Saturday, May 19, 2007

Camp Norway

Dad never liked life in Morris Plains. He felt that if we spent too much time there, we'd become the boors that he so much saw in his own family and feared becoming. He was right in part. My summers were spent hanging out with a friend of mine named Charlie, the son of the baseball coach that took me home from my 6Th grade Little League Banquet. Charlie was a bit on the nefarious side. During the summer we would play home run derby at the ballpark and smoke tea joints in my backyard. Tea joints were a horribly dangerous and disgusting practice of rolling up a tea bag in paper, lighting it on fire, and then trying to smoke it. You might as well have run into a burning building without a gas mask.

Charlie also had serious family problems. Little did I know it at the time, but his father abused his wife and kids. He was also a raging alcoholic. Normally nobody was allowed in their house, not even Charlie's friends. The times that I did make it in were extremely uncomfortable. You could feel the father about to explode, and a few times he swatted Charlie who ran off like a baby - something I did not expect from a 12 year old. I am sure he knew more was to some once I left. Charlie's father did not work - he had injured himself on a construction job years ago. So he was always around.


So when Dad suggested that I go to sleep away summer camp, I refused. My life was perfect. Dad on the other hand saw this as a way to kill the suburban rube in me, and my mother wanted me away from Charlie. Both were right.

One weekend in New York we went through brochures for summer camps. I gravitated to a sports camp in New York. My father, though, tried to convince me otherwise. A sports camp he feared would just be an extension of my current life. He wanted me to get out of my comfort zone and, I think, get into a little trouble. Mysteriously compromising, I saw the brochure for Camp Norway, a 4 week summer camp in Vermont. I don't recall exactly why I chose it, but it more than likely had to do with the pictures of the campers most notably the girls.

Having never been anywhere on my own other than to my grandmother's, I grew increasingly nervous as my departure date came near. When I got on the train in Grand Central Station for the trip up to Essex Junction, I might as well have been going off to war. With me was a black trunk with all my belongings, and I wore a pair of wrangler jeans, a grey Morris Plains Borough School gym shirt, and a blue windbreaker. All class. We arrived at Essex Junction around 5am. Everyone piled out of the train and waited with all our luggage for Jack Childs, the camp director. He was a wrestling coach from Drexel University and played the part. A nice man deep down, he came across as a drill sergeant to the campers. You never wanted to be called down to the farm house to meet with Jack.

Camp Norway was located on Lake Fairlee in Vermont. The campers slept in open-window cabins that slept about eight. The cabins were nestled in the woods and sat alongside a path that we took to go to breakfast each morning. There was a main dining hall where all the campers ate each day and where every campers name since Camp Norway's inception appeared on the ceiling.

The camp had existed since the 1920s and catered to white, upper class families primarily from New York and Maryland. The owner had come from old East Coast wealth, from the oil industry as I recall. His family was a household name in Baltimore amongst the well-to-do, so the camp had as much as 50% of its population from those same families in Baltimore. The majority of the rest were from New York and New Jersey with a sprinkling from other places.

It is ironic that it seems like the first person you speak with in a new location, you never really get to know. The person I met that first day of camp was a boy from Miami named Andy Gotleib. Actually I think he lived in both Miami and New York depending on which parent he was staying with. We talked for a few hours outside our cabin, but when it was around dinner time I had to come into the cabin to meet my camp mates. A sense of dread swept over me.

To my surprise, two boys were from New Jersey and lived in towns I recognized. One boy named Bob was about 5'1" and had Billy Idol spiked hair. He came from Montclair, had a very distinct accent, and knew how to break dance. He was my type, or at least he epitomized what I wanted to be. The other boy named Greg was from Chatham, New Jersey and was much more on the preppy side. Years later he would be caught in a horrible situation as his father murdered his mother and was convicted a few years later.

Within days I was glad, magnanimous really, to be out of New Jersey. I quickly learned the values of independence, and I also learned that Jersey girls were not the most interesting lot in the world. I met a crazy girl named Missy from outside of Boston. She was also from an extremely well-to-do family, but she liked to give the impression that she was a rebel and punk. She even colored her hair red to show it. Not such a crazy red really, but it made me feel alive.

The camp hosted a dance every Saturday night, and this is where I began to date Missy. It was also the last place I would ever enjoy dancing. Bedtime was at 9pm, and you had to be in your cabin if you wanted to avoid getting caught by night patrol and having a personal visit with Jack Childs. So after the dances I would sneak up to Missy's cabin where we would talk for 15 minutes before I would hustle back to my cabin before 9pm.

I enjoyed camp so much that year that I asked my parents if I could stay for another 3 weeks session. As a parent now, I realize how much of a success they must have felt. You take a risk, not only financially but emotionally, in sending your children away like this. It could not have worked out better, though. By the time I returned home, I had grown 5 years. I felt independent, but more than anything I knew there was life outside my little village in Morris Plains. Some people never learn that lesson let alone in their 7Th grade summer.

I am not sure how much I told Dad about summer camp. He came up to see me each summer - I ended up returning two more times. I know he loved the scenery and the clientele. This was just where he wanted to see his son. When he came he would take me out to Hanover, New Hampshire for lunch which after "roughing" it for a few weeks was a welcome treat. Also strangely enough I did not feel as embarrassed when he brought Bert.

Life may have been different had Dad not pushed camp. I would have continued to hang out with Charlie and maybe have gotten into more serious trouble. I would not have discovered that I could succeed outside my protected walls of Morris Plains. He did well.