Back in the late 1970s I spent at least a week every summer as a Jr. Counselor at the NH 4-H camps and loved both Spruce Pond Camp and Bear Hill Camp. The summer after I graduated from high school, 1980, I worked the full summer at Spruce Pond Camp as a Sr. Counselor, a paid job, under a UNH-WorkStudy grant.
This was a great experience, my first full summer away from home, learning new things and where I first learned what teaching was all about. Many of the older Sr. Counselors and Area (ayr) Heads were teachers working the camps as their extra money, summer jobs. The camp director at Spruce Pond that year was big on the Sr. Counselors writing and implementing lesson plans for various day and evening activities. I developed a strong dislike for written lesson plans during this summer, but otherwise had a great time.
After each meal, a section of campers would stay behind in the dining hall and clean up by sweeping and washing the tables. On Friday after lunch, the Jr. and Sr. Counselors had the job of REALLY cleaning the dining hall, moving all of the tables, sweeping and washing the floors. To do this we put on the most recent Neil Young album Live Rust, turn the volume up and sing at the top of our lungs. By the time we got through Sugar Mountain, I Am A Child, Comes A Time, After The Gold Rush and My, My, Hey Hey (Out of The Blue), we were usually finished with clean up and could go to the waterfront for a last minute swim before having to stand on the docks for camper free swim.
Today I was driving home and playing the Neil Young Decade CD full blast (except at stop lights and the gas station) and several of these songs are on that album, since it is almost summer just hearing them took me back 33 years to that summer at Spruce Pond 4-H Camp and I was singing at the top of my lungs again... Luckily no one could hear me this time...
