My first year I was among the littlest tykes in Cabin 21 in the Midget Unit. Larry Bramhall, the nature counselor, was the unit head. I still recall the creepy feeling of a large snake Larry wrapped around my neck. (And to this day, I know the names of very few plants, at Camp Day or anywhere else. Could it have been the snake? Nah.) My counselor in either 1946 or 1947 was Dick Elton, who liked olives. I remember this because Chef Brown would chalk up "Olives for Elton" on the menu board about once a week. Camp sure seemed big, and so did all the large Juniors and enormous Seniors, even the kids in Cabin 24 and 25.

Sleeping in cabins was novel for someone who had never been to camp before - come rain, the shutters would go down and we would lie on our bunks during rest hour reading comic books like Green Lantern or Wonder Woman in the humid air while the drops beat down on the roof. Hopefully, one didn't have to go outside - to the 8-hole outhouse - in the pouring rain. The only specific comic I remember from those days was one in which women ruled the world and boys were thought silly if they wanted to become doctors, lawyers, etc. Must have struck a responsive chord somewhere!

We wore uniforms in those days for every day camp life - gray and green shorts and white T-shirts with the green YMCA triangle. And of course white ducks on Sundays for chapel in the mosquito-laden woods. My mother had to sew my name tag each spring into each and every piece of clothing, certainly a laborious task. Clothes were sent weekly to the laundry in E. Brookfield or Spencer and often came back with a green tinge, and some years, pink.

I remember camp as being very athletic, competitive, and, one could even say, Spartan. For example, there were no showers, only cold Lake Quacumquasit to bathe in - once a week under Coach Fisher's strict eye and loud commands. Of course we swam every day which at least got the dust off. The large round cold-water-only stone sink which is still in the Junior unit may have had a duplicate in the Midget Unit and we brushed our teeth and washed up there in the morning after reveille sounded. (Amazing how much meaning can be gotten from 3 notes on a bugle - especially when echoing over the lake and grounds of a wonderful camp.) Camp was also rigorous in that we had intense athletic competition - for the plaque of course - each and every day during the hot summer. We really put out the calories. I can remember often lining up exhausted for a quick drink of iron-tasting water from the fountain in the junior field area after a game of flag football or basketball on the dirt court. We got good and tanned out there too in the July and August sun. When the activity period bugle would blow ending a period, a big cheer would go up - from the winning team, at any rate.

Camp Life was also spartan in that food was not in all that great an abundance. Or to put it another way, Chef Fred Brown claimed he fed each camper on 22 cents a day (as I learned when a counselor.) He was a grandfatherly looking man with a big smile who often stood in the doorway wearing his tall white hat and accepting a cheer for some particularly good meal. On 22 cents a day, I'm not sure what that might have been - perhaps good meatloaf with brown gravy - but in any case we wolfed it all down and it tasted great. Breakfast might be orange juice, milk, a box of cereal - with disputes over Rice Krispies vs. Wheaties vs. Cheerios (some things never change). We would collect the tiny cereal boxes, fold them on the crease, and build short and long doggies from them. On a few days, we would have a treat such as pancakes or a precious sugar-coated doughnut. There were sometimes seconds at meals and extra food was invariably raffled off by each counselor. To get the food, the waiter had to wait for Coach Fisher or Doc Simmons to put up his index finger, then quick walk - but not too quick or you might be sent back - to the serving window. The waiter would then hustle the tray back to our round green table and we would dig in. When I graduated to Cabins 10 and 16 in the Junior Unit, we had to wait for Coach Fisher's pinkie to go up in addition to his index finger. As a Senior in tents 7, 4 and 1, it was index, pinkie and thumb. All this interspersed with Doc Simmons coming out from the staff table once per meal, blowing his whistle and admonishing us to "Keep it down to a dull roar".

Many years later, when I paid my first visit back to Camp Day with camp in session (August, 2004), I was very relieved to see that there was an ample salad bar and Dick McKnight had made a huge and delicious fish chowder. No one seemed in a hurry to get to the food and everyone seemed well fed. This contrasted sharply with my camp days in the late 1940s when packages of brownies or oranges from home were most welcome, even essential. For energy we could also buy soft drinks and candy bars at the camp store, then located at the front of the dining hall. We used coupon books instead of cash and tore out nickel or dime coupons to pay for an Orange Crush or Baby Ruth bar.

Mustachioed Vinnie Morotto was music director and sailing instructor and he would often lead us in the dining hall, playing his clarinet with enthusiasm, in songs like "Home on the Range," "I've Got Sixpence", "McNamara's Band", and "99 Bottles of Beer". He also led evenings of skits and songs performed on a wooden platform in the dining hall. The only girl in camp most summers was Vinnie's daughter, Brenda. The main music I remember hearing on the radio at camp was a popular Tommy Dorsey big band tune, practically the camp theme song, other big band sounds, and songs like "Mairzy Doats", "Don't Fence Me In" and "April in Portugal". In the early 50's the beat changed with "Rock Around the Clock" and then the King.

Of course for new campers and even juniors, it was the job of older campers to scare us, and of counselors, to trick us, on occasion. I can remember coming out of the dining hall at night after a movie, perhaps wearing a poncho for the rain, and running down the dirt path to the Midget Unit with flashlights on. We might have seen Tarzan or King Kong or a western, all in glorious black and white. Suddenly a junior or senior would scream and pounce out on us from the bushes, scaring our little hides off. Ghost stories in a darkened cabin were also effective. Often a counselor would read us to sleep or tell a tall tale, or we would read comics under the covers with flashlights after lights out.

In addition to tasks like sending us to get a skyhook or similar implement, one day the counselors decided to time us in racing across the Midget unit. The distance was perhaps 40 feet. One boy would run and the counselor would call out the time on his watch. There were about 12 of us. Slowly the times got better and better. 6 seconds, 5.5 seconds, 4 seconds. It was a bit puzzling because kids I knew were slower were posting better times than faster kids. Then it got down to 2 seconds, 1 seconds, and finally 0 seconds! Some doubt came, but not much. Innocent, we ran as fast as our little feet would carry us, and the counselors sure enjoyed it. In such ways, one learns the ways of the world.

Most days consisted essentially of team competition - basketball, volleyball, softball, flag football. Then there would be instructional swim and later free swim or crafts or boating. We found time to play horseshoes quite a bit too, with giant metal horseshoes. Swimming in Lake Quacumquasit as a very thin 8 or 10 year old in mid June or late August was no fun! But in July and most of August the water was fine. To pass the test to be able to swim in deep water, they rowed you out to the "middle of the lake" and you swam back in, accompanied by the rowboat. Later this was deemed a tad risky, so a lap requirement was begun between arms of the H dock, which amazingly today (2004) looks just as it did in 1946. The diving board is in a different position, but the dock looks identical, even to the dips. Under the direction of Smitty (Reginald Smith) you went from Minnow, to Fish, Flying Fish, Shark and Junior Life Saver. You might make only one classification each summer - and better not twist on the back dive if you wanted to make Shark.

Other competition for the plaque consisted of track meets, swim meets and boating meets. These were vigorously contested and often exhausting. Even as a Junior it was very hard jumping into the water and climbing back in several times during a canoe race. Another difficult event was gunneling where you stood on the gunnels at one end of the canoe, and rocked it up and down to move forward. All this was child's play compared to, say, an overnight canoe trip to Quabog or Lake Lashaway. Paddling up to the bridge, through the weedy passage to Quabog, then across Quabog to Lashaway with mosquitos everywhere, hungry, in 90 degree weather, and two ten-year-olds having to do all the paddling - it sure toughened us up.

In 1946 and 1947 there were 3 three-week periods, and in 1947 plaque competition began, with three plaques being awarded. From 1948 on there were 2 two-week periods, and two plaques. Most of us were really into the plaque competition. In the Midget division, teams were appointed, but in Junior and Senior, captains chose the team. The entire unit lined up and the captain with the first pick then had to wait for the choices to go all the way down the line and back up, so he might have had the first pick and the 14^th, while the final captain choosing would have the 7^th and 8^th. This evened things out and plaque races were almost always very close.

I remember one year as a captain "agonizing" over whether or not to choose a person whose name I saw on the alumni pages just now - Forbes Keith. He was the best athlete in camp that year but was sick at the time and it wasn't clear how soon he would be able to join the team. I ended up choosing him. We started out 3 wins and 2 losses without him, and when he joined us we did have a very fine team with Walter McDonald, Dick Cleveland, David Scheffler, Paul Josephs, Paul Doering and Thomas King (names courtesy of webmeister Phil Levine!) and won the first half plaque in 1951 as the Red Sox.

When I visited camp in 2004, I got to talking with Dick McKnight (who with Sonya has done such a marvelous job in maintaining the camp look, feel and tradition!!) We of course talked about plaques right away and soon realized we had been on the same plaque the first year they were given - the Apaches, 1947, along with Jerome Bonazoli, Gary Hoyt, Robert McAndrew, Ted Wasserman, and David Yaffe. I had also managed to get on the very first plaque, the Cherokees. Dick asked me how many plaques I was on and it turns out it was 7, 3 from 1947. I see Ted Wasserman was also on those 3 plaques. In the Juniors we were college football teams, of course, and I always chose Notre Dame. I was part of two Notre Dame plaques and two more in the Senior unit as the Red Sox. I don't know how we got to be the Red Sox because everyone idolized Ted Williams and the team, but somehow we did. The plaques meant a lot to many of us, standing for so much team effort and achievement every day for a month, and effort that had been successful among your peers. On award night, it was exciting but intimidating to stand up there before everyone under the dining hall lights while Doc Simmons or Coach Fisher read out the medals and honors one had gained - white ribbon for third place, red for second, blue for first in track, swimming and boating. Since every camper had to do this, the banquet and ceremony went on for quite a while!

The highlight of the camp season, for me, was the Treasure Hunt. During the last two days of camp in late August, all regular camp activity was suspended. Counselors and staff worked taking down the dock, putting boats in the boat house, and generally getting things ready for closing. All the campers, by unit, took part in the Treasure Hunt. All day long, in teams of two, we ran down clues from waterfront to Senior Field to dining hall to Infirmary to tennis court, to outside the camp grounds, even. It was exciting and tense to strain your brain to figure out a clue and then run as fast as you could to get to the clue before another team. You wrote the symbol for each clue onto a pad and then checked off your symbols at the end of the day with the counselor in charge. All day too you were comparing notes with other teams, trying to get an edge, seeing how far they had gotten, etc. The prizes were a baseball or bat to the winning team, and lesser prizes after that. But it was the exhilaration of that all-encompassing two-day quest that made it so great.

One final note - on the record board, which is happily still there after all these years. The only record from my era is for the baseball throw, and it is a retired record. Back then records were by unit not by age, if memory serves. The record I have in mind was a baseball throw by Alan Akeson in 1948. I was there that afternoon when he threw the ball a ton from home plate on Senior Field. Others had had their turn, including me, but none of us came anywhere near 200 feet. When Alan unleashed the ball, a gasp went up, because it seemed uncanny. Where did that come from? Alan was strong, but not that strong. The ball landed 224 feet away, disrupting some other track event out there in centerfield. I was 10 in 1948 and Alan was a year older, so I figure he was 11. Alan's record has been retired but I see it still exceeds the age record for age 11. Retired or not, here's to Alan Akeson and his magical baseball throw!

And here's to Camp Frank A. Day - long may the camp flourish on the shores of Quacumquasit!!
Jon Knowles