Summer Camp; Pedro Pan Style

MEMORIES OF SUMMER CAMP

T

he summer of 1962 was a time that brought total change to my life, as well as to the lives of all who were at the camp, when we were forced to grow from being teenagers to being a semi-adult in his (her) teens. Gone were family and lifelong friends, as well as any kind of familiar surroundings. I could no longer go find my Saturday and Sunday gang to enjoy the park or the movies. I have to quickly add that those who were in charge of this growing monster called Camp Matecumbe, went well beyond any reasonable expectations in the care and nurture of us. They really did the impossible and, with a somewhat limited budget, they made us feel welcome and at home. We were given clothes in which to hang around the camp, teachers so that our schooling would not fall too far behind, natural classroom settings under the trees and weekly trips to downtown Miami and to Crandon Park and the beach. I remember Richard’s Basement, a store where with the few dollars we were given as an allowance, we could actually get some bargains. There was this bright, mint green shirt I bought at one time… but I guess that one better gets filed under “experiment” since, after I actually had a good look at it in daylight, I never really had the guts to put it on.

Several of the tents had “pets”. We were actually on the then fringes of the everglades, with all the attending wildlife one tends to find (perhaps, and sadly said, used to find) there. Minus the current pythons; these are an unfortunate late addition to the habitat. At one time, under the wood planks of our tent, we had a wildcat which gave birth to a litter. Needless to say, we admired from a distance; also fed the mother from the same distance. There were stories of snakes, “giant” spiders, etc… The only babies I do not remember coming across were alligators. Luckily, these were still keeping to the further reaches, where we could not bother them.

We had our classes, we played baseball and basketball –of sorts- as well as imitation American football. I remember there was this one guy –can’t recall his name- who had belonged to a private club in Havana, where they had had a football team and he had been a part of this team. He did his absolute best to initiate us into the mysteries of this sport (remember from where we had come, and under what circumstances) and, I swear, we did our best to try and fall into a formation… of sorts. However, after starting a play (after all, who would start with “jot, jot, jot, cuatro, izquierda” For my English speaking friends who are reading, you can read this as "hut, hut, hut, four left"), this poor guy would usually end up hitting his head against a tree, as we went everywhere but where we were supposed to go.

There was also a swimming pool. This was important, since there was no air conditioning in the tents or the cabanas, and the pool served as a cooling medium (Miami, Everglades, summer…it was hot and humid). We had daily splash parties and swimming competitions. Besides, until the new buildings were built sometime in late summer, the shower situation was truly not good. There were about 30 showers for some 400 guys… I won’t even mention the bathroom issue… I will leave that to your imagination. Being a boy’s camp, and surrounded by nature… when in a hurry… Oh well!! Luckily we were young and very pliable to circumstances.

All in all, it was a summer for memories. Often at night, we would sit around the central area and have an impromptu “jam” session. Since we had no instruments but were far enough from civilization to have no complaining neighbors, we would use the (in)famous comb-in-paper for a lead instrument, and the metal backed chairs would double as drums and bongos. Hand sized rocks would be the rhythm section, against the flat of the metal, and hands would beat the bass percussion (read: bongo) against the wooden part of the seat. We would then harmonize along. Actually, after a while it began to sound pretty good. There was one guy, Alberto, who had been a drummer in Cuba and he actually had the sticks and a good rhythm to go along with them. Sometime that summer I even ran into a couple of “fans” who used to listen to a radio show of which I was a part in Cuba. They were very excited; I was very surprised.

Then, there were the almost-every-Saturday night dances at the girl’s Homestead Refuge. These homes were different. There were about 15-20 homes with a husband/wife team in each. Usually, the couple would have a daughter of their own living in, and would serve as foster parents to about 6-8 girls in each home. My sister was in a home there, so this gave me an advantage when it came time to pick the boys to go dancing. I always had the excuse that I had to see my sister… it worked and I usually got in the bus. Besides, I did dance pretty well, and this was important because we always had to show up the guys from the other camps. It was a “guy” thing, you know?

At some point in the summer, I met with my girlfriend from Cuba. Ours had been a Romeo and Juliet romance. She was my first “novia” - the first serious girlfriend, at age 13 – and had left Cuba about 6 months before we did. I remember waking up at 4 am the morning I knew they were leaving, and actually hearing the car go by the corner of our house (they lived a block away)… I was really impacted. Anyway, we met again that summer in Miami and relived our romance a little bit. We would again be separated and this time, for a good 40 years, 5 marriages (between the two of us), as well as several children and some lifetimes. It was a good reunion, but we both realized the torch had long ago become a good memory.

We did, at camp, have a period of 2-3 weeks that was truly underwhelming. As mentioned before, in a camp originally intended for about 125 kids, there were about 450-500 “guests” as a day in, day out average. So… when one guy broke out with the chicken pox, guess what? Most everyone who had not had it as a child came down with it. Yours truly included. A second cabin (about 40 beds per cabin, as opposed to 12-16 per tent) had to be made into an infirmary, in order to keep everyone who had the pox as far away from the rest as possible. Everywhere I touched my body, it itched. Later I found out that, because we were mostly between 15 and 18 years old, we really were on the fringes of being too old and having this become a very serious issue. But this was later; then, we just felt lousy, bored, itchy and all around miserable.

It was not all fun and games; there were the occasional fights (boys will be boys…), and there were the very real and difficult remembrance moments, where any one of us would suddenly realize that the probability of never seeing family again –or for several years, in the best of cases- was a very real one and this realization was conducive to a real down and out funk. Often, when this happened we would go out into the "jungle" by ourselves, just to get some private moments and get through these emotions.

Then, there were the constant rumors around camp, as to where we would be sent. Sometimes we would be readied to go to a certain location, just to have something happen at the last minute and the relocation would be postponed or cancelled, as had happened in my case.

Around late August I was called in and told to make myself ready; that I, along with 8 other children, would go to a farm home in Des Moines, Iowa, a place we had never heard of. After some prep time, it turned out that the home we were going to occupy was burned to the ground about a week prior to occupancy. The cause of the fire was never really identified, and we came to think (I hope unfairly) that the locals did not really want incoming exiled kids who might possibly have horns and tails.

The Good Lord has many ways of working his will. This change in plans, in the long run, became a huge (with a capital H) advantage for me. When I was finally placed with a foster family, they turned out to be incredibly loving and caring, as was their community. More on this some other time.

Around late August, my sister went to New York (Tarrytown) to live with our aunt, uncle and the cousins. They had left Cuba in 1960, two years before us and were more or less established, with my uncle in a good job. Not extremely well paid, but good overall benefits, considering there were 4 –and now, with my sister, 5- children in the household. I chose not to go in order to minimize the additional impact; it was better to have my sister go live with them, in family. We would not see each other again for some 30 months.

September came around and I remember having the feeling of uncertainty regarding my relocation. Every day I would go to the main office and ask about my “ticket out”. Don’t misunderstand; this did not mean I hated Camp. It had become my home and the kids and adults-in-charge my family. But we also knew this was a transient set up and that in order to get ahead, we had to go to a normal environment, learn English, go to a regular High School and join the mainstream of society. Sometime in late September, I was called in to be told that I had to begin to get ready to leave Camp Matecumbe.

I had to get ready to go, to abandon that world in which we had been living and which was somewhat surreal; Chicharo, Negue, Douglas, Luis, Alberto; the teachers and counselors… especially one female teacher about whom many of the guys dreamed, sometimes in our sleep and sometimes while awake… then, there were many others only whose faces I remember, who had become friends and family during this summer, and who would fade into the past as life went on, like an old and very dear picture that has faded over the years as we hold it over and over, in order to try to hang on to and relive those special moments. With some of the guys I have come into contact again many years later; others, unfortunately, have been lost along the way.

This crazy, sad, happy, beautiful and confusing summer, is a preface to my once again breaking an established life routine, leaving camp and coming into my new foster home, city and school. I was shown where it was on the map and, when I looked at its location, it seemed to me that I would be on the other side of the world.