Did you ever go to summer camp? I did. A lot. I spent a lot of time at a summer horse camp.Year after year.
When I think of summer as a kid, I either think of the hours and hours we (usually with Lela) spent playing outside, or I think of summer camp.
I went as a “camper” three different times. Then I went as a “Wrangler” for three years, which was essentially a junior staff-in-training position. Basically, we did the
shit grunt work and got rewarded by special activities that the campers didn't get. Then I went as a staff member. I was a counselor, a horsemanship instructor, and even a trail ride leader. I loved every second.
I was recently talking to my cousin, who went two years with me, and were laughing about the morning "routine" at camp.
At 6:45 am, a huge bell in the center of camp would ring several times, waking anyone within a 2 mile radius. We would wake in our sleeping bags, laying on our thin
sorta foul mattresses, on top of our wooden bunks in our wooden cabins with windows (no glass) and a door (of wooden planks). As a camper, it was very exciting. As a Wrangler, it would illicit a groan, as a day of work was about to begin. As a counselor, who had undoubtedly been up too late at a staff meeting, it made you want to stab the bell ringer. As a pre-teen or teenage girl, it brought on a mad rush to the showers for primping. As a Smart Girl, you were already up with your personal alarm clock to get in the communal bathroom before everyone else.
I can still smell that bathroom when I think about it. Eww.
At 7:00 am, the bell would ring again, signaling a 15 minute warning. Those that had gone back to sleep would then do the mad scramble to get up and dressed with bed head and unbrushed teeth. I may or may not have been one of those in my first years there. Before I became a Smart Girl.
At 7:15 am, the bell would ring again, demanding everyone to show up at the center courtyard around the flag pole for flag raising, and if the leaders were on the ball, really
lame fun calisthenics like jumping jacks and other blood-pumping excitement. With any luck, the bras found at the top of the flag pole would not have come from our cabin.
Everyone would check the daily schedule, waiting for them to open the doors to the big lodge signaling that breakfast was ready, and then they would push and shove their way inside to claim tables. Because we were starving. Grace would have to be sung before anyone could eat:
“Oh, the Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord, for giving me, the things I need, the sun and the rain and the apple tree, the Lord is good to me.” Yeah, yeah, sing it three times a day for 9 summers and you, too, will remember it.
And it didn't matter what they were serving for food. When you are at camp, outside all day, you eat anything and everything that is served! Then it was a mad rush to get the cabins cleaned up before that
damn bell started ringing again signaling we were supposed to be somewhere else.
There were special days, though. Those would be the days that someone had climbed up the night before and taped the dinger thingy in the bell to the side. And silence that thing into peaceful oblivion. At least until the bell ringer figured it out.
Ah, the good old days. So many camp tales.
"One time at band camp..." haha (Please tell me you got that movie reference) Maybe I'll tell you about the horse skeleton we found (I have pictures!) or the time we dumped my cousin in the horse trough fully clothed. Good times.
***Ally
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