Mary Ann Fitzmorris / L’Observateur / August 5, 2000

Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda,……Please come pick me up from Camp Grenada.My children have never had to say these words. Mainly because when these kids leave for camp, they take Mudda with them, and even Fadda has sometimes been loony enough to go.

There was even one summer that Mudda and Fadda went to camp so much that Fadda used all his vacation time, and camp became the family vacation.

Mudda and Fadda can only explain this foolishness by saying that was a particularly hot summer; must have been heatstroke.

In reality, even that year, camp time totaled three weeks. Usually, each kid goes for a week of Scout camp, and the programs couldn’t be more different.

Boy Scout camp is everything camp should be. And more. It’s the more that kills you. Boy Scout camp ends at 3 in the afternoon, but you’re already dead by 1. It is spread out over an enormous tract of beautiful land with very little shade, and it is jam packed with swell things to do.

After lunch, though, the effort required to get yourself to the proper place to do these fun things saps whatever energy is left, and the campers are visibly dragging by quitting time.

Mudda, and most other group leaders, knew exactly what time it was whenever anyone asked. Post lunchtime activities became an endurance test. As soon as the last camper of the group left, Mudda would jump into the car, fire up the air conditioner to the Desert-Only setting and drive home as fast as possible. Every passenger in the car shared the same thoughts. They were: water, air-conditioning, cold shower. After satisfying these immediate needs the off-duty campers would sit around like zombies the rest of the afternoon.

Could this possibly have been worth it? Absolutely! This camp was staffed with people who really liked what they did and were creative enough to think of crafts, that one camp essential, that were actually usable.

The camps of my youth provided useful crafts. A bowl I made from popsicle sticks would still be in service at my parents’ home if the strength made possible by hot glue gun technology had been available then.

But even state-of-the-art adhesion couldn’t save my favorite craft from Boy Scout camp. It was a bird-feeder house made of very thin balsa wood. I was sad to give it up, but two years in the elements transformed it into a shredded balsa glue skeleton.

The Girl Scouts offer the ultimate usable craft on a yearly basis. They evidently subscribe to the same theory I have, that one can never have too many picture frames, so each year Girl Scout camp produces a picture frame done in the camp theme, offering an image of the camper for that year. Good idea.

Besides a few other neat crafts, Girl Scouts sing. They walk around and sing. The reason for this limited activity outside the craft cabin can best be explained by a conversation I had with a few young ladies at the water station, where I worked one day.

“Honey, you’re totally dry! How did you manage that?” I inquired of one.

She whined her reply. “Well, I don’t like to get wet. And I don’t like to get dirty.” She frowned, “Camp is dirty.”This interchange illustrates why the Boys Unit, containing siblings dragged to camp by the volunteering Muddas, has more fun than any of the girls. They have cookouts and swim in the river. They are constantly wet and chaffed (if their walking is any indication), but undaunted by these conditions.

These boys understand that creature comforts are not normally part of camp.

Even Fadda, comfort junkie to the core, looks forward to his annual trek to Scout resident camp with my son. The first year the drinking water was so brown and nasty that my husband felt it necessary to bring a car trunk full of water when they returned.

But the water and the military style canvas tents are minor irritations in a camp brimming with swell activities, like archery and B-B’s, and, best of all, firemaking.

More important, they brought home an armful of really useful crafts, including the requisite annual bird feeder.

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