Stories from the 50's
-By Bob Binstock
Actually, the play that had
"Down with the Big E...Thrown him out of
Bide-A-Wee" was from the 1950s. I know because I wrote the show, a
"counselor's play." The words to Down With the Big E were set
to the tune
of the Volga Boatmen's Song (Russian). In the larger play Lou did get
thrown out of Bide-A-Wee, and eventually everyone missed him. Near the
end
of the show, the entire cast sung (to the tune of We Ain't Got Dames
--from South Pacific:
We got sunshine on the ball field, we got moonlight on the Lake, we got
chicken every
Sunday, we get french fries we get steak, we got volley ball and ping
pong,
we got lots of things to do, WHAT AIN'T WE GOT, WE AIN'T GOT LOU! ...
and so on.
The play also included an intercamp game at
Interlaken which was owned then
by Joe Kupcinet (brother of the long-time Sun-Times columnist Irv
Kupcinet-- Kup's Column).
During lunch at Interlaken, some Interlaken campers sang (to the tune of
Shoeless Joe
from Hannibal, MO -- from the show Damn Yankees, which opened in the
early 1950s):
Who came along to found our camp? Greasy Joe from Chi-ca-go!
It's all coming back thanks to Tommy Lewy's note about the 1940s
(1950s).
Story #2
In 1952 when I was a CIT, Kawaga had its first
event with a girl's camp, a dance in the Rec Hall for CITs only.
The reason was that Lou was going out with the owner of a girl's camp,
Gwen Griffin, and they thought they'd give
it a try (this was in a period between Evelyn and Dag). At the dance I made
early contact with the camp director's
daughter, Gay, and eventually invited her outside for a
"walk." Subsequently, Lou and I double-dated.
We'd ride out in his big Buick and meet the mother
and daughter at a restaurant.
When Interlaken came to play the Senior ball team some weeks later, I
came to bat in the fifth inning of
a scoreless tie with the bases loaded. Lou called time, marched down
from the scoreboard, pulled me
aside, and whispered in my ear, "Hit one for Gay." He was
really into it. After fouling off about 10 pitches
down the left field line (I didn't want any fielder to be able to make a
play) I finally clipped the branch of a
pine tree in fair territory for a ground-rule double; we went on to
score ten runs that inning and win the game 10-0.
A sequel to the "Gay" relationship came
up at the end of camp when the counselors were meeting to determine the
end-of-camp trophy selections. According to my informant-counselor, the
Senior Spirit trophy came down to a two-man contest between me and
Charlie Lask. One of Charlie's supporters had been the counselor in
charge of the dance with the girl's camp. He argued vehemently against
my candidacy on the grounds that I had violated the rules by taking Gay
outside the Rec Hall, and that this was against the Kawaga Spirit. On
the other hand, my supporters said that that my taking Gay outside was a
strong argument for me to receive the Senior Spirit trophy. After all,
they said, the trophy is for "the camper who best exemplifies the
spirit of manhood through camping." What, they argued, could better
exemplify the spirit of manhood than taking a girl out of a dance for a
"walk"? Charlie got the trophy. But I got Gay, and went out
with her a lot during the next year back in Chicago.
Bob Binstock
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Kawaga
Alumni Association |
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