Day 104 of Nat'l Emergency: Father's Day Edition

During this time of coronavirus pandemic, Father’s Day is not being celebrated in our household the time honored way with visits with children and grandchildren (for that matter, Mother’s Day fell short as well). Neither is it possible to adhere to our custom of dining out at the preferred restaurant of the honored parent. 

The other day Gilda asked what I would like to do to celebrate. I’d like to be able to play poker with my buddies again, said I. That, too, is not happening anytime soon. 

The silver lining in that is that I have more silver lining my pockets than if the game took place every month. It’s a small consolation.

As for dinner, Gilda is baking fresh hamburger buns to caress her juicy hamburgers. She’s also making fresh potato salad. 

I hope everyone else’s Father’s Day dinner will be as lovingly prepared and delicious as mine.

Down the Rabbit Hole: Stepping outside one morning last week to pick up The New York Times from our driveway, I saw a bit of whimsy I had never witnessed in 36 years in our current home even though our yard is infested with Peters, Flopsies, Mopsies and Cottontails. Four young rabbits were playing a game of tag on our front lawn, scampering this way and that after the leader, not caring at all that I was taking in their playfulness.

The rabbits were clearly family and having fun. Their game of chase was not to be confused with squirrels or chipmunks running after each other. Those pursuits are clashes of territoriality, one animal brusquely shooing off an invader from his or her sphere of influence. 

Farmer McGregor—alias Gilda—spares no love for these creatures. She accuses them of eating her plants just before their flowers are to bloom. She has no proof, of course, though the rabbits do spend lots of time munching grass from our lawn. Guilt by association.

If it were up to me I would snare one and make it a house pet. Before they had kids Dan and Allison had two pet rabbits. Gilda has no intention of humoring my desire.

In case you’re wondering, rabbits are no longer classified as rodents. They are lagomorphs. Has to do with having four incisors compared to two in rodents. 

Promenade: We took a near four mile walk Thursday down Rosedale Avenue. We used to walk before COVID-19 hampered communal activities, but we’ve really picked up the pace since social distancing knocked out most other outdoor pastimes. 

Someone, I’m surmising a young girl and her family, positioned painted rocks on stone fences, at the foot of trees and on the base of a fire hydrant along the way. Each rock had an inspirational message. A turquoise painted rock said, “This will all blow over in time.” A yellow rock with a drawing of a bee intoned, “The bitter comes before the sweet.” Two flower illustrations under a bright yellow sun on a green background accompanied the saying, “Spring has sprung.”

Any passerby could not help but be cheered up. 

Nor could they be anything but dazzled by the life-size moose statue standing guard in the front yard of a recently renovated cottage. 

Camping Ground: Young Judea, our grandkids’ sleepaway summer camp, was cancelled, as most were in New York and New England.

Perfectly understandable given the caution proscribed in this age of coronavirus. Seriously disappointing to anyone who has relished the sleepaway camp experience.

Dagny was to have spent her first such adventure in July, joining Finley for his second season away from home. It also means Dan and Allison will not get to enjoy being empty nesters for an extended period for the first time in 10 years. Ah, well, there will always be next year.

With a little more planning, however, camps could have created a controlled environment, Gilda believes. If campers and staff were tested and screened before arrival in camp, and forbidden to leave the grounds, even for counselor days off, the camp could have been made into a virus sanctuary. Food and other deliveries could be controlled, much the way grocers receive shipments. And there would be no parent visiting day. 

Ah well, it’s too late for this summer, but as sports fans of losing teams are wont to say, “Wait till next year!”

Training for Household Chores Began at Sleepaway Camp

Most mornings Gilda makes our bed but that’s mainly because she rises before me; while I am washing up she returns to the bedroom to make the bed. She also believes she does it better than I do. Who am I to dispute such a labor-saving belief?

I tell you this because of a recent New York Times article professing the benefits of starting the day by making one’s bed, along with the best way to do so, as well as a section covering the debate over use of a top sheet (https://nyti.ms/2xFp71l).

The first time I was required to make my bed was my first morning in sleepaway summer camp 61 years ago (prior to that seminal away-from-home event our housekeeper tidied up my sleeping quarters during weekdays. I assume my mother did it on weekends).

When my bunkmates and I arrived at Camp Massad Aleph we found our beds neatly made by our counselors. That was the last time they performed that function. Henceforth, they informed their seven-year-old charges, we would be required to make our own beds during the daily cleanup hour after breakfast. During cleanup we were assigned chores, from sweeping the floors to bringing in dry bathing suits and towels from the outdoor clothes line to cleaning the sinks. Each task rotated daily based on a chore pinwheel posted prominently on a doorjamb leading to the bathroom.

Making a bed that first time required prior knowledge of hospital corners, the de riguer method of securing a taut military look for sheets and blankets. Prior to that morning I had never heard of hospital corners. My one and only sheet at home had been fitted, not flat. Now I had two flat sheets and three navy blue wool (itchy) blankets to secure to a metal frame bed.

A counselor demonstrated the proper technique of folding up a corner of a sheet before tucking it under the mattress. The procedure is repeated for the top sheet and two of the blankets, the third blanket becoming a jellyroll placed at the foot of the bed. When precisely done, a quarter dropped on the finished bed would bounce; a broomstick handle thrust inside a hospital corner would be swallowed up all the way to the straw brush.

These weren’t idle standards. Every day an inspector judged our handiwork. If your bed failed to pass muster, if the clothing in your cubby holes wasn’t stacked perfectly with all folded items forming a straight vertical line, you’d be held back from first activity, except if it was swim instruction (there was no way of getting out of swim instruction—believe me, I tried). 

At the end of each week—sleepaway camp lasted eight weeks back then—the cleanest bunks were awarded prizes such as additional candy privileges from the canteen. 

When I returned home I didn’t have to make my bed again until camp the following summer, but weekend house chores imposed by our mother became part of my routine and that of my brother and sister. We had three basic jobs: setting the dinner table, clearing the dishes after meals and dusting (full disclosure—Bernie and Lee do not recall dusting as a chore but I distinctly do, perhaps because, as the youngest, I was assigned a light task). We also had a daily assignment to pick up fruit and vegetables at Joe’s, the neighborhood produce store, and buy a fresh rye bread at the bakery on Ocean Avenue (our father thought bread made any meal taste better).

Being the youngest had the previously mentioned advantage of a lighter workload until both my brother and sister moved out, leaving me for several years solely responsible for all chores. 

The real beneficiary of my prolonged exposure to housework has been Gilda. Though I don’t often make our bed, I do set and take off the table and clean the pots and pans. I vacuum and do most of the shopping. But I don’t dust. Still, Gilda would probably tell you I don’t do enough around the house. 

Summertime Reflections on Sleepaway Camp

Our daughter-in-law Allison sent a short video of five-year-old Dagny cannonballing into a neighborhood pool along with a note that seven-year-old “Finley passed their deep end test by swimming the length of the pool down and back and then treaded water for a minute!” 

Naturally I am proud of them, but also envious, as I am, at 68, still a non swimmer. But what her note really accomplished was stimulating me to write this blog.

Actually, I’m a little late writing and posting this entry. A year late, to be perfectly honest. I had intended back in 2016 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of my first year at sleepaway camp, but I wound up spending too much time channeling Gloucester Island, Mass., summer resident Walt Whittaker (played by Carl Reiner) trying to warn fellow Americans, “The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!”

Okay, I promise you—no more Trump talk this time.

I was just four months passed my seventh birthday when my parents shipped me and my brother and sister out for eight weeks to Camp Massad Aleph in Tannersville, PA, at the base of Mount Pocono. We did not want to go. When they first told us about our upcoming summer adventure, while driving on the highway, we instantly rebelled. Dad threatened to stop the car if we didn’t quit complaining. We had grown accustomed to our annual stay at the Takanassee Hotel in Fleischmann’s, NY, (subject of a future blog) and had no interest in being away from our parents for two solid months, especially if we had to be at a camp where you were expected to speak Hebrew all the time. 

As if the trauma of being away from our parents wasn’t enough, we soon found out our mother would be taking an extended trip to Israel, Italy and France and therefore would miss both visiting days. Quite an adventurous trip for a woman by herself in 1956 traveling to countries where she did not speak any of the languages (Dad had to stay home to run their business). 

When school ended in late June away we went. To get to Massad we had to board buses somewhere in midtown Manhattan for the more than two-hour ride. My loneliness and trepidation began at the bus when my older brother and sister entered separate buses. I sat way in the back, on the right side of my bus, my head propped up against the window to stave off nausea. 

Of course, we all wound up loving summer camp. I spent 15 July-Augusts at sleepaway camps, the first five at Massad, winning all-around camper awards despite never learning to swim (each year my division head counselor would caution I would not win the award the following year if I failed to achieve aquatic success).

The years at Massad have a way of jumbling together in my mind but I have some very distinct memories of that first summer. We were, for example, warned not to play catch with a baseball. Softballs only. Naturally, some boys didn’t follow orders, until one bunkmate miscalculated his lunge for the hard ball and was struck right in his two front teeth which promptly exited his mouth. 

Another boy, Dennis Keene, had to retrieve a ball thrown over a fence behind our bunk. He found the ball among the trees sitting atop what turned out to be a yellow jacket nest. He emerged from the thicket shrieking, for good reason. His shirt and shorts were covered with yellow jackets dead after stinging him. No one dared go on the other side of that fence for the rest of the summer.

Every group had its own schedule. We ran on “camp time,” one hour earlier than time back in the outside world, so that it was dark by 8 pm. Each day counselors issued marks for your performance at various activities and for speaking Hebrew. Awards were handed out for each activity at the end of the year.

My first year arts and crafts project reflected the mores of the time—I made ashtrays for each of my parents, a brown one for my father, a sandstone one for my mother. On a bookshelf in my living room sits the sandstone ashtray. 

Twice a day we had swimming in the man-made lake, instructional in the morning, free swim in the afternoon. I remember being cold, standing waist-deep in the water, a thin reed of a boy unable to stay afloat when putting my head in the water, flailing my arms, kicking my legs. I did, at least, put my head under the water, not like an even thinner bunkmate, Michael Khan, who would shake his hands wildly when the instructor would ask him to dip his head in the water. 

Every day we would raise the American and Israeli flags in the morning, lower them in the afternoon. We learned the special way the American flag is folded into a tri-cornered shape. 

Around 4 pm every day we had chocolate milk and crackers or cookies. Thin kids like me could get a second helping of chocolate milk.

Friday afternoons the camp mother came by to wash our hair, vigorously. I never realized until many years later she was checking scalps for lice.

For Friday evening Sabbath services we’d dress in white shirts and blue shorts or pants, the colors of the Israeli flag. After dinner, we’d sing Jewish folk songs in the dining room. Before it got too dark, the girls our age would join the boys outside for Israeli folk dancing. Few boys were interested in this activity.

Saturdays were spent praying in the morning, free time in the afternoon except for a mandatory discussion hour on Jewish subjects, all conducted in Hebrew. 

At the end of summer camp we had color war, called maccabiah at Massad. My first year team was “Poalim,” Hebrew for workers. I can still recite the words and melody of our Hebrew cheer song. My team won.

I went back to summer camp for 14 of the next 15 years. I learned how to play different sports. I learned how to be competitive but always show good sportsmanship. I learned leadership skills. I learned how to be independent. I learned about young love. But unlike my grandchildren, I did not learn to swim.