Not everyone wanted the top bunk. Muriel Richert only had memories of sleeping on the bottom bed in the fifties, because she was afraid of falling off the top bunk. She had company with Patsy Walsh (1938), who also had a fear of heights. For Kathy Hall (1966-71), her little 5 ft. 2 in. height prevented her from climbing up top.
Jeri Smith could not wait to get to the rustic little cabin in 1965, with the musty smell, knot holes in the wood and rope pull windows. “I always wanted the bottom bunk. Sometimes there would be little bed wetters and the counselors never made a big deal of it, but you would see those sleeping bags drying out on the clothes lines.”
Not everyone was so kind to the bed wetters, according to a few girls. Shirley Colbert recalled a girl in 1941 going home after the hut giggled over the incident and Cindy Naylor knew girls teased instead of being ignored in 1967. Little girls, frightened and homesick often wet their pants and their beds and if a counselor was around, it was handled much more gently. Often girls wanted the top bunks, fearing a “rainstorm” under them.
The Haggard Marcusson Company in Chicago featured the “Tiger” brand steel bunk beds in a 1916 catalog for $26.40 identical to the ones in the bunkhouses at camp. Minutes from March 31, 1937 indicated six bids from different companies had been solicited and Haggard Marcosson was the lowest, but the Wieland Company offered the best price on mattresses. There were also inquiries about waterproof ticking, which was the covering on the mattress.
“I remember laying on the bunk bed and the girls would lay below and kick the bottom of my mattress to get me airborne to see how far I would go,” laughed Elaine Engibous from the early sixties.
Standard bedding in the early years of camp were bedrolls from blankets and sheets, which had a traditional form of folding. In later years, there was a new “status symbol”—the sleeping bag.
For Dorothy Niedzielski, it was and Army blanket in 1946-47. “I can remember the sand would get though those blankets, but we needed them on cold nights.” Cara Prieskorn (1966) said,” There were always people who came in with cooler things, like sleeping bags. I was “out” with my bedroll, but you know I had a sleeping bag the next year.” Kayleen Jacques, in the late fifties, had a wool sleeping bag, which was only entrusted to her. “Most of the time, I think I was barely covered because it was so warm.”
Cynthia Gregory (1960) had her grandmother buy her a sleeping bag with S&H Green Stamps. Gretchen Jacques (1955) had her Dad’s “huge puffy below zero” sleeping bag, “which made me stick out and that was the last thing I wanted, but no one ever short-sheeted my bed.’
“When I got to camp I didn’t have the appropriate sleeping bad,” said Primitive counselor Sue West in 1975. “I was estranged from my Dad, but he lived in West Branch. My older brother Doug called up my Dad and told him to buy me the right bag. On the day the campers were arriving, it freaked me out that out of nowhere the Dad I hadn’t seen in years was standing there with my new sleeping bag. The last time I had seen him was when I was sixteen and he was with his new wife. All I could think of on that day was that he wasn’t important in my life and I had work to do.”
Do your recall your bunk beds and bedding?