Here am I, your special island
Come to me . . . come to me
Your own special hope, your own special dreams
Bloom on the hillside and shine in the streams
We had no
curtain, no stage lights and no microphones. But oh, what heights we hit.
With Gerry at the piano, scripts to memorize and sheet-music lyrics in
hand, young performers and chorus members spent two or three weeks polishing a
Parents’ Weekend show for the last weekend of July. That’s when a stream of
Ramblers, DeSotos, Imperials, Fairlanes, Impalas and station wagons would bring
moms, dads and little kids up
Gerry and Ellen Bucky made sure they saw that camp wasn’t all softball,
swimming and ceramics.
The titles of our ambitious musicals are like a collection of Playbills
from the 50’s and 60’s: Damn Yankees,
South Pacific, Finian’s Rainbow, My Fair Lady,
Four decades later, the years roll back effortlessly and the music rises
in my mind with just the slightest provocation. Mangoes and bananas you can pick
right off the tree, you say? Volleyball and ping-pong and a lot of dandy games?
Yes, it’s a rare beach vacation that doesn’t get me humming about sunlight
on the sand and moonlight on the sea . . . and fuhgeddabout when I saw the cove
on
It really didn’t take much to amuse and enthrall back then either, in
that early TV and transistor radio era … long before Walkman, Pac-Man and
Robocop. Simple costumes and rudimentary sets were cobbled together from
construction paper, tempera paints, fabric bolts, converted furniture,
accessorized clothes, other odds and ends. Imagination and enthusiasm made up
for the basic – OK, virtually nonexistent -- production values.
At our Sunday matinee during Parents’ Weekend, pale adults in Bermudas
and
Beyond their entertainment value, such as it was, the plays had lasting
educational and personality development dividends. They built confidence, taught
stage presence, relied on teamwork and laid a foundation for public speaking by
helping novice performers make eye contact, project voices and recognize the
value of dramatic timing. Through weeks of rehearsals and previews, even those
without speaking parts picked up sophisticated new words, learned about imagery
and rhyme, got snippets of geographic and historic knowledge, even brushed up on
the musical scale (“Doe, a deer …).
Plus, they were just plain cool fun -- with lyrics and lines about making
a bargain with the devil, dancing all night, getting a man, courting lady luck
at all-night crap games and dreaming of the soft and wavy frame that’s a
silhouette of a dame.
I can’t imagine a former camper or counselor among us who doesn’t
still know at least some lyrics to On the
Street Where You Live, People Will Say We’re in Love or Oh, What a Beautiful
Morning.
One
also wonders how many pint-sized hams went on to larger stages as amateur or
professional performers. I do know, thanks to Elaine (Hanauer) Ravich of
Baltimore, that counselor Larry Stempel now teaches music at
For everyone lucky enough to have been there, our version of summer stock
opened young eyes and ears to the beauty, grace and wit of Richard Rodgers and
Oscar Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, Frank Loesser, Irving Berlin, Alan Jay
Lerner and Frederick Lowe.
Come September, parents didn't have to encourage this camper to pick up
original cast LPs at Brentano or Korvette’s back in the city. On vinyl or CD,
those albums still sound mighty fine at the dawn of the 21st Century
and evoke the thrill of putting on shows in a country barn
-- our own special island, our drop of golden sun.
In your heart, you’ll hear it
call you …