The walls did talk, or at least the girls felt like they did, as a tradition developed to write their names on the walls in toothpaste or lipstick. “My Mom always wondered why we wanted extra toothpaste”, laughed Kim Moore (1968-1972), “but you know we just had to write our names on the cabin walls!”
Priscilla Johns saved the little bit at the end of the tube, in the sixties, to end her session with her signature. Others wrote in lipstick. Some of the campers had no recollection of names written on the walls and were horrified at the thought of defacement, but others say the tradition developed early enough that their previous generations had left their calling card.
“I remember putting my stuff on the cross bars of the wall, but we would have never written our names or put graffiti on the walls. There would have been hell to pay”, said Mary Lou Goggin, who was a horseback riding instructor in the sixties and one of the artists who created the muslin wall map of the camp. (Her way of leaving a piece of history still hangs on the walls today.)
“I was always an outdoors kid, but my parents were not”, said Jenifer Penzien, who camped from 1969-71. “I didn’t have parents who were into camping as a family, which is surprising considering how much my Mom loved Camp Maqua, but she was always a sing-songy Mom. Sometime, probably in the late thirties or forties, she stayed in Cabin Three. While they were there they painted a board with the name “Sleepy Hollow” and attached it to the outside of the cabin. When I stayed in Cabin Three, probably 1968 or 1969, the board was still there, although the paint was long since worn away. I also remember looking at the initials carved in the walls and ceilings of the cabins. I stayed in three, four and six looking for Mom’s initials.”
Kellie Moore recalled one summer after camp in the seventies when she was so excited to find that her neighbor Marion Ballor had been a camper. She had baked cookies with her before her death and had found her name on the boathouse wall. “We always wrote our names in toothpaste”, said Kellie, who explained– “It meant I was there.”
The most excited girls were those who found their mother’s name. Patsy Walsh’s daughters were thrilled when they went to camp and were housed in the hut where their mother had slept and saw her name on the wall from the late thirties. Michele Patterson camped for the first time in 1971 and found her mother’s name with the 1947 date and stood in amazement, as did Ruth Wiesen’s daughter Hope, who found hers from the late fifties. Cindy Morrison found her mother’s name (Virginia Walker) from the thirties on her cabin wall in 1960 the year she attended.
Amy Falk, seventies camper, loved the top bunk and remembered all the writings and swore someone had written– “Helen Keller was here” in every cabin. Ann Meisel’s mother went to camp and loved it, and had also written her name on the boathouse walls, but by the time her daughter arrived in the sixties, for some reason the boathouse was closed as a hut and she was disappointed not only to not be able to be in the coveted hut, but unable to see her mother’s name on the walls.
What were the rules regarding writing on the walls when you attended? Were they violated? Did you ever find a relative’s name?
