Camp Zoe Memories
Getting Ready for the Dance
I hit the showers three or four times as a ten year old camper at Camp Zoe in 1975 during my two week stay. My mom wasn't there to make me wash so why bother? My interest in girls increased in the following summers and so did my hygiene. I got up before 7am to shower during my last summer there. They handled bathing differently prior to the environmental movement of the early 70's:
We were NOT ALLOWED to take showers unless we stayed for a MONTH! We all took soap, shampoo and washed off in Sinking creek during afternoon swim!
Susan Strom, camper, 1966 - 1974.
The showers were located in two shacks behind the mess hall. They did the most business before the dance. The boy's shower housed a changing area with benches and a hot water heater next to the shower area itself. A dark, waterproof shade covered a window on one wall. One day I I lifted it up and discovered a screened window into the laundry room where a kitchen girl was doing a load of wash. I didn't mess with the shade after that.
If you stood in the shower, looked up, and followed the steel pipes across the opposite wall they disappeared through the boards. We discovered the pipes went into the girl's shower. If you stood at the shower head closest to the wall and climbed up the pipes, you saw through the gap into the ladies shower area. Such temptation was too much for a fourteen year-old boy. We were the right weight and size to stand on the pipes without breaking them. Reprimands followed when a counselor caught your skinny, naked butt up on the pipes, but every summer the peephole by the pipes remained. No one ever patched it.
Revlon's Flex shampoo and conditioner were popular hair products. When I smell that distinctive conditioner, even today, it takes me back to camp. Guys also brought along Brut and Jovan Musk for dance night. We wanted to smell our best for the ladies. The dry look was in style but locating an electrical outlet for your blow dryer wasn't easy. We managed to feather our hair, don our terry-cloth pullover v-neck shirts, and lace up our earth shoes for the most anticipated social event of camp, the dance!
We boogied in the evening twilight at the tennis court. (The lodge was our rain-out location). We rigged colored lights and played albums and 45s. Counselor Lei Moncrieff supplied the stereo equipment and records for many dances. There were three dances (or maybe four) during a two week session. The last dance was a long, slow number. The first year I was there it was "Hey Jude" by the Beatles. After that, the last song became "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin.
"Stairway to Heaven" has a fast part toward the end where it rocks out before Robert Plant sings the last lyrics. Some people preferred to fast dance during this interlude, but I ignored it and held my partner close the entire time.
Ozark day had the Sadie Hawkins dance. The girls grabbed dates during a sock grab in the archery field earlier in the day. Every boy put a tube sock in his back pocket and challenged the girls to snatch it. One tried to run away from the less desirable escorts. If a young lady got your sock she claimed the right to escort you to the court. Square dancing started the evening.
I hoped to meet someone special at the dance. A couple of long, slow dances together might blossom into a full-fledged camp romance. Robin Jones chronicled a chance meeting with a Boy's Cabin dreamboat in a letter home to the folks.