Meg Dahlem, camper from the early twenties’, recalled the kitchen extended across the entire front of the lodge. (When she stopped in 1987, she recognized the benches, tables, piano and porch swing were all from her time at camp.)

The camp bell rang for meals, and was located in different places during different years. It was the “core of our existence here at Maqua” read a caption under a news photo of Margaret Burr, counselor from Plymouth and a senior at Albion in 1957. “If the bell goes haywire, the camp would not know when to eat, sleep or play.”

“The lodge was very important because we ate every meal in it,” said Kayleen Jacques (1956-59). “There were picnic tables and benches that were not attached to them in the dining room. So, when we sang, we could pick up the bench and pound it on the floor for added effect. We sang before each meal and policed our own tables after we ate.”

(Jean Evans (1933-38) laughed as she related the lodge was only a place to eat and she avoided it at all costs because it was where the director and staff who could boss her around hung out.)

Finding a cook for the summer was not an easy task. Often school cooks were hired, but their assistants were often family members or campers who assisted, before the days of official kitchen aide positions.

“All the cabins had to take turns with the duties,” said Dorothy Bonnen (1942). “I was assigned to the kitchen and I peeled potatoes and carrots and did whatever the cook wanted me to do. The cook and her daughter made out the food schedules. It was fun, even when we did the cooking stuff.”

Marge Hasty (1946) ended up cooking in the kitchen when all the cooks quit and Zoe McGrath (1968-69) transitioned from a twenty-one year old camp nurse with a quick lesson on cooking when the cook quit on the first day of camp.

“We had to itemize the food products and learn to cook in volume and did this for a few days before the new cook showed up. Believe me, I had never cooked before, but we had great staff who helped.”

“Our cook “Cookie” was a white haired, short, overweight woman who worked hard and made wonderful food. We would clap to het her into the dining room and she would wander through the tables,” said CarylSue Abendroth (1953-54). “You could tell she must have been hot in that kitchen, because her hair would be all messed up and her cheeks would be pink.”

Sandra Greve worked in the kitchen from 1954-1956 as a fifteen to seventeen year old. “I cleaned up after the cooks and assisted the cooks in the last year,” said Sandra. “The first year I worked with girls from college and lived in the lodge, but the third year the cook wanted the room to herself, so I was in one of the cabins.

She had lived in Hale and attended the First Baptist Church, so back then she knew many of the people who worked at camp. “It helped that I lived in Hale and it was fun to work. I wasn’t a camper, but we were allowed to intermingle. I would even swim in the lake when the girls were resting and go into town. Every two weeks I would go back to my parent’s house on our farm (where the Colonial Inn now stands). Sometimes I would take friends with me and I would fix up the girls on dates with guys in town.”

Sandra described the kitchen on the left side and that porch had a table for them. The kitchen was very large and had longer sinks on the left with a cast iron stove .She had to make sure the food was on the table, “but we were not slave labor”, making $5-$-$75 for the entire summer. “I was able to buy clothes for school, which was helpful since Mom was a kindergarten teacher and Dad was a farmer.”

Camper Pamela Watson was ten in 1956 when her mother became the camp cook. She had been a cook in the Bay City school system and at Camp Iroquois, and was famous for her homemade hot dog and hamburger buns. She would spot her Mom several times a day during meals and stay-overs, and thinks she had a room in the lodge or Infirmary during the two summers.

Attempting to try a change of positions from nature director to assistant cook, Audrey Delcourt got up early for her new job in 1969. “It looked more like perserverance. I burned my fingers a few times and decided I needed to change my attitude. Then I had fun. Before my attitude change, it was just work. I remember bringing my plant press into the kitchen because I needed a heat source to dry my plants and I used a shelf over the huge stove.”

One summer there was a cook in the kitchen from Eastern Europe. “She was of the opinion that the largest meal should be in the middle of the day, as it was in Europe,” said Jennifer McLogan (1965-71). “There would be so much food! And it was blazing hot—100 degrees outside and we were eating piles of hot food.”

What do you remember about the cooks during your sessions?