Kali
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Camp is...
The place I grew up. It’s my Hideout from a stressful world. It is my #1 Vacation destination. Camp is where I learned to swim, ride a motorbike, where I have caught most of my fish. It is where I almost learned to waterski. Camp is where I am the happiest. It is where I can relax. Where I can always be me. It is where I have met the newest family members, where family can always be found. Camp is where we reunite after periods of living our separate lives. Camp is where I learned to love my extended family, in fact Camp made it so I did not know the difference between immediate and extended family because everyone was right here. Camp is where I learned to be myself.Camp is where many people learn to be themselves. Camp is where I hope Jen’s and my children learn to be themselves. And as the world changes around us, I hope they will experience things as I did, at Camp and through Camp. Camp is the best place on earth, and there’s nowhere I’d rather be. Camp is the physical manifestation of perfection, relaxation, and most of all love.
Shani circa 2004
I know it isn’t a big building, but it’s never been small. As a child, I remember not being able to see the desserts sitting atop the counter. I remember trying to sneak a peek while my family was at the beach. I remember the mornings, wrapped up in a big cozy cotton blanket, staring down at the calm water. Looking out the screen, watching the ducks enjoying time on the dock before anyone woke up to shoo them away. The only kind of cereal was the healthy kind, but here at my camp, that was O.K. I didn’t mind the lack of berry crunch, or sugary swirl, the oats were good enough for me, but only when I was there. Only when the wind smells like pine or when the roads were quiet.
I remember the morning sand in between my toes, sending shivers up my spine. The water is cold and still. I poke my toe in and watch the ripples hit the shore. I remember the walkway from the camp to the beach seemed twice as long on the way back up, even though it wasn’t even very long to begin with. I remember being scared of that place where I saw the snake even years after it had slithered away.
The blueberries in Freedom, New Hampshire, are sweeter than the blueberries in heaven. I remember having to bring my gram’s watch so I could be back before too late because too many times I ate blueberries until after dark.
As I grew up, I gained more and more privileges. Like going to the raft without a life jacket, or using the canoe with my cousins. I remember late nights on the water’s edge watching the stars with my family. I’d look up, and pick my favorite and just stare at that one until my eye lids became too heavy. Then I would turn and go back up to the place I loved so much.
The familiar creak of the screen door is a sound I only recently learned to love. The pictures on the wall, the trophies on the mantle, the ash in the woodstove, are all things that make this little cottage my home. The spiders here remain alive, and the moths are welcome. This is my camp, and it is their camp. The door to the bathroom is more than just a door, it is a record keeper from way back in the 40s.On the door is every person’s height, multiple times, from various years. There is Champ’s from 1959, or Joe’s from 86. I see my marks from over my lifetime, and I can’t even remember half of them being recorded. I do remember the one in pink ink though. I wasn’t supposed to use pink, no one before ever had so I might as well. I did, then I remember not being able to hide the fact that it was me.
I remember the morning sand in between my toes, sending shivers up my spine. The water is cold and still. I poke my toe in and watch the ripples hit the shore. I remember the walkway from the camp to the beach seemed twice as long on the way back up, even though it wasn’t even very long to begin with. I remember being scared of that place where I saw the snake even years after it had slithered away.
The blueberries in Freedom, New Hampshire, are sweeter than the blueberries in heaven. I remember having to bring my gram’s watch so I could be back before too late because too many times I ate blueberries until after dark.
As I grew up, I gained more and more privileges. Like going to the raft without a life jacket, or using the canoe with my cousins. I remember late nights on the water’s edge watching the stars with my family. I’d look up, and pick my favorite and just stare at that one until my eye lids became too heavy. Then I would turn and go back up to the place I loved so much.
The familiar creak of the screen door is a sound I only recently learned to love. The pictures on the wall, the trophies on the mantle, the ash in the woodstove, are all things that make this little cottage my home. The spiders here remain alive, and the moths are welcome. This is my camp, and it is their camp. The door to the bathroom is more than just a door, it is a record keeper from way back in the 40s.On the door is every person’s height, multiple times, from various years. There is Champ’s from 1959, or Joe’s from 86. I see my marks from over my lifetime, and I can’t even remember half of them being recorded. I do remember the one in pink ink though. I wasn’t supposed to use pink, no one before ever had so I might as well. I did, then I remember not being able to hide the fact that it was me.
Camp 2009 by Patrick
Camp 2009
Camp means swiming
and biking and visiting
with family and friends,
and without camp gram-
jam would be history.
Camp means a lot to
me. I love hearing
laughing and hearing
birds singing. that is what
camp means to me. by Pat
and biking and visiting
with family and friends,
and without camp gram-
jam would be history.
Camp means a lot to
me. I love hearing
laughing and hearing
birds singing. that is what
camp means to me. by Pat
The Camp at Freedom, by Cousin Bill Shaw
I suspect my first visit to the camp was in the summer of 1939. It was not the camp that is now there, but the one which burned down about 1950. At my Uncle Ray's suggestion and arrangements, I had been at Camp Lincoln, the Portsmouth YMCA camp in Kingston, NH, despite the fact that I lived in the Bayside section of New York City. Uncle Ray's wife was my father's sister, Bertha. He was always known to us as Uncle Ray although his full name was George Raymond Chick and outside the immediate family he seemed to be called George or Doc. He had been a Medic in the army in France in World War One. He took pity on his city boy nephew. 1 was a couple of months shy of my seventh birthday.
The camp at that time was one of three on the lake. The other two were owned by Ray's brother and a close friend called Uncle Marlin by the kids. The cabin was small with a door on the roadside into the kitchen with a bedroom to the right and the living room behind the kitchen and the wrap around porch on the lake side. There was no electricity but an ice box, a pump beside the sink and a kerosene lamp in the living room. The kids all slept on cots on the porch.
For the next five years I spent four weeks each summer at Camp Lincoln. Uncle Ray and Aunt Bertha would come over on Sunday afternoons to check on me and leave me some of Aunt Bertha's famous blueberry muffins (the blueberries picked from the woods around the camp). Uncle Ray had a water spaniel which he had trained to dive on command and a show for the whole camp would be put on. The spaniel raced down the hill to the dock and leaped off the end, spread eagled, for a big splash, a quick swim back and up the hill to her starting point, ready for the command to go again.
Following those weeks, I usually went to Freedom for Uncle Ray to teach me how to fish. I learned as much by watching as listening so it was fortunate that Uncle Ray was left handed. He tended to cast with a side arm motion which I copied. Since I was right handed this worked well. He and I could both cast in the same direction from opposite ends of the boat. That boat was a long row boat which I believe he had built himself. It was really built to be used with a five horse power outboard motor but oars were kept in it for emergencies. One summer when I was there with my family, but without the Chicks, I had the boat to my self but no motor. I discovered just how big the lake was. I didn't get much beyond Levitt Bay. I caught only one fish in five days and that was after docking the boat following two hours of "not a bite". I saw a turtle poke his head up about thirty feet from the dock and tried to land a spoon near him. He disappeared but as I retrieved the line a pickerel hit the spoon and I had my only catch of the week.
Fishing with Uncle Ray was one the joys of my life. We would go out about seven in the morning for two hours and again about six in the evening. We might do some trolling on the way thru Broad Bay up to Spindle Point but we both preferred to drift and cast at Spindle Point, or near the island in Levitt Bay or at the submerged boulder where Berry Bay starts to the river. Uncle Ray caught the biggest pickerel I ever saw at that spot. It dove and struggled for a good five minutes before we got it into the boat. Boating the fish was always a problem because Uncle Ray did not believe nets were fair. Over the years I managed to catch some pickerel but I loved being there whether we caught anything or not. One year we had no luck for three straight days. Uncle Ray told me we needed an early bedtime because we were going to Huckins Pond in the morning as he had never failed to catch something up there. We took the boat to a creek to the right of the YMCA Camp on Broad Bay and motored very slowly, with me lying on the forward deck calling out the rocks. That creek eventually went under the road and into the Danforth Ponds to another even narrower creek that led up to Huckins. We were all alone on Huckins and saw only one sign of civilization; an abandoned shack. Uncle Ray soon had a good sized pickerel and we returned in triumph although somewhat chagrined. We sheared a pin in the engine halfway across Broad Bay and had to row the rest of the way.
We cleaned and ate everything we caught. He taught me how to clean a fish but Aunt Bertha cooked them. Pickerel are sweet but bony. The fun was catching them. The only bass I ever caught was off the island in Levitt Bay and it was a particular thrill as it jumped several times, which a pickerel won't do. Uncle Ray explained that pickerel eat young bass, so plentiful pickerel means a lack of bass.
At that time, there were few boats on the water, particularly during the week. The shore opposite the camp was owned by the power company and there were no cabins on it. Uncle Ray believed in five HIP engines. Chick Motors sold Johnson outboards and he frequently brought up a new one for a weekend and "broke it in". One Sunday, Uncle Marlin came up but did not have his boat in the water yet. He borrowed Uncle Ray's but, in mounting the engine, he failed to fully tighten the clamps, and when the engine caught in about ten feet of water it popped out and sank. They sent for me. They gave me a line with a loop and asked me to dive down and connect it to the engine which was in plain sight from the surface. On the third try I got it attached and they pulled it up to the boat. Ray and Marlin spent the rest of the day tearing down the engine and putting it back together. In doing that they lost a cotter pin and Ray fabricated one from a hair pin supplied by Aunt Bertha. They tested the engine and it ran fine. Over the years I have wondered if whoever bought that engine had occasion to tear it down and wonder why Johnson was using hairpins in their outboards.
Uncle Ray did not believe in fishing when the sun was high. The kids spent most of the day time in the water. The dock extended about twenty feet into the lake and there was enough depth at the end for a shallow dive. The boat was tied to the dock. There were also day trips. I particularly remember the darkness of Tilton's General Store in Freedom with the sign " Open Every Day (except when i go fishing)". Our visits showed that Mr. Tilton did a lot of fishing. Midge and I also hiked up Green Mountain and viewed the White Mountains from the top of the Fire Watch Tower. Running back down was easier and a lot more fun. On a trip to Cannon Mountain, Uncle Ray stopped in Lincoln on the way home to ask if there was a short cut to Ossipee. He was told that the Sandwich Notch road starting about three miles east of Campton would cut several miles off the trip and that it was passable. We tried it. It was a ten mile dirt road but the first two miles were up and the next eight down. It was tough on car and driver but exciting to the ten year old in the back seat. Uncle Ray said he probably misunderstood the man and heard "passable" rather than "possible". Veronica and I drove it again about fifteen years later and found it rugged but beautiful. One day in August, Uncle Ray and I scoured the countryside trying to find a farmer who still had some ice buried in sawdust in his barn. We were lucky on the fourth stop as the ice box at the end of the porch was almost empty.
Uncle Ray also taught me to shoot with his 22 rifle. In the middle of one lesson he became irritated by a very noisy squirrel and took off thru the woods after it with the 22. He fired two shots but the squirrel got away. He also showed me his Army Colt 45 automatic pistol which he had kept from his service in France. The next time I saw one was in Korea ten years later and it was on my waist while I was serving as Officer of the Day once a month.
An owner several sites east of the camp had a boat with a twenty-five horse outboard which he would noisily run at full speed between Levitt and Broad Bays on weekends. This annoyed Uncle Ray and everyone else. One summer in the mid forties a rumor went around that this owner, known as Jackie Junior (or was that his boat?), wanted to put in an airstrip behind the row of cabins on the lake. Uncle Ray went into town ( Center Ossipee?) to see who owned the land and, with his brother, promptly bought the land behind the lake front cabins. I can remember driving into Freedom with him and Aunt Bertha when he would stop in the middle of the woods and peer out the side. Bertha would ask what he was looking at and he would very slowly say "See that tree? That’s my tree. Bertha would say "Oh Ray, don't be silly!" It worked out very well in the long run.
Uncle Ray spent a good deal of time teasing Aunt Bertha, which she loved. Much of the kidding was about Bertha's sister, Fannybelle, who was a short, stocky, extremely warm hearted, very talkative dynamo. I imagine he also kidded her about her brother Ralph, my father, who was as useless with mechanical objects as Ray was talented, but he did not do that when I was there. His daughter, Priscilla (Robin), did not always enjoy his kidding. While she was rarely there when I was, I have never forgotten her seething when driving with her father as a passenger and me in the back seat and rather than suggesting she slow down, he said "You know those are telephone poles not a picket fence".
Uncle Ray was a second father to me and could provide things my father could not. After my father died in 1949, Uncle Ray stepped in and gave my sister away at her wedding and was my sponsor when I graduated from Bowdoin College, both in 1953.
I shall never forget the view of Mount Chocorua from the dock at either sunrise or
sunset. My last recollection of the old camp is the sound of gunfire and firecrackers on VJ Day ending the second World War in August of 1945.
Cousin Bill Shaw July 14, 2009
The camp at that time was one of three on the lake. The other two were owned by Ray's brother and a close friend called Uncle Marlin by the kids. The cabin was small with a door on the roadside into the kitchen with a bedroom to the right and the living room behind the kitchen and the wrap around porch on the lake side. There was no electricity but an ice box, a pump beside the sink and a kerosene lamp in the living room. The kids all slept on cots on the porch.
For the next five years I spent four weeks each summer at Camp Lincoln. Uncle Ray and Aunt Bertha would come over on Sunday afternoons to check on me and leave me some of Aunt Bertha's famous blueberry muffins (the blueberries picked from the woods around the camp). Uncle Ray had a water spaniel which he had trained to dive on command and a show for the whole camp would be put on. The spaniel raced down the hill to the dock and leaped off the end, spread eagled, for a big splash, a quick swim back and up the hill to her starting point, ready for the command to go again.
Following those weeks, I usually went to Freedom for Uncle Ray to teach me how to fish. I learned as much by watching as listening so it was fortunate that Uncle Ray was left handed. He tended to cast with a side arm motion which I copied. Since I was right handed this worked well. He and I could both cast in the same direction from opposite ends of the boat. That boat was a long row boat which I believe he had built himself. It was really built to be used with a five horse power outboard motor but oars were kept in it for emergencies. One summer when I was there with my family, but without the Chicks, I had the boat to my self but no motor. I discovered just how big the lake was. I didn't get much beyond Levitt Bay. I caught only one fish in five days and that was after docking the boat following two hours of "not a bite". I saw a turtle poke his head up about thirty feet from the dock and tried to land a spoon near him. He disappeared but as I retrieved the line a pickerel hit the spoon and I had my only catch of the week.
Fishing with Uncle Ray was one the joys of my life. We would go out about seven in the morning for two hours and again about six in the evening. We might do some trolling on the way thru Broad Bay up to Spindle Point but we both preferred to drift and cast at Spindle Point, or near the island in Levitt Bay or at the submerged boulder where Berry Bay starts to the river. Uncle Ray caught the biggest pickerel I ever saw at that spot. It dove and struggled for a good five minutes before we got it into the boat. Boating the fish was always a problem because Uncle Ray did not believe nets were fair. Over the years I managed to catch some pickerel but I loved being there whether we caught anything or not. One year we had no luck for three straight days. Uncle Ray told me we needed an early bedtime because we were going to Huckins Pond in the morning as he had never failed to catch something up there. We took the boat to a creek to the right of the YMCA Camp on Broad Bay and motored very slowly, with me lying on the forward deck calling out the rocks. That creek eventually went under the road and into the Danforth Ponds to another even narrower creek that led up to Huckins. We were all alone on Huckins and saw only one sign of civilization; an abandoned shack. Uncle Ray soon had a good sized pickerel and we returned in triumph although somewhat chagrined. We sheared a pin in the engine halfway across Broad Bay and had to row the rest of the way.
We cleaned and ate everything we caught. He taught me how to clean a fish but Aunt Bertha cooked them. Pickerel are sweet but bony. The fun was catching them. The only bass I ever caught was off the island in Levitt Bay and it was a particular thrill as it jumped several times, which a pickerel won't do. Uncle Ray explained that pickerel eat young bass, so plentiful pickerel means a lack of bass.
At that time, there were few boats on the water, particularly during the week. The shore opposite the camp was owned by the power company and there were no cabins on it. Uncle Ray believed in five HIP engines. Chick Motors sold Johnson outboards and he frequently brought up a new one for a weekend and "broke it in". One Sunday, Uncle Marlin came up but did not have his boat in the water yet. He borrowed Uncle Ray's but, in mounting the engine, he failed to fully tighten the clamps, and when the engine caught in about ten feet of water it popped out and sank. They sent for me. They gave me a line with a loop and asked me to dive down and connect it to the engine which was in plain sight from the surface. On the third try I got it attached and they pulled it up to the boat. Ray and Marlin spent the rest of the day tearing down the engine and putting it back together. In doing that they lost a cotter pin and Ray fabricated one from a hair pin supplied by Aunt Bertha. They tested the engine and it ran fine. Over the years I have wondered if whoever bought that engine had occasion to tear it down and wonder why Johnson was using hairpins in their outboards.
Uncle Ray did not believe in fishing when the sun was high. The kids spent most of the day time in the water. The dock extended about twenty feet into the lake and there was enough depth at the end for a shallow dive. The boat was tied to the dock. There were also day trips. I particularly remember the darkness of Tilton's General Store in Freedom with the sign " Open Every Day (except when i go fishing)". Our visits showed that Mr. Tilton did a lot of fishing. Midge and I also hiked up Green Mountain and viewed the White Mountains from the top of the Fire Watch Tower. Running back down was easier and a lot more fun. On a trip to Cannon Mountain, Uncle Ray stopped in Lincoln on the way home to ask if there was a short cut to Ossipee. He was told that the Sandwich Notch road starting about three miles east of Campton would cut several miles off the trip and that it was passable. We tried it. It was a ten mile dirt road but the first two miles were up and the next eight down. It was tough on car and driver but exciting to the ten year old in the back seat. Uncle Ray said he probably misunderstood the man and heard "passable" rather than "possible". Veronica and I drove it again about fifteen years later and found it rugged but beautiful. One day in August, Uncle Ray and I scoured the countryside trying to find a farmer who still had some ice buried in sawdust in his barn. We were lucky on the fourth stop as the ice box at the end of the porch was almost empty.
Uncle Ray also taught me to shoot with his 22 rifle. In the middle of one lesson he became irritated by a very noisy squirrel and took off thru the woods after it with the 22. He fired two shots but the squirrel got away. He also showed me his Army Colt 45 automatic pistol which he had kept from his service in France. The next time I saw one was in Korea ten years later and it was on my waist while I was serving as Officer of the Day once a month.
An owner several sites east of the camp had a boat with a twenty-five horse outboard which he would noisily run at full speed between Levitt and Broad Bays on weekends. This annoyed Uncle Ray and everyone else. One summer in the mid forties a rumor went around that this owner, known as Jackie Junior (or was that his boat?), wanted to put in an airstrip behind the row of cabins on the lake. Uncle Ray went into town ( Center Ossipee?) to see who owned the land and, with his brother, promptly bought the land behind the lake front cabins. I can remember driving into Freedom with him and Aunt Bertha when he would stop in the middle of the woods and peer out the side. Bertha would ask what he was looking at and he would very slowly say "See that tree? That’s my tree. Bertha would say "Oh Ray, don't be silly!" It worked out very well in the long run.
Uncle Ray spent a good deal of time teasing Aunt Bertha, which she loved. Much of the kidding was about Bertha's sister, Fannybelle, who was a short, stocky, extremely warm hearted, very talkative dynamo. I imagine he also kidded her about her brother Ralph, my father, who was as useless with mechanical objects as Ray was talented, but he did not do that when I was there. His daughter, Priscilla (Robin), did not always enjoy his kidding. While she was rarely there when I was, I have never forgotten her seething when driving with her father as a passenger and me in the back seat and rather than suggesting she slow down, he said "You know those are telephone poles not a picket fence".
Uncle Ray was a second father to me and could provide things my father could not. After my father died in 1949, Uncle Ray stepped in and gave my sister away at her wedding and was my sponsor when I graduated from Bowdoin College, both in 1953.
I shall never forget the view of Mount Chocorua from the dock at either sunrise or
sunset. My last recollection of the old camp is the sound of gunfire and firecrackers on VJ Day ending the second World War in August of 1945.
Cousin Bill Shaw July 14, 2009
For Gram
I don’t fit in any place, never have and I don’t intend to start trying now. Camp isn’t a great exception to this in the big picture, but it is something dear to me in a way nothing else can be ever. Camp is where my family is no matter where we live. Camp was the safest place and closest thing to a base and stability I knew as a child. Invaluable. To this day it is the place I fear police harassment the least, and watch what I say and do the least. Besides being deep in the woods when no one knows I’m there, Camp is where I feel closest to free.
I am not a native Vermonter, and I don’t want to claim Mass. anymore than it wants me. Camp is the biggest and most consistent reminder to me that I come from people, not straight out of the mud. We cook and eat food together where relatives of mine who were dust before I was born did the same, and to me that is more beautiful than anything any one of us could create materially in a life time. No matter what it looks like when the time comes, Camp is where I’ll bring my grand kids to walk in my gramma’s footsteps and point out where the one horse and log built road used to wake me up with branches scratching ma’s car.
– Netdahe
I am not a native Vermonter, and I don’t want to claim Mass. anymore than it wants me. Camp is the biggest and most consistent reminder to me that I come from people, not straight out of the mud. We cook and eat food together where relatives of mine who were dust before I was born did the same, and to me that is more beautiful than anything any one of us could create materially in a life time. No matter what it looks like when the time comes, Camp is where I’ll bring my grand kids to walk in my gramma’s footsteps and point out where the one horse and log built road used to wake me up with branches scratching ma’s car.
– Netdahe
Monday, August 3, 2009
Another Great Old Home Day
I have about a million photos and some video, but here is one of the traditional group shots from Old Home Day 2009. We were 47 people, 4 less than last year. The weekend was filled with sun, laughter, smiles and great food. Who could ask for anything more? Love you all.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
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