Oh boy, does this one evoke some memories. How about you?
Vintage Snapshot: Off to Camp
– Posted on November 25, 2018
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Curbside Classics Archives
Oh boy, does this one evoke some memories. How about you?
Not particularly. When I was in it as a kid, in the early 2000s, it was pretty watered down. A far cry from the beginning of Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade.
I beg to differ. Except for the car, this could have been me going to scout camp in the early ‘00s. Then again, it was Ukrainian scout camp (yes, in the US) – not sure what “normal” Boy Scouts was like at that point.
Sort of. Our uniforms in Canada were different, and where I lived we went to camp by train!
I’m just a bit younger, so my trips to Scout camp were in a Vega wagon and then a 77 Impala wagon. Oh, and unlike that kid I was smiling.
But that picture is current and future too … I’m still doing the Scout thing as an adult even though my sons are all in college, now with my Mazda 6 since I sold my Outback. (Sadly many of the boys have never seen another manual transmission car..). But this year the vehicle we took to camp had a few more horsepower — a pair of GE P40s pulling the Amtrak Coast Starlight.
We often come across unusual cars on our trips. One of these days I should write them up
Hahaha, the kid looks excited.
I recall when I was about that age, in the early 70s, I used to read about summer camps and such. I would hound and pester my parents to let me go to one, but they always refused. “We can’t afford it.” Looking back, we practically lived in a summer camp. Our little town of Angola was a summer town 30 miles south of Buffalo, on Lake Erie. Our house was 100 yards from the beach; Camp Pioneer, a Lutheran summer camp, was a 5 minute bike ride away at Point Breeze; Camp St. Vincent DePaul was a 10 minute bike ride on the other end of Grandview Bay; not to mention the half dozen waterfront public parks nearby. No wonder dad got tired of hearing about it.
It’s amazing what we had as kids, and didn’t realize how special it was. Living in Angola on the Lake was like “kid paradise”.
There’s still a very different experience of going away – away from your family and parents for the first time – and dealing with a lot of other kids etc. in a separate location. Like going away to college instead of living at home.
But that does sound like kid paradise. You didn’t mention the other half of the year with mega snow, snowball fights, sleds and saucers, igloos, boots and gloves and parkas, and a lot of shoveling.
The bag in the kid’s left hand reminds me of a vintage Vic Tanny’s bag design I once saw. He may have been an early innovator, aiming to get buff before going to camp.
I went to Scout summer camp as a 12-year-old in the summer of 1966. It was located in southern Missouri. I did not enjoy being in the Scouts and I hated camp – I guess I was never very good at any sort of regimentation. When the family moved to Florida later in the year I did not rejoin the Scouts. I know how hellish a month of summer camp would be in sticky, stormy, and buggy summertime Florida as I spent much of my subsequent lifetime working outdoors in FL as a surveyor, soils mapper/technician, or environmental engineer.
We loaded onto a mid-1960’s charter bus.
Seemed pretty luxurious …… until the last leg of the journey —
To make the climb up Tolland Mt., in W. Mass., the driver would shut down the AC, as all power was needed to get that behemoth up the winding, gravel, 1-lane, 10% grade.
Talk about living up to the Scout motto of “Be Prepared.”
The driver of this car has TWO spare tires!
It might say more about the general quality of tires at that time than it says about the driver. 😉
Yes!
Now that you mention tires, one year (1966) I went to Boy Scout camp with Mr. Harris in their 1965 Plymouth Fury III. We took the Nyack exit off of I-80 in the Sierras, drove a few miles on pavement, then many more miles on dirt road to reach our campsite. Things went fine on the way in, but coming home we got 2 flat tires (with only 1 spare, of course) before ever getting close to reaching the paved road. It took us forever to make it to the Shell station in Nyack.
I know Mr Harris had to buy at least one new tire. I would assume the tires on the Plymouth were the originals, since the car was only 1 year old, but how many miles were on them, I don’t know. I think back then you were lucky to get 10K miles on a set of bias-ply tires on a car like a Plymouth.
That kid might have been excited to go to camp, just not excited about having to stop every few minutes to get his picture taken. Sort of…can we get going? look on his face.
I was in the scouts about that age but the closest I got to going to camp was a 3 day weekend Polar Bear Event at the scout camp a little over an hour away. We lived in rural Pennsylvania and the camp was in the next county, at a fairly isolated location, and the weekend was in January. Never having been camping before it was a real education. Didn’t get much sleep that weekend as it was so cold.
I was a Boy Scout up through middle school until I just got bored with it. As I got into high school, I got into sports, cars, girls and part time jobs and I got very active with my volunteer fire department so there was no time. Looking back, I do wish I had stayed with it and made Eagle Scout though.
Anyway, my scouting years were the early to mid 1980s and my Scout leader, who was a friend of my Dad’s, had a green 1970 Dodge Polara and then I think he had a Buick Regal.
I was in scouts for a bit. Somewhere there is a picture of me loading up into the assistant Scoutmaster’s red 67 Ford Country Sedan that had lost all of its wheelcovers by 1970-71. But it was soooo much nicer than the Scoutmaster’s 69 Ford Cortina wagon. That little English Ford did not stand up to his hard use at all.
The kid looks morose because he knows he will be away from that fabulous 59 Plymouth for a whole week.
My father was not really involved in my scouting experience and my camp transportation were usually car pool affairs. Most common vehicles included an early ’70s F-100 or F-250 camper special, A Fury III wagon (hidden headlights!), or most common a mid-seventies Dodge maxi-van.
Boy, does it. I dropped out when I was about 14 or so. I had asthma as a kid, and by the time we started doing hikes on the Appalachian Trail, I simply couldn’t participate without having an ‘episode.’ I do remember one of the last field trips we made was to Warner-Robins AFB in Macon, Georgia, where we got to climb up into the cockpit of a B-52. They also pointed out the row of six B-52s on “hot standby” in case of nuclear war.
Pic is of our ’68 Country Squire LTD being loaded for a camping trip my brother went on (the one laying on the ground). That’s Dad looking on in mild embarrassment…
Great photo. With a lot more resolution it could be art. Maybe a photorealistic painting.
So many questions:
So, why is he lying on the pavement? His hat just popped off. Did he fall down? What is that pink thing? Who took the photo, and why? It’s not the kind of scene that someone would click the Brownie at. And why loading the car in a parking lot of something that looks like a medical clinic or something, not a driveway?
I think that was at a school or church where the Troop met. You’d have to understand my brother to know why he’s laying face-down on the pavement. None of us understand him, for what that’s worth! (c:
Oh, the pink thing is a net bag with his sleeping bag and other gear. They were going spelunking.
Our Scouting vehicle in our troop was ironically, an International Harvester… but not a “Scout”, but the much larger Travelall.
On one trip, we all drove in it up to the mountains of Western Maryland, and it snowed over night; a good foot or so was on the ground the next morning. Even though the motto was “Be Prepared”, our scoutmaster forgot something he needed to make us all breakfast (pancakes). He wanted “King” syrup, and all we had was maple. So into the Travelall a few of us climbed, and down the long driveway we went, as if there was no snow at all. We were staying in a cabin on this particular trip.
When we got back, I wanted to try the King Syrup he insisted on obtaining despite the weather. I was unimpressed. I only think he liked it because that was his last name!
I’ll stick to maple (or even artificial maple), thanks. ;o)
Wow, I thought that actually WAS JPC with his 59 Plymouth.
I was in Scouts for a couple of years, but I never did any of the trips. I think my parents figured that weekends were family time, but it is possible I never mentioned the trips to them and didn’t bring the permission forms back…
Never did the Boy Scouts thing but had bible and confirmation camps.
Is the car a ’58 Chevy?
59 Plymouth
That totally could have been me going to Boy Scout camp in the 1990s. Come to think of it I think I even took my Dad’s old Air Force duffel, which basically looks like a bigger version of what that kid is holding. The main difference is that the vehicle would have been a Plymouth minivan, not a big Plymouth sedan like in the picture (if I ID’ed that car correctly).
It was YMCA camp for me, but by bus. My first memory is of some kid wanting my window seat on the ride up, implying that he might throw up on me if I didn’t give it to him. Even for a 10 year old, it was a dubious threat.
I was in the cub scouts then boy scouts (for awhile..but I bowed out somewhere around age 14)…but never went to boy scout camp.
We were living in Virginia at the time, and I went to Camp Parater (a religious camp) somewhere around Richmond. My youngest sister (now deceased) was born after I got back (she was born Aug 12 1970)..and I think it had something to do with my Parents wanting me to have something to do that summer as we weren’t going camping as was our normal routine in the family. We were all assigned grown up chores when I got back (I guess to help out my Mom)…remembering feeling kind of like an Adult (not really) doing them.
I would have been driven in a 1969 Ford Country Squire we got in the Fall the year before. My Uncle had bought a 1969 LTD 4 door coupe when he graduated from College (actually, a few months earlier, since the 1951 Chrysler Windsor he got from my Grandfather apparently lost a head gasket and he junked it instead of replacing the gasket). We were living in Manassas (just moved there right after buying the Squire)..and it took a couple hours to get there. I was lonesome, first time away from my parents/siblings, for two whole weeks, though I got into the swing of things just around the time camp ended.
My ’59 Plymouth was a fire chief peddle car…with a bell on the hood and everything…got it for Christmas, 1959, in Covina, Ca.
I was in the Scouts in late 60’s / early 70’s in Troop 69 (I kid you not). I never went to the summer camp but I did enjoy the weekend camping trips and hiking parts of the Appalachian Trail. My buddy’s Dad had a Gen 1 VW bus that was usually the vehicle of choice. Good times.