Those of a certain age will recall 1962 as an optimistic year, perhaps the last year of optimism in the troubled, tumultuous decade that followed. JFK and his New Frontiersmen were in charge; the GNP was humming along and Viet Nam was still a place most Americans couldn't locate on a map. The Cuban Missile Crisis lay a few months ahead, but we were still blissfully ignorant of those missile sites going up, Castro's answer to the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion.
It was a fun time to be nineteen and working at a summer camp.
For the previous eight years, summers meant spending seven weeks at Camp Nanticoke in central Pennsylvania—first as a camper, then camper-waiter and then, going into my second year of college, as a counselor. The pay was lousy, but you got free room and board and a chance to pass on whatever wisdom or mentoring that you received as a camper. Sports oriented, the camp was an athlete's haven, and not just for the campers; the counselors competed in their own intramural sports league.
Most of the long-time Nanticokians, as we called ourselves, returned for the comradery, the friendships we made there, including the romantic liaisons, an inevitable consequence when girls and boys are thrown together for seven weeks. Well, not exactly together, because a few hundred yards separated the two camps. We shared some of the same athletic facilities (pool, ball fields, tennis courts, etc) but the boys and girls bunks weren't in sight of each other. We did have mixers, and when a camper reached the age of thirteen, he/she was required to attend.
The socially precocious among us, young, good looking boys with the gift of gab and savoir faire, did quite well at those mixers. They knew just what to say and how to say it. Shy was a foreign word to them. They could approach the cutest among the girls and ask them to dance, no sweat. Later, you might see them smooching outside on the porch with some young lass they managed to charm. The not so precocious didn't have it so easy. I know, because I was one of them. We were the proverbial wallflowers, shy but no less hormonally desperate as the so-called studs. We'd languish on the sidelines and gawk with envy.
Becky Himmelfarb, one of the cutest girls at Nanticoke, was prime gawk material. From the D.C. suburbs, her family had money (her dad was a prominent heart surgeon). Like her male counterparts, she never lacked for confidence. People blessed with exceptionally good looks seldom do. When Becky walked by, people noticed, both the boys her age and the college-age male counselors who did their best to be discreet. She had short, raven-dark hair, deep blue eyes and a smile that couldn't help but draw smiles from others. She was a cute kid who had developed by age thirteen into a sexy, super-cute tween with a body an older girl might envy. All the sudden—or so it seemed from the time she was a pre-pubescent girl of twelve to the following summer—she sprouted boobs and curves and long, shapely legs. This was the summer before Eisenhower beat Stevenson for the second time. We were both the same age, old enough to attend the mixers. No surprise, Becky drew those budding stud-muffins like ants to sugar. She couldn't sit down for more than a minute before being asked to dance. A bunk buddy of mine dared me to ask her, bet me a dollar of his canteen money that I wouldn't have the cajones to venture forth across the dance floor and do what my social betters could do so effortlessly. It took me awhile to get up the nerve, but finally I did it, thinking I had nothing to lose and everything to gain, either a dance with Becky, extra canteen money or both. But I was wrong, because winning the money was small consolation for being summarily shot down and losing what little confidence I had.
Truth to tell, I wasn't exactly a young white chick's idea of a Rick Nelson/Paul Petersen type of lady killer. I was just average looking. Okay, maybe a tad below average, what with a long Semitic nose, braces on my teeth (not unusual, for several kids wore them), a few zits and kinky hair that not even that "greasy kid's stuff" could tame. Kids used to tease me about my hair: Louis "Brillo pad" Melman they called me. But I was a good athlete, fast, strong and well coordinated, and it was the summer before the fall I started lifting weights. If I couldn't have the face of handsome Steve Reeves, I figured I might be able to sculpt my already athletic body into something approaching his. Maybe then the ladies would take notice.
But that was in the future. In the summer of '56, I was a social zero, fantasizing along with others of my ilk about the Becky Himmelfarbs of the world, or at least of Camp Nanticoke. As for Becky, she hooked up with Gill Reamer, one of the handsome young dudes who never lacked for female attention. By summer's end, they were almost inseparable, holding hands at movie night (held in an outdoor arena called The Dell) and even during Friday night services. At mixers, they'd dance exclusively with each other, smooching on the dance floor during slow numbers like The Platters' "Only You." All I could do was sigh and say, "It must be nice."
By the following summer, Gill and Becky were being called the "sweethearts of Nanticoke." Becky looked more appealing than ever, more filled out, with longer hair and a "wiggle in the walk and a giggle in the talk," as the song went. My newly grown muscles impressed my bunk mates and boosted my confidence—that is, until history repeated itself at the mixers. Becky was off limits, but there were plenty of other girls to choose from, not in Miss Becky's league but close. Like her, most of them shot me down, though, unlike the previous summer, I kept coming back for more. By lowering my standards in the looks department, I managed to score a date for the Summer End dance with Gilda Potash, cerebral and very nice. Beauty-wise, she was a 5 at best. What the hell? I was no matinee idol either.
Fast-forward to the summer of '62. I was nineteen and returning to Camp Nanticoke for the first time as a counselor. I stood a solid five-foot ten, with a couple of bodybuilding trophies under my belt (just local contests, but I was proud of them). And, thanks to bi-monthly applications of hair relaxer, my Brillo pad hair had morphed into something I could now style without breaking combs. Some zits remained, but my nose didn't look as big because my face was fuller. Becky was there too, now a counselor herself, looking great, traipsing around in her Nanticoke Staff white sports blouse and blue shorts. Word had it that she was unattached. I knew that she and Gill had broken up a few summers back. Subsequent boyfriends in subsequent summers followed, and I suspected it wouldn't be long before she'd hook up with someone else. She was still my dream girl, perhaps even more so, desirable and unattainable.
She said hi whenever we crossed paths, the same as she did to everybody she knew. I was nobody special to her, just another admiring male Nanticokian. Just as well, because I didn't return to make it with Becky Himmelfarb. Being a counselor to young teens had its own rewards, as did the athletics, showing off my new-found hitting power in softball and running stealthily through enemy territory in night games of capture the flag.
And then there were those mixers. It was strange watching boys that reminded me of my young teen self, the not so good looking among them either getting shot down or too shy to approach any girl among the bevy of comely and less than comely lasses that sat giggling on wooden benches across the dance floor. Our first one was held in early July, a couple weeks into the '62 camp season. Several bunk-loads of campers were there, including Becky's own barely post-pubescent charges—the shy ones eyeing each other warily from across the room, the more socially precocious shuffling and twisting on the hard-wood dance floor in the cavernous, dimly lit confines of Douglas Hall, essentially a big red barn used for everything from mixers and camp plays to indoor activities (like arts and crafts) during inclement weather. One of the guy counselors armed with a stack of 45s and a horn-loaded sound system acted as deejay. Seeing Becky triggered flashbacks of that time she shot me down. I could still see her shaking her pretty head no, could still feel the sting of that rejection. But the angst I felt while approaching her then was history, so I had no qualms about crossing the room to ask her how it felt to now be a counselor. Our deejay had just started spinning The Dovells' "Bristol Stomp."
"Hi Louis, asking me to dance are you?" she said. I laughed, thinking she was joking.
"Well, I—ˮ
"Great, because I've got this pent-up frustration I need to work off. These kids can drive you nuts."
If only it had been this easy back in '56, I thought as we Bristol-stomped in our way around the floor. If this was an actual dance, I didn't know the steps and neither did she. We did what the kids were doing, shaking and bouncing and twisting as best we could to the beat—she in her knee-length denim skirt, me in my long khakis.
"Thanks, I needed that," she said, wiping the sweat from her forehead. Our deejay kept spinning his 45s while we talked on the sidelines, raising our voices to be heard over the music. The conversation centered mostly on being counselors, then strayed into what our lives were like outside of camp, college, home life, etc.
Minutes later, when I sensed our talk winding down, I said, "I wish we could have danced together back in '56."
She flashed a curious look."So why didn't we?"
"Don't you remember? I asked and you said nada."
