"What if we fall in ????"

I’m going to talk about the Shiloh of over 50 years ago. The camp was in Bernardsville/Mendham NJ on a site donated by a kind man with a heart for children. Hopefully more of the old Shiloh alumni will post memories as we reconnect and bridge the years to the Shiloh of today.

It’s 1956.  The Yankees are hot and the Dodgers are still at Ebbetts field.  Yanks beat the Dodgers in the World Series in 7 games.  Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Billy Martin, Whitey Ford, Elson Howard, Moose Skowron – that was a team.  I am 7 and seldom get out of the City.  That’s New York City for those of you from elsewhere – just “The City” for us that lived there. 

A classmate at PS 86 is the son of the Minister at the Eastside Church of Christ.  I’m Jewish.  We’re friends regardless.  Getting stuck in town for the summer was OK as it was all that I knew.  We would go to Central Park, wander along the East River, up on the roof at night or turn on a fire hydrant and play in the water – until a cop comes along and shuts it down after telling us off.   So on a spring day when Eddie Grindley is recruiting campers, he and Mr. Ransom the minister and a couple of college kids come by our apartment on E 83^rd and ask my mom if my sister and I can go away to a camp in NJ for a couple of weeks that summer.  No cost.  She eventually says “yes” – not an easy decision and one the Rabbi does not support.

So the fateful day comes and we go over to the Eastside building on a Saturday (I think) to get on the Grey Ghost to travel out to Camp Shiloh in NJ.  What an old bus – ex Navy, hence the color. Not a bad ride but my sister and I sit together and do not mix with the other kids too much.  We get to the campgrounds and pull up to the Big House. And it is a BIG house. Wow, what a sight.  Stone with a big porch and turrets and a neat staircase and someone whispers,  “it’s haunted” which adds to the mystery. 

All the kids are gathered together and assigned to cabins.  Well, my sister Elaine gets to go to a cabin in the Girl’s Camp. I go to a tent.  A big tent, to me anyway.  Ex military, OD green with side flaps that we would roll up or roll down.  Screens that would keep some of the bugs and mosquitoes out, but not all. Ever see a mosquito in the City? No, me either.  The mosquitoes out at camp were so big they would sometimes decide to pick us up and take us to the swamp. Ok, maybe not but they looked that big to me.

I think there are 7 or 8 bunk beds arrayed around the edge of the tent.  The bunk beds are also ex military with saggy springs and a very thin mattress. I even think the blankets were OD green. There is a wooden floor that keeps the bunks off the ground – but it is a tent.  Any when it rained we learned not to run your finger along the tent roof or touch it as the canvas suddenly sprung a leak.  Something to do with water tension, said the counselor. Of course, sometimes one of us would deliberately cause a water drip to start over the bed of a fellow camper who was a pest, a bully or just to get even for a slight. A wet bed is a terrible thing at night.

And then the big shocker comes our way. The Kybo. An outhouse.  What’s this? I mean, come on. We are civilized city folk here, and we have to use an outhouse? How rude is that.  The counselor, an “old guy” who is probably 19 and in college, has us all sit on the floor and tells us the rules.  One item is the language of going to the Kybo.  We are mostly city kids and have a vocabulary for those functions that he does not want us to use.  Standard 4 letter words for all functions. OK, we’ll play along.  We go down to the end of the Boy’s camp to visit the facility and get a lesson in how to use the Kybo.  We know how to use a toilet. What’s different here?  Well one thing several of us realize is that the seats are large holes cut in a board that was sized for adult bottoms and we were all pretty small with appropriately small posteriors.  Uh oh, one of the kids says: “what if we fall in.” Panic. We confer (without the “old guy”) after we get back to the tent and decide that we would only go in minimum of pairs (And you thought that was only a girl thing) and each promised that if one of us fell in, the other would be there to help him get out.  Day or night, rain or shine we never went to the outhouse alone.  We even found rope to hide close to the Kybo to be available in case of emergency.  Never used, but a comfort to know it was there.

More to come later…..

Ray Newton
Camper 1956 to 1962