Friday, March 29, 2024
Miles from the Mainstream
D. R. ZUKERMAN, proprietor

Thinking about Camp Wabigoon in this Heat Wave

August 5, 2016 --

We didn’t have air-conditioning at Camp Wabigoon my years as camper and then counselor, 1947 – 1961. But we (and Camp Wahanda – our sister camp) did have “the lake” – Rowley’s Pond, that is, above Winsted, Connecticut, on Smith Hill, off Spencer Road.

And when the temperature was in the high 80’s and above, group activities would be cancelled, for an all-day swim at the lake. Rusty Grant, Wabigoon’s head counselor from 1952 on, would tell us how lucky we were not to be in the sweltering city. I don’t know that those words had much impact on us as we kept cool swimming in the southern end of the lake – but they resonate with me this July 26, 2016, sixty years later, with the temperature in The Bronx in the 90’s.

How I miss the lake, and Wabigoon, and Winsted – and so many other things I enjoyed and experienced at Wabigoon, under the leadership of directors Phil and Gladys Brandstein – from our fresh breakfast rolls in the morning to the glittering sky at night (not visible in The Bronx, these days) -- but, then, how lucky I was to have gone from a 7-year old freshman in 1947, to a fourth-year counselor, age 21, in 1961.

ARCHIVAL LINK:

LPR's Annual Homage to Camps Wabigoon and Wahanda

 

From the LPR Archives: The Camp Wabigoon waterfront on Rowley's pond as seen from left field on the old Wabigoon softball field. A fly ball in the lake was usually a home run (unless, in going around the bases, the runner missed second, as this writer once did--the one time he hit a ball into the lake.)