A commentary by Frank DeFord on NPR last week about the abundance of summer youth camps – football, tennis, body-building, etc. – got me thinking about summers when I was a boy in the 1950s and 60s.
I can’t remember hearing of anyone ever going off to a camp – except for satirist Alan Sherman who sang “Hello muddah. Hello fattah. Here I am at Camp Grenadah.” from the jukebox up town at Dairyland, where my friends and I cooled our summer swelter with cherry limeades.
According to Deford, it was the Baby Boomers who started all kinds of organized sports and camps in the summer — Little League and what-have-you. By the time we got to Gen X they’d evolved into having a specific purpose resume-wise.
These days, a boy who has parents who think he can win an athletic scholarship as a quarterback gets sent to quarterback camp. Or pitching camp. Or offensive left-tackle camp (because offensive left-tackles make a bundle in the NFL).
I did have something called ‘Summer Recreation’ a couple of mornings a week led by high school coach and gym teacher Glenn Watt. We chose up sides and played dodge ball and wiffel ball in the school gym or softball on the dusty diamond outside. It wasn’t designed develop us into millionaire professional athletes. It was for exercise and fun.
Other mornings I would grab my fishing rod, pack a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in my army surplus pack and bike with my friends a mile or two to a strip pit or pond for a day of fishing, joke telling, baseball talk and general camaraderie.
Some evenings we loaded our scout gear and traveled across the back fields to “camp out” by a farm pond behind the 69 Drive-in. There we watched soundless movies on the giant screen in the distance, set our lines for catfish, and fell asleep smiling up at the stars.
Many afternoons we went skinny-dipping at Blue Sea strip pit on the Grilz place north of the Santa Fe tracks where we staged rope swing competitions and had all out, every-man-for-himself mud wars.
I can’t remember our parents ever thinking twice about our unsupervised adventures, other than to ask when we’d be home. And we accomplished it all without it being occupational. There was no Wiffel Ball Camp, Rope Swing Camp, Fishing Camp, or Mud Fight Camp for us to attend in the hope that we might someday win a scholarship.
Also this time of summer was when my friends and I would get some old lumber, nails, tin roofing and chicken wire, put together a construction in my backyard, lift it onto the bed of grandpa’s ‘52 Chevy pickup and slowly parade it three blocks up to the main drag.
At the vacant lot across from Cicero’s filling station, we’d unload it, string up some pennants and old Christmas lights, and sell — making change from an old cigar box — 4th of July firecrackers to the neighborhood kids and night works to their parents.
Other kids in small towns from miles around did the same to make a few bucks in makeshift stands every half mile or so in every direction. A lot of us went on to put our construction, communication, and entrepreneurial skills to good use as adults despite being left to our own designs on how to run our operations. A couple even became direct importers of fireworks from China.
In the new millennium things are different. Marketed in newspapers and on TV, and sold in air-conditioned buildings or huge, striped tents - using digital cash registers that take credit cards - fireworks have become big money.
In fact, it’s hard to even imagine a kid getting into the business these days. That is, I suppose, unless he can produce a resume that shows he’s successfully completed Sparkler and Roman Candle Camp.
J.T. Knoll is a writer, speaker and prevention and wellness coordinator at Pittsburg State University. He also operates Knoll Training, Consulting & Counseling Services in Pittsburg. He can be reached at 231-1852 or jtknoll@swbell.net
