Summer Memories - Three Things Thursday

Camp Seely

1. Camp Seely, in Crestline, California, is the summer camp of my younger years. My grandfather, a Free Will Baptist minister in the Los Angeles area, usually brought as many grandkids as possible with him to this camp every summer. I think I went most years between first and seventh grade.

This is a picture of the lodge area where we would have our morning and evening services. One of the fun things to do at camp every year was to hike to Heart Rock. It was very pretty with cold, cold water and to a little kid it was incredible that there could be a heart shaped rock.

Going to this camp for so many summers is definitely one of the highlights of my childhood.


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Part One

Part Two

Part Three

2. The above represents my best efforts at scanning an old-fashioned camp picture of mine. I don't know how many of you ever experienced having a group photo taken using one of those big rotating cameras. If you click link below each photo, it will take you to Flickr where you can roll over the first two and see notes which show you all the members of my family and a couple of friends from camp. I think it is unusual for a kid to go to camp with so many family members present. I always shared a cabin with my grandma, my grandpa always had a camp job--dean, snack shop, something--and for two years, my mom was the camp cook. Note: We are all dressed up because at Camp Seely, the Free Will Baptist version in the 70's, was very conservative. Girls and boys were completely segregated. They didn't swim at the same time. You were not allowed onto the other gender's side of camp. And, you dressed up for evening services. Every night. No exceptions.

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3. Ah, here I am, in a very BOLD red and white striped shirt. I loved that shirt. When my school picture was taken just a couple of months later, I was wearing this shirt. I don't remember very well the girl I am standing next to. It was fun to see people year after year. Sometimes, I would get to see some of the camp kids at the monthly area youth meetings. We meet once a month at a roller skating rink. After an hour or so of roller skating, we would all congregate for devotions.

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Like I said, Camp Seely is one of the highlights of my youth excepting the nightly that was the altar call where, in true fire-and-brimstone tradition, we were told nightly to repent now or it might be too late! Those altar calls, along with the whole cold war fear and too many episodes of the Night Gallery led to many, many nightmares and much stress for much of my childhood. Somehow though, I was always able to separate it from what I thought about God and it never put me off of Christianity.

Anyway, that is my contribution to Three Things Thursday this week, a meme of Sheila's she plays faithfully every week. I play occasionally and this week, with its theme of summer memories was too good to resist!