Big and little things
10/05/19 05:20
I’ve been watching from a distance as friends in Montana are struggling with how to keep their beloved church camp open. It is a very important place to me. I grew up participating in church camp every summer. The memories of camp shared have stirred my own memories. I’m not one to use Facebook as a way to communicate my thoughts and ideas. I simply don’t trust that particular forum with my personal stories, so I haven’t written in that place the kind of memories that others have shared, but I have been thinking about how I might contribute in a meaningful way to help those who are working so hard to keep the camp open.
Part of my reality is that personally I am more invested in seeing what I can do to foster a new generation of campers than in sharing my nostalgia for times that have passed. Making sure that my grandchildren have the experience of grand camp this summer is a high priority for me. Creating shared memories with them is important to me. That doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t have memories or that I don’t know that sharing memories can be meaningful. There is a lot that our memories can teach us. I’m just aware that it will take more than a sentimental old fool to keep a church camp vital in decades to come.
One image that comes to my mind, when I think of being a child at church camp is washing silverware with my father. A camp tradition is having chores that need to be done. In those days all campers were part of work teams that helped keep the camp running. Among the chores were cleaning the shower house, cutting and stacking firewood, setting tables and serving food, and three teams to clean up after every meal: dishes, silverware, and pots and pans. There were three sets of sinks for the three different crews. The silverware tubs were on the porch. Three tubs were used: soapy water to wash, hot clean water to rinse, and water with bleach added to sterilize. We’d wash the silverware by hand, transfers to the hot water, from which we fished out the silverware with a utensil because the water was too hot to use bare hands and time the silverware in the disinfectant before fishing it out onto clean towels where it was sorted into containers to air dry. My dad loved the washing station. Many times he explained to me how to use my fingers to carefully feel for dirt on the silverware while our hands were immersed in soapy water. He would tell stories of washing dishes when he was in college. We’d laugh and sing songs as we worked.
Doing chores with my father revealed a side of this that we didn’t often get to see. He’d sometimes do dishes at home, but most days he would have eaten breakfast and left for work before we got out of bed. Our big family meal was at noon, when he’d come home, but at the end of one hour he had to get back to work and he often left before the dishes were done.
At camp, however, everybody participated in the chores after every meal. He was always cheerful about chores and tried to make sure that whatever chore we were assigned was done well and completely. I think that it was as we were washing silverware one day that my father taught me the quote of Laurence Bell, founder of the Bell Aircraft Corporation, who said, “Show me a man who cannot bother to do little things and I’ll show you a man who cannot be trusted to do big things.” Doing the little chores, like making sure that every speck of food was cleaned off of every piece of silverware was presented to me as the mark of the character of a person.
My dad operated in circles of power and prestige. He ran his own company. He managed an operation at the airport and ran a farm machinery business at the same time, always balancing two businesses and serving his customers’ needs. He was a member of the board of trustees of a college. He served as moderator of the statewide conference of our church. He had held every leadership position in our local congregation. People knew him by name. He was boss to his employees. But he thought it was important to teach his children how to wash silverware properly.
Once, when my “job” was sweeping the feed warehouse, I complained about the job and asked him if I could do something that was more important. He told me that there wasn’t anything that was more important than keeping the warehouse clean. “Every job is important, or we wouldn’t do it.”
This kind of memory, while empowering for me, isn’t the key to the future of our church camps, however. Times have changed. The silverware needs to be washed in a commercial dish washer to maintain the state-mandated kitchen standards. There are still camp chores, but the insurance company won’t allow children to use two-person crosscut saws or splitting mauls for their camp chores. The jobs we do to work side by side with our children and grandchildren have to be different. The cost of providing for a week of family camp is a lot higher than was the case when we were children. Families when considering what to do with their vacations, frequently choose destinations with full amenities. You don’t have to clean the bathrooms when you go to Disneyland for your vacation.
I still firmly believe that church camps have much to offer to future generations of the church. I believe that it is worth the effort to maintain and preserve the camps for those who come after us. I grieve with every camp that is closed. But I also know that the future is not in my hands. I don’t have much time for the Facebook group that is only people my age being sentimental about our past. I’d rather stand by those folks, mostly ones who are younger than me, who are building a new future for the children of the church.
Part of my reality is that personally I am more invested in seeing what I can do to foster a new generation of campers than in sharing my nostalgia for times that have passed. Making sure that my grandchildren have the experience of grand camp this summer is a high priority for me. Creating shared memories with them is important to me. That doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t have memories or that I don’t know that sharing memories can be meaningful. There is a lot that our memories can teach us. I’m just aware that it will take more than a sentimental old fool to keep a church camp vital in decades to come.
One image that comes to my mind, when I think of being a child at church camp is washing silverware with my father. A camp tradition is having chores that need to be done. In those days all campers were part of work teams that helped keep the camp running. Among the chores were cleaning the shower house, cutting and stacking firewood, setting tables and serving food, and three teams to clean up after every meal: dishes, silverware, and pots and pans. There were three sets of sinks for the three different crews. The silverware tubs were on the porch. Three tubs were used: soapy water to wash, hot clean water to rinse, and water with bleach added to sterilize. We’d wash the silverware by hand, transfers to the hot water, from which we fished out the silverware with a utensil because the water was too hot to use bare hands and time the silverware in the disinfectant before fishing it out onto clean towels where it was sorted into containers to air dry. My dad loved the washing station. Many times he explained to me how to use my fingers to carefully feel for dirt on the silverware while our hands were immersed in soapy water. He would tell stories of washing dishes when he was in college. We’d laugh and sing songs as we worked.
Doing chores with my father revealed a side of this that we didn’t often get to see. He’d sometimes do dishes at home, but most days he would have eaten breakfast and left for work before we got out of bed. Our big family meal was at noon, when he’d come home, but at the end of one hour he had to get back to work and he often left before the dishes were done.
At camp, however, everybody participated in the chores after every meal. He was always cheerful about chores and tried to make sure that whatever chore we were assigned was done well and completely. I think that it was as we were washing silverware one day that my father taught me the quote of Laurence Bell, founder of the Bell Aircraft Corporation, who said, “Show me a man who cannot bother to do little things and I’ll show you a man who cannot be trusted to do big things.” Doing the little chores, like making sure that every speck of food was cleaned off of every piece of silverware was presented to me as the mark of the character of a person.
My dad operated in circles of power and prestige. He ran his own company. He managed an operation at the airport and ran a farm machinery business at the same time, always balancing two businesses and serving his customers’ needs. He was a member of the board of trustees of a college. He served as moderator of the statewide conference of our church. He had held every leadership position in our local congregation. People knew him by name. He was boss to his employees. But he thought it was important to teach his children how to wash silverware properly.
Once, when my “job” was sweeping the feed warehouse, I complained about the job and asked him if I could do something that was more important. He told me that there wasn’t anything that was more important than keeping the warehouse clean. “Every job is important, or we wouldn’t do it.”
This kind of memory, while empowering for me, isn’t the key to the future of our church camps, however. Times have changed. The silverware needs to be washed in a commercial dish washer to maintain the state-mandated kitchen standards. There are still camp chores, but the insurance company won’t allow children to use two-person crosscut saws or splitting mauls for their camp chores. The jobs we do to work side by side with our children and grandchildren have to be different. The cost of providing for a week of family camp is a lot higher than was the case when we were children. Families when considering what to do with their vacations, frequently choose destinations with full amenities. You don’t have to clean the bathrooms when you go to Disneyland for your vacation.
I still firmly believe that church camps have much to offer to future generations of the church. I believe that it is worth the effort to maintain and preserve the camps for those who come after us. I grieve with every camp that is closed. But I also know that the future is not in my hands. I don’t have much time for the Facebook group that is only people my age being sentimental about our past. I’d rather stand by those folks, mostly ones who are younger than me, who are building a new future for the children of the church.