I had been out in Michigan visiting the K family, for a good part of the summer. And somehow the decision was reached that myself and the son of the K family would go to a YMCA camp in northern Michigan for two weeks. It might be that after camp my parents would arrive and we would continue with a family vacation, maybe the one where we met up with brother Fred in Colorado.

Exactly why the two sets of parents decided to send these two Jewish boys off to a Y camp was never clear to me, but neither of us boys or families were at all observant Jews, so it might have just been a convenient and affordable way to ship us off for a while.

I happened to be in the oldest group of campers – and it was a yMca camp, all boys – and we slept in tents in the wood across the lake from the rest of the camp, where my co-conscriptee was staying, slept in wooden buildings and had exercise each morning, with fully structured programs.

While we older boys slept late and mostly hung around the camp, sometimes going on woodsy adventures with the counselors.

I remember perhaps two days in my entire life where I woke up in the morning completely awake and alert, ready to go; one of these was at this summer camp where a counselor was cooking french toast in a pan over an open fire.

Our first night we sat up late around the campfire and one of our two counselors proceeded to give us a kind of “from the heart” talk about life and what is important. That talk wound up with him giving us words of wisdom about sex, including his observation that he really didn’t like it the first time, or even the second time. At which point our guy Ronnie J. yelled out “oh but that third time.”

Ronnie J. was the only black kid at camp. On the first day we sat in a row to take our swimming test. Boys were comparing their level of tan and one kid said, yeah, but your tan is nothing compared to that kid down there, meaning Ronnie J. It was a racial comment but not really racist and in the whole two weeks I never once heard the N word, nor any other racial comments towards or about Ronnie J.

I didn’t pass the swim test well enough to go on the canoe trip so I stayed around with another kid who couldn’t go because he had a broken arm in a cast. His nickname was Army. We were all supposed to get nicknames; mine was Curly but it didn’t stick.

Ronnie J. and I were the two that didn’t belong in this lilly white Christian summer camp, but my being Jewish was a secret. His being black – and from the city – was obvious. Ronnie J. was the coolest kid among us, funny, athletic, confident.

At one point we went on a great hunt for a legendary giant snapping turtle in a pond deep in the woods. We baited it with some sort of meat and sure enough the snapper grabbed the bait and we pulled it ashore where the counselor was able to kill it and cut it up for our dinner. 

At some point in all this ghoulish activity it seems that two of the clawed feet of the snapping turtle had gone missing. And it was blamed on Ronnie J. I have no idea if Ronnie took those cut off feet or if it was a false accusation, based on his tougher background.

But nothing more came of it, other than a little scent of prejudice in the air.

We played Capture the Flag, a perfect game for boys in the woods. And at one point I came up against a clear definition of what kind of kid I was, or how was I seen. Two of us, Baker and I, sneaked up on the kid who was guarding his team’s flag. That kid saw both of us but what he said rang through my head for years, forever, He said “Oh no, not Baker.” Baker was a cool athletic kid who wore knickers and looked utterly all American, blond and fit. So the kid expressed that seeing Baker was a serious problem for him, but I didn’t even register. I was a non-entity. There was no tetherball on our side of the lake so no chance for me to show off my summer camp tetherball prowess; I was an athletic zero.

On Sundays we would row across the lake and eat with the rest of the camp in a building and then go to “church” in the space in the woods designated as the chapel.

The church event was not a big deal for me, I just sat there quietly and I doubt anybody noticed that I was not actually saying the prayers. 

The big event that really turned my head around was at breakfast. An event that cemented the idea that I was just not “raised right” and not a real all American kid. We were eating French toast, made in the kitchen, not over a camp fire. But I loved all French toast and was happily gobbling it down when our counselor, who was a good guy in general, called out loud to me to ask if I would like a shovel. It was his way of letting me know that I was eating much too fast. I tried to save some face by wise-guy responding that I didn’t need a shovel but a bigger fork would be helpful. 

I looked around and saw how the other kids, properly brought up midwestern kids, were eating. They were eating very very very slowly, as they had been taught. So I started a new routine: I would pick up my fork and cut into my French toast, then put down my fork. Then count to 10. Then cut a bit more. Then put down my fork and count to ten. And so on. I ate as slowly as I could, counting, waiting, counting. But stil finished before all the others.

On the woodsy side of the lake it had never come up that I ate too fast or had no manners, but in the dining room it was grossly obvious – to others. 

This never really changed the way I ate after I left the Y camp. I still eat too fast. In grade school and high school we could go to the gym and play as soon as we finished lunch so I usually ate a school lunch in less than a minute.

The last night of camp was the talent contest. There was a well-known story about the kid who a year or two ago had told a joke for his talent show moment and after he told the joke he paused and said aloud, “Oh, now I get it.”  

It was clear that Ronnie J. was going to do one of his routines for us in that talent show and he did. He told a long, complex, improvised tale ending with him patting his  imaginary pet Tommy gun for which he had a affectionate nickname, like “Old Betsy.”

The entire camp was blown away and gave Ronnie J. a standing ovation. This was around 1964 or so, decades before Richard Pryor, and nobody had ever heard or seen anything like it. Sometimes I think about what happened to Ronnie J. but his name was so common that I could never find any version of him that was really him.

There was one last moment as we were waiting for parents to pick us up on the last day that stuck with me. I was talking to another kid about baseball, and where we stood in relation to baseball. In those days most boys had some thoughts about going to the major leagues; baseball was everything. This kid said to me that he knew he would never make the major leagues and he knew exactly why. He said look at the wrists of major leagers: they all have really powerful wrists and his were just not big and strong enough. So he, at around 14 years old had already dealt with that reality. Meanwhile i looked at his wrists and then at mine. His looked pretty strong and manly to me, and were about twice as thick and muscular as mine. To this day I have small delicate wrists. And I noted decades later that Wade Boggs, the hall of fame third baseman for the Red Sox really did have some big, strong wrists. So no major league baseball for me, and in fact no major league sports: they all require some big strong wrists. 

Two weeks at a YMCA camp somewhere in the woods in Michigan. It was kind of great, kind of strange. But it did include one of the two times in my life where I woke up totally refreshed and ready to go. And I can’t remember the other time.