The Council Room

[DavidAyars]

Though I love coffee now, I was not a coffee drinker when I was at camp, even as a councilor. I do remember that BMB would make an announcement (at Sunday "dinner"?, really lunch) inviting staff to join Mrs. Bentley for a cup of coffee on the porch after the meal. Wasn't there also one of those 40 cup silver coffee servers at one of the dining room windows at breakfast, anyway? A few jolts of joe might have helped focus some of the spacier campers, but that was not allowed.

Since those large drip coffee makers can produce coffee that ranges in quality from pretty good down to abysmal, any recollections about how good the camp coffee was? Was it one of those things that varied from summer to summer, depending on who was in charge of making it (or cleaning the urn)?
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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

[David Bentley]

I, too, never drank the stuff at Camp, but, in my advancing years I've come to actually enjoy a morning cup as I hang out at the local Black's Paper store. During the day - never. With respect to the Sunday coffee on the veranda with Mrs. Bentley, the 'Mrs. Bentley' originally referred to BMB's mother, then, through time, came to include both BMB's mother and his wife and my wife. My Camp memory only starts in 1949, but as I remember, there were other ladies present for Sunday lunch, ie, Mrs. Walton, Mrs. Taylor, Miss Duncan, Mrs. Slocum, Mrs. Irons, Mrs. Scheirer, Miss Stone, nurses, Mrs. Vaughan, Mrs. Vaughn, Mrs. Fox, and others. In the beginning it was an opportunity for these early generation ladies to socialize with my grandmother following the death of her husband, the founder. If any guests, or parents, were at Camp they were invited, also, to join the coffee time. I was never really involved so I can't speak about the urn or whatever.
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C-1 49 J-7 52 S-3 55 J-10 58
C-7 50 J-7 53 S-2 56 J-8 59
C-8 51 J-4 54 S-7 57 (JA) J-8 60 - 64
1965 - 1968 Military service
Pine Cone 68 - 75 (with wife,Sherry,
and daughter Tracey)
Wolfeboro - full-time since 1997

[Mike Freeland]

Well I drank a lot of coffee there, and believe it or not, it was pretty good. Maybe that's because Phil liked coffee too.

The pot was next to the Jr/Sr slide, just below the waiter-order thing, on the corner where BMB stood to do the announcements. There was always a punctured can of evaporated milk. Now there's a flavor. I haven't put that stuff in my coffee since then, even though I like it.

You may remember that Freddie always had a block of ice in the sink/bubbler on the dining hall porch, with a handy ice pick (can you imagine having an ice pick lying around with a bunch of kids these days?). With that, I always made a glass of iced coffee, usually with the help of one of the campers (Chris?).

On Sundays, they always hid the urn in the kitchen so we couldn't get at it (which I did anyway, getting into trouble). The idea of hiding it was to conserve coffee for the gathering of Mrs. Bentley and "ladies present" on the porch after the meal, and because if everybody drank coffee at the meal, no one would want to join the "ladies present" afterwards. (I also got the "Well if you can do it, then everyone else will want to" argument. I suggested we cross that bridge when/if there were an uncharacteristic stampede for the coffee urn on a Sunday affternoon). I further pled my case, saying that there weren't more than a couple of us who drank iced coffee at lunch, and there's no way we'd let being coffeed out and jittery interfere with the opportunity to join the "ladies present" after the meal. I guess I won, because I got my coffee AND joined everyone on the porch after Sunday lunch, as did the other coffee addicts on the staff. All was well.

Even today, the first swig of iced coffee reminds me of lunch at Wyanoke.
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'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

[DavidAyars]

Yeah, see now I love black iced coffee in the early afternoon of summer days, too, so I understand. I know we're not supposed to, because the caffeine makes normal dehydration even worse in hot humid weather. But iced coffee still makes much more sense to me than hot coffee in the summer. Did that habit make the second afternoon of Presidential hikes a little headache challenging, Mike, or could you tank up at a huts breakfast and make it through?

I'd forgotten what both Dave and Mike point out, the "Ladies Present" and guest angle on the Sunday coffee klatsch. Since I wasn't imbibing, that all kinda flew over my head. I hope, Mike, that you remembered to extend your pinky finger as you hoisted the cup on the porch, and not some other random finger while brooding over any Sunday dinner arguments over access to the urn. The Ladies Present would have noticed such things. I can just see Jane Fox flipping you back, "Yeah, I saw that, and I got your cuppa joe right here, tough guy! Come and get you some!" "That's it, beyotch, it's GO TIME!" with a porch table-clearing brawl right out of an old Western movie. Edna ripostes, "I think we better cut down to decaf next week." Good Times. Yeah, I'm a little twisted. I blame it on caffeine.

Do you remember if the coffee was still good after Phil left, since some other things went downhill by general acclaim?
_________________
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

[Chris Gill]

I remember being the one that had to fetch coffee for Mike Freeland. I guess I knew how he liked it. I don't remember the ice coffee as much as wrapping my hands around one of those heavy mugs of warm coffee on a cold August morning. Maybe I'll send Mike a can of condensed milk for the next bet that I loose.
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1965-1975
C7,C8,J8,S4,S3