It was all girls and a safe place to talk, a place to give in to the innocent rites of passage, and share experiences only girls could relate to–that was camp. Shaving your legs, bleaching or cutting your hair, smoking your first cigarette, talking about sex, wearing a bra or not wearing a bra and getting your period for the first time were all firsts sometimes experienced at camp.
“We discussed lots of things about life at Camp Maqua,” said Anne Shutt (1961-66). “The birds and the bees talk took place in my cabin. I can remember the counselor came in and answered all our questions with the lights out. I think she stood outside and listened to what the questions were, and I look back and think that was pretty smooth. I don’t know who she was, but she had blonde hair.”
Discussions like that had been going on for years. Mary Jane Keschman (1944-54) recalled some evenings when the older girls answered questions from a cracker barrel. “We were allowed to ask any questions we wanted, whether it was sexual or otherwise, and the counselors would answer them for us.”
“I think I have a photo of some girls with me sitting on beds over there with the counselors. I wondered at the time, why would they want to talk to us, but we could ask our counselors any questions, even if it was about sex,” said Jan Mosier (1947-52). “So, I asked HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?”
Cathy Hawkins (1962) felt like her coming of age was as a junior counselor. “I remember going to town with a bunch of counselors. We went into a store and one of the counselors tried a on pair of jeans, then stuffed them in her purse and stole them! She later came up and apologized to me. I didn’t tell anyone because I was the low man in the pecking order. I struggled and I also learned a lot. I knew she felt bad about it. It was my time for learning about life and the mystique about being away from home for two weeks in a living environment with others. That situation instilled in a direct influence for right and wrong.”
One camper laughed as she recalled another camper, (who attended a different school,) and was the first person she ever knew who wore braces. “On three different occasions, I helped her to find her retainer from the dumpster. She would take it out to eat, forget it and it would get thrown out,” laughed Ellen Hydorn (1954).
Then there were girls like Marsha Immerman (1947-53) who did it all! “I had my first cigarette from a counselor at age fourteen, peroxided a streak in my hair at thirteen and shaved my legs for the first time at camp. I told my Mom I had shaved my legs for the first time and she said that it was too bad because I would now have to do it for life. When she asked about the blonde streak, I said the sun bleached it, but I’m sure she knew. Our cigarettes were hidden inside little bandaid boxes, because they were the perfect size to hide them,” said Marsha, whose favorite brands were Lucky Strikes and Chesterfields. “We used to sneak into the boat house to smoke, I can still see Sharon Cummings sitting outside the tack house with two cute stable boys smoking cigarettes.”
Kimela Peck (1966-74) and Audrey Graff (1948), despite the camping years between them, shared the distinction of smoking their first cigarettes and shaving their legs at camp. For Kay Alcorn, her memory of shaving her legs in the late forties was on the dock at the lake. “My mother would have never let me start so early, and truth be told, I didn’t need to.”
“My second trip to Maqua, and I was probably nine, I decided it was important to be shaving my legs,” said Jenifer Penzien (1969-71). “I was the only one in my cabin shaving. I was in cabin four that year. I remember being in the bath house with my leg propped up on the round sink thing, which sounds gross now, shaving my legs.”
What was your rite of passage at camp?