First Years at Camp

 Written by

Conni Berns

Nov 27, 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first time Mom went to Moss Lake Camp for Girls to teach Ballet she refused to leave us in Cincinnati.  She would not go for the summer and have Tyll and me wait elsewhere.  We were a package deal.  We came with a sitter (I believe that was the first year Mrs. Van Holle, Suzanne Farrell’s Aunt was our sitter), and we stayed at the nurse’s cabin on camp grounds.  It didn’t work very well.  We had to stay out of camper sight, keep off the daily camp areas, and be “unnoticeable” .  Then we had to be at meals when campers ate, and follow their rules of etiquette.  Mom found this worked not at all well.

The second year, and from then on, she found a rental in Inlet or Eagle Bay and commuted the 2 or 3 miles to work each day.  The problem was transportation.  There was none. 

The first year she bought a scooter.  It had two wheels, and ran on gas.  She was quite capable riding it, and she zoomed around with her feet on this little platform, carrying groceries between them when needed.  When we were eager to go to a movie, she would carry one of us in front of her about 50 yards ahead, go back get the other, jockey that one fifty yards ahead of the first, and hop on down the road til we got where we wanted to go.

Dr.  George Longstaff owned the camp and was a Dentist.  He insisted the teachers and instructors all be experts.  My best friend’s dad had been the Olympic fencing coach.  He was always looking for the best. Dr.  Longstaff decided Mom needed to learn to drive a car, so she could buy a car and “move up” to a more acceptable type of transportation.  I am sure he was not so satisfied with the sight of her coming to work each year on a little putt-putt scooter.

Mom would have driving lessons at any time of the day when she was at camp.  She would then descibe to us what she had done, and what she had learned.  It fascinated us.  “I don’t understand,”  she said, “He makes me drive backwards all the time.  He said if I can do it looking backward, forward will be easy.  I have driven all the camp roads backward, turned around, driven in circles, it is getting crazy.”  Finally she got out on the public roads and started driving forwards.

That’s when she explained another tecnique.  “In the mountains, on the very sharp turns, especially on narrow roads without any center lines, you can drive in the middle of the road, but you must honk the horn loudly.”

Anyone that has driven with my mom knows she had a unique way of driving.  She drove aggressively and was excellent at parallel parking.  She was not afraid of driving the larger cars, because she learned in Dr. Longstaff’s station wagon, “woody.”  She had excellent reflexes, as I noted while I was learning, and she would smash her hand on the dash yelling, “Brake!”  before I even saw the stop sign or the car stopping in front of me.  I always wondered if The Doctor had done that, too.  No, I cannot imagine him doing ANYTHING with a raised voice.  Raised eyebrows, yes.

She did take the driving test in New York after tutoring from the Doctor, and passed.  She then bought a car from a neighbor in Eagle Bay.  He was a car dealer in Syracuse, and she gave him $600 and he came back with a green 2 door Plymouth.  We had that car for a long time, and it served Mom well. 

Dr. Longstaff must have been a good teacher.  Mom never had a major accident, but she was constantly stopped fot speeding.  We would sit horrified in the back of the Plymouth, holding our breaths.  She began her story, “I just come from the old country, and there we have no speed limit, and I am so new to this all, …” She used the same tactic after she had been here thirty years.  I cannot recall when she EVER paid or received a ticket!!!!! She always charmed the officer out of it.