One summer, I think it was the summer of 1976, we went to this big day camp. Even Jim and Earl went. We all walked to Parkwood Upjohn together to catch the bus out to the place. It was exciting and it felt important to get up and go to the bus stop with all our alley friends. It was pretty early, too, like going to school, and we were there all day.
I don’t remember where it was, or what it was called, but I do remember that it was fun.

(Ed. note: I wonder now if it was a City Recreation program held out at the fairgrounds).

We did arts and crafts, got our faces painted, and participated in a huge, camp wide musical. It was the Yellow Submarine, by the Beatles. I remember learning at least that song.

One day I got my face painted like a clown, and then someone drew my portrait, imagining what I would look like when I was grown up. It was an ink portrait, not colored in, just a sketch. It was a beautiful sketch, but I decided that since it was supposed to be of me all grown up, it should have wrinkles on it. I ruined the picture by drawing wrinkles all over it. Mommy wasn’t happy about that.

Another day, I made a fish out of tissue paper. It was a wind catcher, or streamer, or something like that. I thought it was beautiful, and couldn’t wait to get it home. I must have fallen asleep on the bus or something, because I almost missed my bus stop. I grabbed my fish and ran off the bus. I left my red and white hand knit poncho on the bus. Mommy had made me that poncho when I was 5. She was really mad at me about that! To this day she talks about how stupid I was for leaving the poncho on the bus and bringing home that fish. I had the fish hanging up in my room for many years. Grammy later knit me a bigger, more colorful poncho, that I never lost. In fact, Yani wears it now. It is red, yellow, green, orange and white.

One thing Mommy really liked about Kalamazoo was the Nature Center. It seemed like she was always dragging us out there for one program or another. I took every class they offered, I’m sure. I didn’t like nature or science as a child, because, for one thing, I was allergic to everything outside, it seemed. I would get terrible hay fever every August and September; I’d sneeze every time I went outside, and when I went around hay, my eyes would get all puffy. I also thought all that science nature stuff was really boring. I never wanted to follow or collect bugs. I didn’t find plants exciting, what with all my allergies. Animals were interesting toys; I didn’t care what they looked like inside.

I did like rocks, though, until I took the Nature Center class on rocks. We took an incredibly long walk to a quarry, looking for different kinds of rocks, rocks that were different from the sedentary rocks all around us. We got there, and still found nothing but sedentary rocks! I never did see a different kind of rock up close—except moon rocks. Those were cool; you break them, and they had all kinds of crystals inside. But you find those in gift shops; not on the ground. Pyrite was pretty cool, too—fool’s gold. You knew it wasn’t real gold, but it was fun to pretend.

One of the Nature Center Day Camps we went to had a sleepover. It was on a Saturday night, and the Sunday morning, when we went home, was Father’s Day. Daddy didn’t want to go. He said that growing up in Vincent, Arkansas was enough like camping to him to last a lifetime. Mommy had used to be a Girl Scout Leader, so she was excited to camp out at the Nature Center with us. Char and her mother went, too.

Well, mommy said that the ground on the way to the camp site was ‘uneven,’ and she stepped in a hole and twisted her ankle. She could barely get around the rest of the night. Mrs. Miller took up the slack and carried stuff and got us to the camp site. That night, Char and Zeke flopped and swam in their sleep, and every time they moved, Mommy sprayed them with bug spray. Consequently, they didn’t have barely any mosquito bites the next morning.

I, on the other hand, had slept without moving at all, and had a face and body full of mosquito bites! We made a Father’s Day card for Daddy out of painted pine cones, and then we went home. Daddy still has that card in his office.

The last Nature Center class I took was about pioneer life. They have an old house a few miles away from the Nature Center, called the Delano Homestead, which is supposed to give you the feel of life in the 19th century. We spent a day out there in the late fall, making sauerkraut and generally being in the house. When you take a tour of the homestead, there are parts of the house that are roped off, and you just get to look at them from a distance. During our day at the homestead, we got to go behind the ropes and really see the house up close.

I played the old piano, and looked at the old quilts up close. We all took turns churning cabbage with a lot of salt to make sauerkraut. I had never known what was in sauerkraut before. After a day of laboring in the cold house (I think this was in December), we got to enjoy a feast of the sauerkraut and other foods. I think we had it with sausage. By the end of the day, I appreciated the time spent in the house. It took awhile for my nose to warm up after Mommy picked me up.

I also went to several overnight camps: Girl Scout Camp at Merrie Woode for three years, then several years of music camp. Overnight camp, of course, took us away from the alley entirely, and thus wouldn’t qualify as AlleyKid stories. I may tell them some other time. Suffice it to say, we went away for a week or two in the summer, and came back and appreciated our alley friends all the more. It was fun sharing the day camp experiences with our friends throughout the summer.