage to ship 'em back. Turns out I was selling them for less than they were worth in net credit! Oops.

With the 24-unit boxes that were opened and partially sold, they'd keep those in the store and sell them or give them away until they were gone to people hanging around in post-camp, I think, or the Vaughans would take them back to Gorham, Maine, for treat-or-treat handouts, perhaps, or maybe Celia sat up late nights in Hilltopper pounding them down. She had a raging sugar jones, for Mint Juleps, as I recall.
_________________
Camper: J-8 1965 (Kevin Ryan), J-8 1966 (Mike Freeland), S-6 1967 (Russ Hatch), S-3 1968 (Jeremy Cripps), and JA-2 1969 (Dan Mannis).
JC: J-2 1970 (Bill Bettison) and J-3 1971 (Gene Comella). Councilor 1972, J-5 1973, and JA-1 1974 & 1975

[Mike Freeland]

That's a great story about Irv -- uh, Mr. (to me - see elsewhere in this forum) Vaughan. That look could wilt a bamboo safety pole, and you're right, BMB was no slouch at it either. The day he (BMB) called me aside as I walked past the dining hall and "suggested" that I go over to S-1 and "Tell your friend Nelson I want to see him. Now." is still crystal clear in my brain. He made me want to quit and drive home to Pennsylvania right then, before telling "my friend Nelson" that me might be facing a corrective interview on the dining hall porch, and that maybe he should look into it whenever the mood struck him. I didn't of course; I told him, and then sneaked round the back of the DH and below the veranda and listened in.

Now that you remember it, I remember the End-of-Season Store-wide Sale-a-bration. Good'n'Plenty wasn't much of a hot seller. Pat used to call them "Lousy'n'Too Few"

I (I should make that "we" because Garth and I were always together before camp for a couple of weeks for a pre-camp mountain trip) worked pre-camp quite a few times, usually only the last few days. You're dead on abut the cameraderie and the hard work.

Getting the Midget rifle(!) range ready was one of the least pleasant of the chores because of the mosquitos. It was the only place at Wyanoke with no air (just Carbon Di), so the mosquitos were worse there than anywhere else on the property. The worst of it was that the place always looked the same after we finished sprucing it up as it did before.

Getting the Cabintown pines and shower room ready was fun because you got to get wet, and it didn't require lugging mossy, moist mattresses up and down hills. Man, those things must have been completely saturated with DNA. The weather was usually warm and muggy so the wet was refreshing. Again, despite all the Pine-Sol knock-off and BAB-O abrasive cleanser, they always looked the same after we cleaned 'em as they did before (same thing happened after the Chapel Police hit them during the summer). Something about Cabintown had that quality. And with the shower room, there was always the attitude that they were just little boys after all -- getting them in the shower was hard enough, and they rately took the time to notice the rust stains around the shower heads.

I never got involved with waterfront prep. Even though I was on the swim team for years at Wyanoke, I didn't like the water much, a fact later observed and respected by (program director) Bob Fox -- I was never assigned wharf duty or swim classes. Just like Bob and Russ Vaughan.

Every summer there was a job called "THE PROJECT", imperiously and floridly assigned by Dave Bentley and/or Tom Falcon, usually on the last day of pre-camp. Who got to do it and what it was, were always mysterious until after-lunch announcements that day. It was usually assigned to an old-timer (supervisor) and a couple newbies. I got to supervise one year. And don't forget the nickel (or was it a quarter?)

Surely you guys all remember that.

I worked post-camp maybe two times. To be honest, it was really hard for me to watch the tents being taken down, the rafts dragged to shore, the canoes loaded onto the trailer and brought up to the dining hall porch, the tables tops removed from their legs and leaned against the Sr. dining hall walls, chairs clustered on the perifery of the big room to make room for sail- and rowboats, mattresses stacked in J-16, on and on. It was like bulldozing my home.

Pre-camp was just so full of anticipation of the two months to come that preparing for the summer was an almost joyous experience, despite the gruelling work.

Taking it all down after all that had gone on in the past two months was just too melancholy for me, so I begged out for the most part. Camp seemed so permanent when it was in full swing, and striking the set immediately,and I mean immediately, after the last car drove out through the gates, only served to demonstrate how ephemeral it really was. I for one didn't like the reminder.
_________________
'56-C-9 C. Mosher '57-C-9 Bill Feaster
'58-J-14 H. Peavy '59-J-11 G. Wood, C. Duncan
'60-S-8 R. Leavitt, D. Hemphill '61-S-1 E. Slocum
'62-JA-1 H. Dunbar '63-C-2 (JC)
'64-C-5, (JC) Councilor
'65-C-9 '66 - '72-J-8
'73-JA1 '75-J-6

[Robert Vaughan]

Well, this topic is hitting close to home. In his latter years at camp, my dad didn't draw a salary - maybe this went on for many years after he started working at Tufts in 1953 but I'm not sure. It may have been a tradeoff for having three boys there or something. But I do know that in those latter years, his deal was 50% of the profit on the store. I have no idea how much that amounted to but consider that I just bought six cans of tennis balls at about $2.60 a can and recall that they were $3.00 in 1975!! Now my mom did like her chocolate but I don't think we ever took any home.

The whole topic of pre-camp and post-camp could fill a few volumes. Usually Brad wanted about seven of us to stick around at the end and there was a sadness to it but also great camaraderie. It would lead up to a final Tuesday evening when we would wait on the Wolfeboro Rotary for their big lobster feast and then get a lobster apiece. Brad would give us the afternoon off to prep for this and Tom Falcon probably still has the super 8 video of us diving one after another off the high tower in what was supposed to be a smooth operation. Please keep in mind that I probably never dove off the high board (let's face it - nor the low board either) in my life so the smooth flow of each of us doing this came to an abrupt halt although I did finally go off the tower (maybe even twice!).

One year we convinced Scott Carlisle that we always had a post-camp campfire and very seriously he sang "Oh Canada", Edna gave a Kingswood cheer but spelled in KINGWOOD, we read the log which someone wrote up, and a few other memorable things. That might have been the post camp when Steve Downes and I (mostly Steve) wrote the campaign song for Brad for the Parks and Rec Board to the tune of For Boston For Boston.

I don't remember it all but it included the lines

It's time to get the hippies off the Carry.
Brad Bentley, Brad Bentley, Brad Bentley for our Parks.

Pre-camp always included lining tennis courts and putting up new chicken wire as needed. There were always exciting moments to that. Fred Nichols was definitely the man and there were so many lessons taught over so many years. I do remember him saying in 1975 after perhaps a gazillion years ("If I'd known this was going to a temporary job ...")

Anyway, many more great memories of pre- and post-camp another time.

[Mike Freeland]

Hi Bob,

I have to say that it bugs the hell out of me to see how many people view our posts here and don't have nothin' to say. I waited this long to reply so someone else could get in and keep the conversation going.

Back to topic:

What you said is really interesting to me Bob, because it does give an indication of how tough things might have been getting in the later years, and how little we all knew about it.

I of course had no idea that your dad wasn't taking a salary then, certainly none of my business. That anyone was making a salary or a living from Wyanoke never popped into my mind. My summers as a councillor were funded by my salary withdrawals from Bea Stone for the occasional day off. I collected something like $137.42 after eight weeks and thought I was rich. I ate a lot of fried clams and tartar sauce with that dough.

I think you're right - that it may well have had something to do with having three kids in camp. I remember some councillors, nurses or something who had kids there and they had some sort of agreement. It never occurred to me that that sort of thing happened at the executive level. I didn't even think about an executive level!

Something I personally didn't have a clue about back then was that Wyanoke was a BUSINESS. It was Brad's livelihood. His JOB!. My view of camp was from the most fundamental level, even when I got "mature" (grad school and jobs and responsibility and the like): the kids, the tents, the laundry, the parades, the cookouts, the free evenings, the trips, the lake, the camerederie, the magical place Wyanoke was. That was all manifest in the space of three months, then I went away and was no longer a part of it, leaving the clean-up and ledgers to someone else. It never occurred to me that Wyanoke could be reduced to profit-and-loss, balance sheets and general ledgers. Damned naive. But that's youth.

I must have told you, probably while we were weathering a Nor'easter at 39 Wampatuck, that when I was a first-time camper in '56, your father scared the pants offa me. So did Mr. Cooper (you were in his (Mr.Cooper's) cabin, WAY over there in C-8, that year (56) if my memory serves). That'll happen when you're nine. The years changed that, (except for Mr. Cooper. He still scares me.) but you gotta admit that when your dad was serious, he was SERIOUS.

So how was Mr. F. Meredith Cooper as a councilor? Fun? I thought he was probably 90 then, but looking back from this age, I guess he was only maybe 30 or so. Maybe 70?
_________________
'56-C-9 C. Mosher '57-C-9 Bill Feaster
'58-J-14 H. Peavy '59-J-11 G. Wood, C. Duncan
'60-S-8 R. Leavitt, D. Hemphill '61-S-1 E. Slocum
'62-JA-1 H. Dunbar '63-C-2 (JC)
'64-C-5, (JC) Councilor
'65-C-9 '66 - '72-J-8
'73-JA1 '75-J-6

[Robert Vaughan]

Hi Mike,

I'm not sure that it was a sign of economic times but my Dad, until 1953, was the assistant director heading off to Winchester every day (keep in mind that I was five then! so I have only the vaguest memory of some of this). I do remember the turn table in the garage at 4 Sheffield Road where a car would go in and then be turned around to face back out! Both Brad and my Dad had young families and the two reached the conclusion that the income from Wyanoke couldn't support two families so my dad got the job at Tufts and was Asst Director for some wintertime functions and in the summers. Because we were becoming camp age along in there, my guess is that his arrangement of receiving a percentage of the store profits may have started then but it might have been in the 60's or 70's.

I think Russ had Mr Cooper and I do recall being a bit afraid of him. I had Ricky Taylor, Art Sloane, and Pete Sawin (maybe not in that order, however). I think Mr Cooper was on the older side because I think he had older children there himself. I'll have to check the registers.

My Dad did like to keep the lines moving whether it was trying on the uniforms in the first day or two of camp or candy line. No dawdling. He also (perhaps my mom too) didnt like my abbreviations in the years I worked at the store (t-balls, t-paste, u-trou, etc). They had to post them on each camper's bill.

Anyway, more another day.

Bob

[Jim Culleton]

Good dialogue Bob and Mike! Brings back a lot of memories for sure. Yes, Pete Sawin . . . . . . he was my brother Larry's councilor in J-16 back in '57 or '58. I'll have to check the rosters.

Bob, I always liked your mom and dad. They were business like, but yet they showed an empathy towards us kids. I do remember Burt Vaughan working in the store off and on during the late 50's however his main forte was with the band.

Bob, I can remember my apprehension about going into the store and asking . . . . . . . "Any mail today?" Your mom or dad would say . . . . . . . . . "Not today". This was in '56 during my 1st year at Wyanoke. Most of us had some homesickness particularly during the first few weeks of camp. My mom and dad weren't the most consistent of writers so when I didn't hear from them for 3 weeks I knew that I might be stuck at Wyanoke thru the fall and into the long, hard NH winters! Now that was a scary thought ! But lo and behold I was picked up when camp closed for the season. How impressionable our minds were at the age of 10-11 and the "separation anxiety" that most of us felt during our 1st year.

Has anyone had any boiled cabbage and brisket lately (aka NE Boiled Dinner)? I bet Phil liked cooking that stuff . . . . . . about as much as we enjoyed eating it !

Jim
_________________
'56 - J-9 J. Moulton
'57 - J-11 J. Moulton
'58 - J-4 E. Web Dann, S. Hood
'59 - S-6 P. Leavitt
'60 - S-2 F. Avantaggio
'61 - JA-1 RK Irons
'62 - C-9 JC with P. Freeland
'63 - C-1 JC with S. Borger
'64 - C-6 Councilor

[Bob Kennington]

[Pat Donovan]

Bob:

Wow! Midget councilors:

I remember Rick Taylor chewing on toothpicks to keep from smoking, and Art Sloan making us swear we wouldn't tell on him for smoking, and Pete Sawin and the bamboo dance..

Pat Donovan[/u]

[Jim Culleton]

Ah, yes . . . . . . . the bamboo dance . . . . . . if I remember it correctly and perhaps the precursor to "the Limbo" or vice versa.

Didn't it involve two 2X4's set parallel to each other about 3-4 feet apart with 2 long bamboo sticks set perpendiculary? Two councilors, one on each side of each 2X4, would raise/lower the bamboo sticks 2+ times against the 2X4's as a camper would hop in between and hopefully hop out or straddle the sticks before they were slammed together. Of course there was no guarantee on how many times the sticks would be raised/lowered and the speed at which each cycle occurred.

Yep, there were a few sore shins for sure ! I had totally forgotten about this . . . . . . if this is the dance that you are referring to Pat.
_________________
'56 - J-9 J. Moulton
'57 - J-11 J. Moulton
'58 - J-4 E. Web Dann, S. Hood
'59 - S-6 P. Leavitt
'60 - S-2 F. Avantaggio
'61 - JA-1 RK Irons
'62 - C-9 JC with P. Freeland
'63 - C-1 JC with S. Borger
'64 - C-6 Councilor

[Pat Donovan]

You've got it, Jim. Along with Pete's story about how the tribes used to affix very sharp blades to the insides of the bamboo poles, making their enemies, forced to do the dance, as nimble and quick as they could possibly be.
Pete Sawin was a freer spirit than many of the JAs and JCs, perhaps because he hadn't been a camper and hadn't been (dare I say) indoctrinated as thoroughly. He had to have been OK with Mr. B., though, to have been moved up to the Junior Camp and given his own tent. (It was a small tent, and it was really a cabin, but it was responsibility nonetheless.)
Pat