IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME

Not every Hoboken boy got to spend time at summer camps. Few attended them as often as I did. This vignette describes some of my adventures while out in the woods, far from civilization. It is also the last of my grade school stories. After posting it, I decided to add another section, this one describing my first year of high school. So, this is a revised posting, with some pictures.

IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME

My parents sent me to summer camp for two weeks every year, from age six to twelve. I spent all but one of them at Camp Columbus, near Branchville, New Jersey. The Catholic Church's Columbus Cadets, patterned after the Boy Scouts, operated the facility.

Upon arrival at camp for the very first time, I witnessed a boy performing a crazy dance. Either bees or wasps had stung him numerous times. Camp counselors covered him with mud to draw out the poison. The kid screamed endlessly before this remedy took effect. This introduction to outdoor life seemed an ill omen.

We campers slept in WW I surplus tents on straw-filled mattresses. A wood pole held up the tent’s tarp. At least once during each of my annual stays, in the middle of the night, older boys would enter the tent of the youngest campers, lift up the support pole, and gently allow the tarp to come down on the sleeping innocents. The little kids would start screaming bloody murder. The perpetrators would laugh. Welcome to Camp Columbus Hazing 101.

Some cadets became homesick, while others wet their beds. This dampened my enthusiasm for camp. One summer, a boy who was too frightened to walk to the latrine at night, hid his bowel movement in his footlocker. He could not keep it a secret for very long and received an early dishonorable discharge.

The camp had one strict rule. You had to write a post card home, twice a week, and bring it with you before entering the dining hall. Despite my reputation as a very finicky eater, it was at this camp that I learned to eat and enjoy canned sardines, the only sustenance provided when we boys took nature hikes. It was a singular experience, as my mother never cooked or served fish. It became the subject of one of my postcards.

Camp Columbus adjoined Culver Lake. Campers swam in it every day. Non-swimmers wore yellow bathing caps and had to remain within the confines of a roped-off shallow portion of the lake. Boys with modest swimming skills wore blue caps. They had to remain within a roped-off section that featured a raft with a slide. Good swimmers wore red caps. They had to pass a rigorous swimming test to merit this recognition. Boy’s identified with red caps could swim in the open lake, off the end of the pier, not confined by ropes. Only a few campers managed to exhibit enough skill to earn this privilege. I was one of them.

My brother had taught me to swim and dive at an early age. Since there were so few red caps one summer, I decided to swim with the blue cap crowd. I did a back dive off the raft and hit my head on the shallow bottom, almost knocking myself unconscious. After that experience, I only dove off the far end of the pier into the open lake.

One year the camp’s counselors decided to take the boys for a late evening hike. A few of us slipped away from the main group and sauntered up a road leading to a girl's camp. Authorities discovered our presence, and all hell broke loose. Our counselors marched us back to camp, and then required us to run laps around the track for being “bad boys.”  This punishment far exceeded the sin.

Another year I developed a severe rash on my hands. For weeks afterwards, the skin on my palms kept peeling off. Unable to tell one plant from another, I probably developed this skin disease by touching some vile weed thinking it was a rose.

On another occasion, I became ill and spent the night in sick bay. There, another boy unleashed agonizing screams hour upon hour all night long, terrifying me. Parents never know all that their children experience at summer camp.

In 1939, my brother did some comparative summer camp shopping. His college friend drove us to visit Camp Don Bosco, operated by Franciscan monks. It may have been located near Nyack, NY. I feel in love with the place at first sight. The facilities included wood cabins and built-in bunk beds. However, when the Holy Fathers said that all campers had to wear full-torso icky-looking wool bathing suits, we skedaddled. This prudery was unthinkable to my brother who wanted me to live like Huck Finn. He escorted me back to Camp Columbus for one more exotic vacation.

A classmate, Dick Marnell, attended the same session. He stood about six feet tall, in stark contrast to my stature, barely over the four-foot mark. We were the proverbial Mutt and Jeff team and the only red cap swimmers during these two weeks. For amusement, Dick dove to the bottom of the lake and brought up a stone to prove he had reached bottom. This was quite an achievement as the lake was perhaps twelve feet deep at that point. Every day thereafter, I tried to duplicate his achievement without success. My breath was too shallow and my body too short to allow me to reach the bottom. With grim determination, on my final day of camp, I finally succeeded in retrieving a pebble from below. The water pressure hurt my ears. Did this incident contribute to my losing hearing in my left ear at a later age?  If so, it was worth the price. I still have one good ear left. Unfortunately, my trophy pebble is missing.

Camping never changed this “Big City-Boy” into an “Outdoors-Man.” Animals and insects never appealed to me. Shooting arrows with my bow toward a bull’s eye target and playing horseshoes enlivened my experience at camp, but my interest dropped to zero when someone tried to teach me how to bait a hook in order to catch a fish.

My days and nights at camp were itchy ones as I always acquired a severe case of poison Ivy. I still scratch my entire body for the better part of two weeks every summer, from habit, not need.

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The start of WW II coincided with the day my eighth grade class began in September 1939. Sr. Edwardine did not think it merited discussion. She had her hands full, trying to keep peace among the forty students who filled the tiny room, equally divided between boys and girls. A lectern served as her desk, positioned one step from the double desk I shared with another pupil, Eugene Garbarini. To my left and directly in front of her sat my six-foot tall pal, August William Conrad Campbell. A few seats behind me sat my other six-foot buddy, Richard Marnell, my swimming partner at summer camp. At least four other boys in this class stood five-feet ten-inches tall.

At the other end of the spectrum, five boys, myself included, stood less than five feet tall. A class picture taken just before we graduated in June 1940 shows two of the smallest lads in the class, standing like tiny pillars, one on each side of the front row of girls. One measured four-foot three inches, the other marginally taller. Both are attired in knickers. I maxed out at about four-foot six that year. Standing three rows back, my legs are not visible in this picture, but I know long pants were not part of my wardrobe at the time.

Third row, second from left.

During the summer of 1940, Germany bombed England mercilessly. Americans listened intently to Edward R. Morrow’s live broadcasts from London during the raids, but our nation remained committed to neutrality. The English army managed to avoid capture in France, thanks to the miracle of Dunkirk, when a flotilla of vessels carried them back across the channel. The world wondered if Great Britain could survive.

In September 1940, I enrolled in David E. Rue Junior High School with a number of my eighth grade classmates, including Campbell and Garbarini, but not Marnell who chose to attend St. Peter’s Prep in Jersey City. All the students in my ninth grade were boys. It made school lively and entertaining. I played on the baseball team, catching fastballs thrown by my six-foot pal, Gus Campbell. Each one knocked me backwards. I could catch, but couldn’t throw very well. It didn’t matter. Few batters ever managed to get on base against our “Bobby Feller.” I enjoyed being taught by lay teachers, especially Mr. Kiernan, who taught Latin, my favorite subject. I made the honor roll effortlessly.

After graduating from Rue, I spent the summer of 1941 doing nothing. I followed the war news, of course. Germany had attacked Russia and its armies were steamrolling toward Moscow. The draft that began the previous year now began to build up our armed forces. Men in military garb could be seen everywhere.  

The highlight of the summer occurred when my sister, Helen, married Lieutenant Joseph Schmitz on July 5th at Our Lady of Grace Church followed by a reception at Meyer’s Hotel. They had met while both worked for Bell Telephone, Long Line Division. About a year earlier, the army had called him up (ROTC, Syracuse electrical engineering graduate) to serve in the Signal Corps at Ft. Monmouth, NJ.

For this occasion, my family decked me out in long pants and a white linen jacket. It made me feel like a movie star, something along the lines of Mickey Rooney. I wore it later that summer while at an indoor roller skating rink. Girls swooned at the sight of me, but I didn’t give them a tumble. In truth, I slipped and landed on my backside the first time I glided over the waxed wooden surface of the rink. This activity could be deadlier than warfare.

Here I am, all dressed up and rarin' to go.

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