Stoneham

I attended Camp Susan Curtis in the summers of 1982, 1983, 1984, and 1985! My first summer there I was 9. Back then each session was 3 weeks! Bob Flynn was the camp director every summer I attended except my last summer! They were the best summers of my childhood! Mrs. T, (Tinder) was our arts and crafts, activities director! Her children at the time, Liz, Matt, and Brian were also campers I remember seeing all 4 summers I went! The camp councilors that we had from other countries! Hugo Derike, was from my 2nd summer. He taught me how to count to 20 in Dutch! John Temple was there my last 2 summers! He was from England and looked alot like John Cougar Mellencamp! I think it was the hair! LOL I remember at the end of each session, each summer I attended, we had this massive game of hide and go seek! BUT, the councilors hid and the CITs and Campers went looking! And all 4 summers, the camp councilor called Jungle Jim, was never found! When the bells were rung to signal the end of the game, Jungle Jim would belt out so loud the tarzan yell to let us ALL know how we weren’t able to find him yet AGAIN! My 2nd summer, one of the councilors from my cabin, named Dorothy Woodhead or Woodhouse. Maybe even Woodcock? It was Wood something! There was a song out on the radio at the time, by John Cougar Mellencamp called The Authority Song. And every time it came on the radio she would sing….I fight Dorothy, Dorothy always wins! To this day if I hear that song on the radio, I sing it that way she did! I remember all our camp songs! Camp Curtis loyal are we! We hold thy name in fond memory! From the camp site up on high! We hear the loons loud haunting cry! Waters that gently lap the shore! Breezes that through the pine trees roar! All these wonders of the nature make us to love the more! 10-4! Lol I went back to camp about 15 years ago for an alumnus luncheon that I had read about online! They have much better songs now! Lol Some of ours were kinda corny and a couple of them might be considered bad today! Like, We’re the kids from CSC, we know we can’t be beat! We never wash our underwear, we never wash our feet! We carry guns and pistols! We make our own rules! We’re the kids from CSC and who the heck are you!!? The whole guns and pistols bit would probably be frowned upon today! But back in the early 80s, we were just being kids! I will NEVER FORGET my summers at Camp Susan Curtis! I even remember each little boyfriend from each summer! Camp crushes were so much fun! The dance at the end of each session! I loved waking up and going to sleep at night listening to the Loons! I remember going out in Canoes and checking on the Loons nests that were in a couple places around the Lake! Trout Lake! Allan’s Mountain! I climbed it at least once each week, all 4 summers! Lol So that’s like 12-15 times! I went on all the hikes I could while at camp! Not just the camp mountain, Allan’s Mountain, but I remember hiking Tumbledown Mt., Blueberry Mt., Bald Mt., and one Mountain that I did every summer that I can’t remember the name of at the moment! I DON’T remember the walk from the Camp to that little store down on the Main Road being that long of a walk!! Lol I remember walking to the church in town when the church had a small flea market they had one of the summers I was there! When I went to that Alumnus Luncheon, I walked down by the cabins. Oh my god! They even smelled the exact same way they did way back in 82, 83, 84, and 85! And you know how smells can trigger memories? I closed my eyes and for just a moment…..I was back there again! I remember we were moving bunk beds from one cabin to another and one of the other cabins had the radio up really loud and the song by Madness, Our House was playing! I remember one summer, my cabin sang and danced to the song The Heart of Rock and Roll at that summers talent show!! I remember just myself getting up on stage at 9 years old and singing that country song Nobody! LOL I remember watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory for the first time my 2nd summer at camp! It was a rainy day at camp that day and so they put on a movie day! Baggies of popcorn and cups of Bug Juice! And my 3rd summer I remember being so excited and proud, that my swimming had finally improved enough for me to have a RED bracelet! I was finally able to go on the other side of the dock! I felt like a big kid! I only got to go swimming when I went tocamp, or if my parents took us to the pond which honestly, weren’t very often! I think my parents might have taken us swimming ONCE maybe TWICE a summer. The rest of the summer it was the sprinkler OR we got to sit in one of those small plastic pools. Cant really learn to swim in either one of those! So my first 2 summers at camp I was stuck with a blue bracelet! But damn I was so excited and so proud to finally get that red one! And all those bracelets really were back then were just a piece of either Blue or Red yarn tied around our wrists! But that first red bracelet! I don’t think I took it off the entire summer! LOL I remember being out in the canoes one afternoon. There were 5 or 6 canoes full of campers, with a councilor in each with us. They were trying to teach us some canoe safety tips and rules! Well one of the lessons they were attempting to teach us that afternoon was called the airplane rescue method! Well…..several of us campers thought it would be funny to tip over more than one or 2 of the canoes at once! Yah! All of them ended up tipped over! LOL We all obviously had life preservers on. Those old huge orange ones! We all had to tread water for almost an hour while we waited on another canoe to come out and literally airplane rescue us!! LOL These are just a few of my MANY MANY MANY memories that I have from my summers at camp! I think I am going to drive down in this coming summer! I have to drive right past Butters Hill Rd every time I go see my doctor. I know they have added so many things and fixed up alot! But I can still see the camp that I saw during my 4 summers at camp!!

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