Our July and August days began and ended with live instrumental solos,
part of a soundtrack that accompanied camp life and that echoes in lifelong
memories.
No farm rooster could have awakened us as vividly as our most unusual
form of morning reveille: Accordion serenades by camp director Gerard Bucky,
strolling around the grounds with a full-size instrument strapped around his
shoulders. He played Oh How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning and other tunes, standing
outside the windows of girls’ bunks and marching through the male barracks
like a drill sergeant or a one-man floor show at an Italian restaurant.
And 12 hours later, as the sun was sinking behind the Shawangunk
ridgetops, an American flag was lowered as Taps
played over a loudspeaker – or, occasionally, from a counselor’s tarnished,
dented trumpet.
That evening ceremony, like the pre-breakfast flag raising each morning,
was conducted as a quiet, serious formality that reinforced lessons of patience
and patriotism. Cereal boxes and evening activities had to await formalities
that included singing God Bless America
each morning and “Day is done / gone the sun…” at dusk.
Not every ritual was that solemn. Right after Old Glory was hoisted,
we’d run to a smaller flagpole to raise the blue and white camp colors and
sing (or endure) a truly odd bit of doggerel: We
work and play / Sing and are all gay / Where do we have so much fun? / At Stern
Summer Camp. And that was just one verse.
Then came a quaint drill that probably bored more than a few campers,
while holding others in rapt attention: A rabid fan of the national pastime, who
had clicked on his transistor radio right after the first accordion notes, stood
on a staircase to read the previous night’s major league baseball scores. Had
to keep track of our beloved Yankees, New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers! It
was the Mantle-Maris era, after all … and any echoes of home were treasured.
It still wasn’t time to pour the corn flakes, though. Everyone below
Junior Counselor age had to line up, roughly in ascending age order, for a hasty
medical inspection. Standing on a lawn outside the dining hall, we’d dutifully
stick out our tongues for (at?) the camp’s live-in pediatrician – Dr. Niv,
an Israeli emigrant – so she could spot any incipient sore throats and isolate
the carrier before a mini-epidemic decimated the softball teams.
Inside the screened-porch dining area, campers were a hyper-vocal bunch
who created recurring scenes and sounds of summer.
Goading, teasing chants between tables were heard during the wait for
counselors to bring out food trays, seizing on athletic humiliations or the
latest counselor couple. “From Table 2 to Table 5: You’re the strikeout
kings -- whoosh, whoosh.” … Or: “Hey, Steve … what were you and Marilyn
doing behind the pool?”
On a lighter note, some of the assembled voices also rose in verse to
poke fun at menu cycles. “We had a song about food on each day of the week,”
recalls
Those dinners may have seemed repetitive, but they were mmm, good. And
that brought a high-volume finale to special meals. With feet stomping and
silverware clanging on tabletops, well-fed campers and counselors showed
appreciation by chanting “We want Ladell, we want Ladell…” until our camp
cook came out from the kitchen to receive heartfelt applause for that
evening’s roast beef or weiner schnitzel – an ovation she acknowledged with
a shy half-wave like Mantle or Maris leaning out of the dugout.
This eight-week soundtrack also included campfire songs, crickets,
bullfrogs and katydids, out-of-tune piano plunkings (Heart and Soul,
Chopsticks), 45’s via a loudspeaker and the ping of BBs shot from air rifles.
And for a generation raised before
Now let us go in / And jump into bed / Say our prayers / And cover our
head / The very same thing / I say unto you / You dream of me / And I’ll dream
of you.
Summer still never passes without vivid camp flashbacks as an oldies radio station or backyard insect symphony rolls back the decades instantly with sense memories to savor ... in the still of the night. It’s one of my favorite long-playing albums.