Always a Campfire Girl

The summer I was 12 years old, my mother packed me off to a sleep-away camp in the Poconos. It was called Timber Tops, and the camp still exists, a fourth generation family run operation in Greeley, Pennsylvania. Described as an overnight camp for girls offering an overall-activity program with an emphasis on “FUN,” the fun is posted daily on FB now with lots of wonderful pictures of girls swimming, performing, canoeing, dancing, and having campfires by starlight.

My start at Timber Tops was rocky; about 3 days into to my month-long adventure, I spent a night in the infirmary for colic. Or maybe it was food poisoning. I did not like the food or the sweltering dining hall and I hated the mandatory morning swim in a lake of freezing water. Until Timber Tops, I’d never swum in anything besides a pool or the Atlantic Ocean. I hated the uniform, which was a white tee shirt and red shorts. Can you believe there was a uniform? The second week of camp my life took a turn for the better when I landed a role in the camp play, cast as Shroeder in “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” which thanks to the rigorous rehearsal schedule, got me out of tennis, which I hated.

The reason my mother gave for sending me to camp was she wanted me to have a more well rounded childhood. She also had just started dating a man named Maurice, but more on him later. A friend of hers, Ruth, was sending her girls, Leslie and Barbara, to the same camp; I was friendly with both Ruth’s daughters. Another girl we knew, Wendy, was also going.

What I remember most about Camp Timber Tops was that everything happened on a schedule. There was a rotation of waterfront activities including swimming and canoeing; there was tennis, arts and crafts, theater arts, and riflery. I actually was very good at riflery. I didn’t like walking en masse to the showers and I was very grateful a toilet and a sink were inside our rough-hewn bunk house. There were 12 girls in my bunk, including Leslie and Wendy. Barbara, being a year younger, was placed in another bunk dwelling. Wendy was certain this was going to be the summer when she got her period. Her trunk was packed with Kotex.

One of the girls in my bunk was named Reisman and her family was in the pretzel business. We had pretzels at every meal. Most of the girls at camp came from lovely upper middle class Jewish homes in the Philadelphia area. Today the girls come from all over the country. On a recent video I watched on the camp’s website, one girl was from Scarsdale. Back in the 60’s, the camp was dubbed “The Mountain Camp for Girls,” and even though we lived in bunks not tents, it was pretty close to providing a wilderness camping experience. Built from scratch on the banks of Lake Selma (the wife of the couple who were the camp’s founders), and carved into the side of a mountaintop of pine trees, Timber Tops embodied the spirit of adventure.

I spent the month of August at the camp. When I returned home, my mother had married Maurice in my absence. He and I met for the first time at the train station in Philadelphia on the platform when my mother came to meet the camp train. Maurice bought me a fall (a hair piece very popular in the ‘60’s) and we all went to Bookbinder’s  Restaurant in center city for dinner. He asked me that night if I had ever considered boarding school. To this day I regret my smart-ass answer.

The takeaway from my Timber Tops experience was that camp was very good for me overall. At camp I learned water tastes so much better than the sweet soft drink they served called “bug juice.’ I learned to shoot and clean a weapon and perfected my aim. I learned about flip flops. Prior to Timber Tops, it was strictly boots or barefoot for me. From early May through late September, if I didn’t have to, I wore shoes. I didn’t even know the word ‘sandal.’ But at camp every girl wore flip flops, except for our bunk counselor whose name Leslie (but not me) still remembers, a large, soft, grouchy girl in her early 20’s who snuffled in her sleep and cursed us. I am still a reluctant flip flop wearer after being chewed out at work in my early 20’s for my footwear. I can still hear Ira Kirschenbaum, one of the bosses, saying, “The workplace is not a beach,” and let’s face it, I’m always working and when I’m not, only an idiot would wear flip flops to a stable.

The most important thing I learned at camp was independence and a sense of ‘can do.’ And being in an all-female environment at that particular time of my life was inspiring. It’s thrilling to me that the legacy of Timber Tops lives on, although I see they no longer offer riflery. But now they have horseback riding. Even better.