1940’s

Garb—-

Published on by Kathy Baker

Patsy Walsh (1938) remembered one of the sweet girls in the bunk above her had jeans. “I was so fascinated. I had never seen girls in jeans. She let me wear them and I was so excited! We always wore shorts or dresses. Honestly, it was one of the highlights of being there. I felt sharp. We had to wear our whites on Sunday, though, for our services at Chapel Hill or when the counselors took us to mass.”

One summer Helen Hasty (1943-50) noticed many of the counselors were wearing jeans. She had been sent off to camp with lovely clothes, mostly in white. She wrote home begging her Mom to send some blue jeans, but the request was denied. {“The next summer I went back and I had them”,said Helen.)

“We had footlockers and my Mom made us (sisters) shorts and we almost always dressed alike,” said Susie Utter (1954-56). “We were not allowed to wear jeans at home, but had to buy some for riding horses.”

Then came Shelley Harris (1965-75), who desperately wanted bell-bottom jeans. “Oh man, I remember making those jeans from two pairs. I cut off the thigh parts of one pair, turned them upside down, and laced them to the other pair at the knees with rawhide laces!”

“Camp WAS my summer,” said Laura Taylor (1964+), who was a self-professed goody-goody, but hated the matchy-matchy clothes her mother sent her off to camp with in her footlocker. “”I wanted to be cool and be with the cool kids who turned their shirts inside out and dressed sloppy with bell bottoms and no bra. I copied everybody and tried to dress the part. Cute outfits were not cool and the trendsetters were the counselors. Camp sweatshirts were the symbol of cool.”

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Elemental Garments and Hair Don’t Care–

Published on by Kathy Baker

“Every camp session yielded a copy of the goings-on of the campers in a newsletter, aptly named the “Loon”. It was usually a tongue in cheek review of what went on in each hut, activities of the days at camp and humorous stories relaying such things as deep dark secrets, anecdotes of the date and confessions of campers.

An early edition, somewhere in the 1920’s titled “Confessional Edition” and subtitled “A Bugler Bungles” read as follows; “There was only one of us—I—deserted by my family for the summer and was forced to earn money and a summer vacation at the same time. We—I—thought and thought and finally decided on a summer camp—Maqua, it was called. Since I was young and inexperienced, I was not too careful in my choice but then Maqua seemed a fairly nice camp.”

“Sad as it may seem, it was immodest in its attire in this regalia. I stepped out of a hut and behold sunlight, bright as any lily of fair girl—and then—ah then—two males sitting in a car. Two males looked up me and then away, but not before they had completely identified me as the bugler. But I, what could I do? Heaven know how much lower I may descend the stairs of gegradation, but it can be but a little lower. Woe is me!”

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Camp Clothes–

Published on by Kathy Baker

Like many of the Moms who sent their daughters off to camp, the little labels were sewn into Jeri Smith’s camp wardrobe in the sixties. The list for camp would arrive in the mail to check off the activites and articles of clothing plus items needed for the two-week sessions. Of course, there was always the excitement of checking the boxes next to the ones she loved. In addition, there was the yearly physical, so that she was up to date on her shots.

“I remember my Mother marking every piece of clothing by sewing in little labels,” said Karen Short (1945-48) who added there were now marking pens for the same thing.

Randi Wynne-Parry”s Mom would shop with her for special camp clothes (1969-73)– then the labels went inside. Rosemary Orgren (1956-58) only recalled labels inside her “undies”.

“My Mom would always get me some clothes for camp, so I could last two weeks without washing them. I recall sitting in my bedroom writing my names on all the tags on my shirts, shorts, swimsuits,” said Lindy White (1970-73). “I used a light blue trunk to pack all my clothes and set it at the end of my bed in my cabin. There was a tray in my trunk that I would keep all the miscellaneous stuff, including stationary to write home.”

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Becoming A Woman At Camp—

Published on by Kathy Baker

One of Debra Osher’s firsts occurred at Maqua in the early sixties, but not in the usual timely manner of most girls. “Everyone had their period except me. I was fourteen and my Dad was a doctor and we were supposed to send in this medical form and it would have information on it. I knew everyone had their period, because I used to sneak into the Infirmary and peek at the records. So, I asked my Dad to please mark down that I had it, and he did, even though he knew I didn’t. Well, didn’t I get my period there and I had no equipment! I think I called my Mom a few days later to tell her. Normally, my Dad would have never done that, but he knew how much it bothered me

“I got my first period at camp and I was terrified! It took me awhile to figure out,” said Dana Foote (1974-77). “My Mom did not send anything with me to camp, so I was pretty scared and told my counselor. It was the summer after sixth grade. She took me to the nurse and I just recall being mortified, hoping none of the other girls found out.”

Kay Alcorn remembered one great laugh at her expense in the forties. “I was the only one in the cabin who was not menstruating yet. They teased me unmercifully. I was feeling inadequate and even worried that maybe I’d never start. One evening when I returned to the cabin in my light blue pajamas after brushing my teeth and washing my face, one of the girls said “Oh Kay, what’s that spot on the back of your pajamas?” Knowing that they were probably just teasing me I declined to look. But they kept it up. When I did look, I said, “Oh, I probably just sat on a bug!” They really laughed at that and never let me forget it, for indeed that momentous right of passage was a reality at last.”

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Smoking–

Published on by Kathy Baker

 

Helen Hasty recalled the clouds of smoke that billowed around the big tent behind the lodge in the early forties.

(“Smoke virtually rolled out of the couselors’ smoking tent!”) Some years smoking was no big deal and other years, the directors warned the counselors about smoking on the premises.

Lucille Greenwald (1947-50) had the same memory of the counselors sleeping in the tent behind the lodge and the girls were never allowed to go back there. “We would see some of them with bandaid boxes in their pockets, which had cigarettes in them and we thought it was terribly risqué.”

“I do remember the counselors had a tent behind the screened porch at the back of the lodge, where they would smoke their cigarettes and talk about the “ugly” (uncooperative) campers,” said Geraldine Folkert (1942-47), who learned to smoke at camp at the age of sixteen and became a social smoker.

Carla Schweinsberg (1945-52) was relieved not to be part of the round-up of naughty girls who got caught smoking in the bushes. Anne Obey believed the walks she took to smoke cigarettes was the most scandalous thing she did in the sixties, but admitted she never wanted to disappoint her director and they never smoked on canoe trips.

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Bra Or No Bra?

Published on by Kathy Baker

Every girl probably remembers the first time they had to change in front of someone other than a sister, step into a communal shower after a gym class, shop for their first bra, or the shock that someone could be the same age as flat-chested you and have the hugest breasts you had ever seen!

“I had never spent the night at anyone’s house. I knew no one,” said Geraldine Padgett (1954-56). “I had no friends at camp and the other girls were not from my area. One of the biggest things for me was changing clothes in front of girls! In those times, you didn’t even lounge in your pajamas and we showered alone. I had never dressed in front of people and I was very modest.”

“I do remember, just as my friends did, that we all wanted to be around when one girl was putting on her bra. Her boobs would fall into the cups and then she would just snap it on and pull up the straps. We had never been around girls who were not modest. I think we bothered her “laughed Dorothy Niedzielski (1946-47).

Pat Kula said the memory of her early forties bra story at camp still brings howls of laughter to her bunkmates that witnessed the same act of the girl with the biggest boobs stepping into her bra from the floor. There was not much room for privacy for the girl who was cups ahead of her flat-chested roommates!

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