Memories of Monkeytown

I not sure I can do justice to the sea swell of memories that crash about in my head after I simply say the name of the summer camp I attended from 1975 through 1982.

Eight years.

Eight years every summer for four weeks at Camp Quinebarge in New Hampshire.

Eight years of begging my parents to Please, OH PLEASE let me stay for the full eight-week session. Eight years of Friday Dinner: a letter home was your ticket to eat. Sunday visits when the parents were Required to take me and my friend-of-the-moment to Hart's Turkey Farm for turkey croquettes and gravy. (Damn. Just visited the website--They SELL the Carrot Relish in the gift shop. How do I explain this sudden need for pickled carrots to Dear Butcher?)

Eight years of mosquitoes, archery, cabins, more mosquitoes, bonfires, songs, rivalries, horses, boats, pine trees, swimming, cold cereal, cabin plaques, cold, wet bathing suits at 8am, Skins vs. Shirts, Phineas T. Moneygrubber and Monkeytown.

I hoarded Monkeytown Money under the bed all year long, carefully sorted and wrapped in multiple rubber bands. One year I returned to camp with an entire overnight bag stuffed with Monkeytown Money I had scored off the dimwitted first-year campers from the season before. Monkeytown Mayoral elections. Monkeytown Mayoral platforms based on the trade-in value of last year's Monkeytown Money. (Oh, and that year I just raked it in. Pounds of Thousand Dollar Bills. Ten very rare Fifteen Hundred Dollar Bills. Ha!) And sightings of Phineas T. Moneygrubber. The year he "kidnapped" Tom Ritchie and demanded ransom. The year he missed the Mayoral debates because he had been locked in the Ice Cream freezer at the concession stand at the base of Mt. Washington. (IS there an ice cream stand at the base of Mt. Washington? I'm thinking not.)

Monkeytown. What a concept.

But wait, more memories: The older campers roaring "JU! JU! BEE! JU! JU! BEE!" at the end of every meal as Bill Dold stood up to announce evening activity. (JuJuBee was an all-camp Capture-The-Flag-meets-Rugby game so violent it had been banned, but we still insisted that it was The Best Game Ever, pounding the tables, hollering its name, demanding that it be brought back. Surely this terrified the younger campers, but hey, we were the Old Guard, and we had to prove that we knew the secret rituals of our camp. What are some torn shirts between friends?)

Mr. Zimmerman leading us all in a rousing rendition of "The Titanic" with plenty of verve and arm pumping. "It was sad. (So! Sad!) It was sad. (So! Sad!) It was sad when the Great Ship went down, to the bottom of the Sea, sea, sea (Uncles and Aunts! Little Children lost their pants!) It was sad when the Great Ship went down." (What were we thinking? We LOVED that song!)

I heard a great radio essay a few years ago about the mystique of summer camp, that in some way the whole season is an exercise in convincing you to love the camp so much that you'll come back the next year. By the end of your first season, you've realized that it's loads better if you return: you'll know all the songs, know the codes, be in the crowd who knows not to take swim lessons first thing in the morning, and you'll fantasize about it all winter. When you're counting your Monkeytown Money, for example.

But I guess I should explain Monkeytown. And Phineas.

Quinebarge...{"Here's to our Quinebarge, we sing to thee. Fairest of all the camps, give her a one, two, three. (Four! Five! Six!) Ever we praise thee, love and adore. Here's to our Quinebarge for ever more.....ra ra ra. 1,2,3,4. We want some Mooore, of that Q!U!I!N!E!B!A!R!G!E!" OK, no more camp songs, or at least I'll not type them out anymore. Instead I'll just stop for a minute, sing them out at the computer (which causes the dog a very slight distress) and get back to typing without interruption. Maybe I'll just list them all at the end. Now, where was I? Oh yes. Ahem.}

Quinebarge was originally a boy's camp, started in the mid-thirties. It was on about seventy acres of mostly wooded land right on the shores of Kanasatka, part of the Lake Winnipesaukee system in New Hampshire. There had been a sister camp too, but it closed in the early 70's.* The first year I attended, the few girls stayed in two smaller boys cabins. Over time, girls' cabins were built (all named after Indian tribes, as were the boys'), eventually a rec hall was added, and the whole place was upgraded. But there were still flourishes of the older 1930's ambiance here and there.**

The dining hall walls sported all the cabin plaques ever made, from the first year of Quinebarge. And the carved wooden turtle over the fireplace with the red K for Kanasatka on its back. Every cabin, every year, made a cabin plaque--it not only listed the names of the campers, but in some way was supposed to represent the campers' experiences of that year. The older ones were shaped like tennis racquets, some like canoes, one in particular which fascinated me, the baseball scoreboard, all were carved from wood, and on some you could see the faint images of young boys wearing white shorts and V-necked sweaters. Young boys who are now older than my children's grandparents.***

If you walked past Wood Shop, down the path past the Nature Hut, where Balboa the constrictor lived, you'd end up on a winding wooded path towards Monkeytown.

Monkeytown was a collection of treehouses, huge treehouses, which had been built over the years. There were two storey tree-houses, three story tree-houses, tree-houses with rope swings, tree-houses with fireman poles to slide down. (Ouch, splinters) One tree-house was set back from the others and you had to cross a little wooden bridge to get to it. The floors were made from rough lumber, but all the railings, the steps and flourishes, all those were made from sap-laden pine branches. Sap oozed from every nail head, encrusting your knuckles and clothes, marking your shorts with life-long proof that you had climbed up into Monkeytown.

We were not allowed to play in Monkeytown; it was considered too dangerous. Maybe the winter winds had loosened the nails or a tree had died. But we could walk through it and plan for the Monkeytown Carnival, where the Monkeytown Mayor would preside, tossing Monkeytown Money into the air for us to scramble over.

I wish I still had Monkeytown Money. Rumor was that Tom Ritchie, the red-haired college kid who always hung around and did odd jobs in the years he wasn't a counselor, had designed it. Whoever did, it was a great job of teenaged obsessive attention to detail. Denominations started at Fifty Monkeytown Dollars and progressed in rapid succession up to Fifteen Hundred Dollars. The most common bill was the One Hundred Dollar.

Each bill looked generally like currency, ovals and swoops and a portrait in the center. Each bill had a theme, with little jokes and asides hidden in the swirls. The bills were mimeographed every year onto a new color paper. My favorite years were the pink years. So festive, purple ink on bright pink bills. White bills weren't so fun, but they were easier to collect at the close of the season from unsuspecting first-year campers, because they didn't Feel as if they were worth so much. (Monkeytown Mayors were able to propose the trade-in value for previous year's colors. Usually one current dollar for one thousand older dollars. But if you came back with enough, you could start the year rich as Croesus.) Monkeytown Money was gifted as a prize for having the cleanest cabin, for wining the kayak race, for winning Capture the Flag (approved version), for passing a swim test.

At the close of the season, each cabin took part in the Monkeytown auction, to bid on concessions to sell during the Monkeytown Carnival. Each cabin was assigned a Monkeytown Treehouse, which we spent Saturday afternoons renovating, and each cabin had to develop a game (Wheel of Fortune, Chicken Run) as well as sell a concession (Bid High for Bug Juice. Don't bother bidding on the popcorn, no one buys it). We prepared for Monkeytown for weeks. Build the game, practice the game, collect money for the auction, campaign for a mayor, dream about Monkeytown, plan some more, teach the littlest girl in the cabin to tread water so she can pass her swim test and bring the cabin pot more money, raid the neighbor cabin and steal their Monkeytown Money. Monkeytown, Monkeytown, Monkeytown.

Phineas T. Moneygrubber, whose elegant profile, complete with high collar and monocle, graced the center of the Five Hundred Dollar bill, was the Counselor's Candidate. His appearance at camp events was always eagerly anticipated, but bad weather or a broken-down limousine invariably prevented his arrival. The counselors would read statements from Phineas every so often, explaining his political platform. If he were made Monkeytown Mayor, he would ensure that the campers had All-Bran every morning for breakfast. After which, they would feed counselors breakfast in bed, ham and eggs, toast and coffee. He promised that campers would be chained to their beds every evening, and instead of archery, crafts, ceramics, or wood shop, the campers would, under Phineas' rule, partake of dredging the leech-infested slime from the lake bed during the day. I think Phineas may have been Count Olaf's cousin. He was deliciously nasty.

Nine years is a long time to spend anywhere, and I have a bunch of bad memories of Quinebarge too. Or maybe they're just those awkward adolescent gaffes which happen anywhere, regardless of summer camp. Towards the end there, it was getting pretty run down, or maybe the glow was dimming under too much familiarity. It's now under new ownership, a former counselor, actually, and apparently still going strong.

I think about Monkeytown every summer, every summer when I start looking for a camp for my kids. They don't make summer camps like this anymore. Certainly in California, there's almost no longterm overnight camps. Mostly it's a week here, a week there. And the camps are themed: soccer camp, drama camp, computer camp, band camp. But if it hadn't been for the open ended schedule of summer camp at Quinebarge, I never would have known that I enjoy woodcarving, or basketweaving, or that I'm a pretty good archer. Or at least, I was. The only swim lessons I ever had were in that lake. The lake with the leeches. Ew.

I never progressed very far in swimming, just to Intermediate Swimmer, which allowed me to take the Blue Jay sailboat out on the lake by myself. (Although I remember quite clearly NOT wanting to become an Intermediate Swimmer, because I enjoyed sailing with Mr. Zimmerman, who had to accompany those campers who hadn't passed their swim test.) When are my kids ever going to sit around a bonfire at Piney Point, watching silly cabin skits**** and singing mournful songs over a still lake? When will they have the opportunity to learn how to sail a boat, kayak, tell ghost stories, raid cabins, or steal kisses from another Junior Counselor under a pine tree while the sap glues your hair to the back of your neck as evidence of your moral crimes?

I miss summer camp. Pass the Bug Juice.




* Summer, we're all together,/ Here at camp, and later on./ Quinebarge we will remember/ throughout the years to come./ In the forest below the stars/ moments of magic have been ours./ Our fears have been forgotten,/ we sleep in peace./ Quinebarge, our home./ Forever young, Forever old./ Our dreams have been (da da da)/ we (da da da).

** Bo Bo Ski Watten Dattle! Waad Atten Shoo! OO!
Bo Bo Ski Watten Dattle! Waad Atten Shoo! OO!
Itten Bitten Fowten Hattle!
Itny Bitny De'Howten Taddle!
Bo Bo Ski Watten Dattle! Waad Atten Shoo!

***Children go where I send thee.
How shall I send Thee?
Well I'm gonna send thee ten by ten,
Ten for the saints who went back again
Nine for the nine who dressed so fine
Eight for the eight who stood at the gate
Seven for the se'en who ne'er got to hev'n
Six for six who never got fixed
Five for the five who stayed alive
Four for the four who stood at the door
Three for the (clap) Hebrew Children
Two for (clap) Paul and Silas
One for the Itty Bitty Baby
Who was Born, Born, Born in Bethlehem
(I still have no real idea what any of this means...)

****"What a nice dress!"
"I got it from Jordan Marsh!" (A Boston Department store)
"What nice shoes!"
"I got it from Jordan Marsh!"
Et Cetera
(Girl runs past wearing a towel.)
"What Happened?!"
"I'M JORDAN MARSH!"