Summer Camp, Part One: Camp Arrowhead

I thought that I would like to look back at the various summers I spent in camp, and see some of what I can recall. In the summer of 1991, I went to camp for the first time, to Camp Arrowhead near Tuxedo, North Carolina. My father had been to the same camp as a boy, although it was on the site of the current girls' camp at the time.

It was the summer that Terminator 2 came out, although at the age of eight, I wouldn't see it for a while. I did wonder about it quite a bit when seeing promotions for it at fast food restaurants on the road. I wondered less about Ice T's song Cop Killer, although that was prominent at the time as well. I further recall someone talking about the Mickey Rourke movie Barfly, which I still haven't seen.

It was a summer of some great memories and some unpleasant ones. One of the first things that I recall happening was the swim test. I don't think I had ever swam in a lake instead of a pool before, so I kept my head above water, and ended up not doing so well on the test even though I could swim. For some reason, they used the swim test to divide the boys into sides for certain competitions. It seems like the "failed swim test" side is automatically at a disadvantage, but it wasn't the Olympics. I would like to have been able to go into the whole lake, but was restricted to a small portion of it.

Our imagination was captured by the idea of being out of our beds after lights out. I don't think anyone had ideas about what you would do once you were outside and unsupervised, but it was just like a dog chasing a car. One night we got ready to try to get out, but the cabin leader astutely noticed that we were all fully dressed in black, and quashed it.

You had to write letters home on Sunday. The idea was, if you wrote a letter, you got to have ice cream, and if not, no dice. That led to some hasty missives home at the last moment. Otherwise, though, I doubt I would have written at all. I don't believe there was access to a phone, so it was just letters.

There were many parts of the day devoted to one activity or another, or free time. At one time, you were supposed to go out to one of the activity areas, and weren't allowed to stay in your cabin. At another time, you had to stay in your cabin and do quiet things. I had brought a book because it was my understanding that you were supposed to donate one to the library. I brought my least favorite book, which turned out to be the only thing you had to read. At another time, though, I was reading Jaws from the camp library, so maybe you were allowed to check out books for that time of the day.

One day, something kind of peculiar happened. I guess that some of the staff was supposed to do something with me and some other boys, but they decided it would be easier to put us in front of the tv with a movie. I'm trying to remember what movie, but can't seem to. I remember everybody watching Diamonds Are Forever on a different occasion, but I can't remember what movie we watched this one time. They told us to say it was some other guy, and as I recall, that's what we said. Kind of a funny thing.

I met some interesting people. There was Burgess, whose dad owned the camp. There was the Japanese kid, who wouldn't tell us what the writing in his comic books from home said. There was our cabin's CIT, who I recall was taking or had taken German in school. And there were others who have faded in my memories.

On one occasion, we were told a scary story. It affected me quite a bit, and I recall it took place on a beach. I knew that North Carolina was a coastal state, but wasn't sure how close the camp was to the ocean. Looking at the map now, I see the camp is hundreds of miles inland. I had asked the cabin leader if we were near the beach, and he just laughed. Not much reassurance.

I recall now a number of times that we left the cabin and went to remote campsites. On one occasion, we were supposed to have hamburgers, but no buns had been procured. We ended up making burgers with patties in place of the buns, and condiments and toppings in place of the patties.

I also recall that we were using a somewhat fast creek as a water slide. I got awfully bruised that time. On that night, or perhaps the night of another camping expedition, we had gone to bed, and before I fell asleep, I was inside my bag and couldn't see anything. Something like a foot or a paw pressed on me, and I was quite certain that a ravenous wolf was ready to kill me if I showed myself. I don't know now what it was, but it as easily could have been one of the other boys. Either way, I got out of it.

The camp store, called "the Canteen", was considered something special. It mainly just had things like toothpaste and shoelaces, but most of us, I would imagine, had never had the discretion to spend money on our own, so it seemed like a big deal. I don't recall buying anything in particular.

So I spent three weeks there, and wanted to go back every year after that, but I just went to Camp Arrowhead the one time, and was excited by newsletters sent to our house thereafter. It wouldn't be for a number of years that I went to the Boy Scout Camp Geronimo, which I will write some about in the next installment. I'd like to write about each year I was there, but am not sure I can distinguish one year's memories from another. After Geronimo, I'll write about my last year of camp, which was at Camp Hahobas.