CAMP PAINS
Needing a summer job and too young to be a counselor at the camp I loved where they knew I was only 17, I subtracted a year from my birth date to make me 18, falsified an application to a Girl Scout Camp and was hired. Most of the several hundred dollars I'd earn in eight weeks would go towards the car I needed for college. Unlike previous summers at my Jewish-Communist camp, I knew no one at Girl Scout camp and better yet, no one knew me. Rural Pennsylvania was clearly not the place to reveal my politics, certainly not back in 1957.
Four counselors shared a canvas tent. Secured on a wooden platform, it was one in several clusters inserted into the rustic woodlands near the Delaware border. The political consciousness may have been alien, but the smell of spicy pine and the simplicity of community camp life felt comforting. I breathed deeply but still could not completely relax until checking the ground for my three-leaved nemesis.
Consciously pleasant and cooperative, I didn't slack off and was popular with the nine-through-12-year-old girls. An ideal age, old enough to hold an intelligent conversation and young enough to idolize their slightly elders, they loved my songs and sought out my company. Yet everything about me and everything I did seemed to rub the staff wrong. My first thought was that the FBI had paid the Camp a visit—an interview certain to be blacked out in the dossier I sent away for, decades later. In any case, Brownies certainly hadn't prepared me for this place.
The young, mostly rural women on the camp staff had only heard of people like me and I found them difficult to read. No one said 'New York Jew' within my hearing and I underestimated the deep and abrasive culture clash seasoning the atmosphere. All I knew was that this New York Jew felt more misunderstood and miserable in the Pennsylvania woods than on the Kansas prairie.
The director provided no guidance and clearly disliked my informal, egalitarian style with the kids. She regularly called me on the carpet for one infraction or another. For example, on one hot day at the end of an extremely dry lunch of peanut butter sandwiches, my thirsty kids began panting and gasping out pleas for milk. Tongues hanging out, they draped themselves across the table or slumped on the bench. I, too, was thirsty and the request seemed perfectly reasonable. The whole camp had gotten their milk rations and a small pile of half-pint containers were left in the cooler. Grabbing a handful, I walked back to my table and distributed them to the thirstiest petitioners. An hour later I was summoned to the director's office and reprimanded.
It had never crossed my mind that sleeping in the nude might be a problem for anyone until late on an overcast, mid-summer afternoon when Merry, my hostile group leader, tapped me for a private chat. Once earlier she had taken me aside after I asked another counselor what she was being paid. 'There are three things we don't discuss,' she instructed. 'Religion, politics and money.' No need saying that sex was out too. It figured that this crowd would ban the most interesting topics of conversation.
We sat on the bench of a picnic table. 'Lexy,' began my group leader grimly, and I cringed inside to hear my nickname used in a scolding. Good feeling in camp was strictly enforced through instant intimacies such as compulsory nicknames.
'You're responsible for the safety of these girls and you must be ready for any emergency 24 hours a day,' said Merry. 'If you're naked, you're unprepared.' Merry completed her list of transgressions and I asked why she hadn't said anything earlier. 'I thought you weren't happy with me,' I said, 'but I didn't know why.' 'Then you should have come to me.' She slitted her eyes. The meadow was covered in mist. This land near Hancock was lovely, and home to many birds.
'But you're the lead counselor of the group,' I protested. 'Yes,' she answered, 'and if something's wrong, it's your responsibility to come to me.' I liked her sturdy looks and dry wit, her infrequent, dazzling smile. I wanted her to like me but knew that regardless of what I did, she never would.
It was going to be a long summer!