As someone who was only ever a camper at Chanco, I have a much different perspective on the Chanco experience than do those who were counselors, especially those who were counselors for years and years, longer than they were ever campers. A lot of the in-jokes that might make sense to any counselor who ever encountered this website seem fuzzy at best to me. Instead, I have the perspective of one who was always a camper, and never quite knew what was going on when we campers were in bed or otherwise not around. Sometimes, though, the counselors would make veiled references to these things, and we campers would pick up on half of a story even as the rest of the story was forever hidden from us. This is a story like that, and therefore, it's not complete. I can only offer my incomplete perspective as a camper who was around for it, but never quite knew what was going on.

One thing about the camper/counselor relationship that I definitely remember from my days as a camper, especially in my younger years,  continue reading »

This incident occurred during my last year at Chanco, Senior High Conference in 1992. We were a pretty boisterous group that year, and maybe nothing proves that more than what happened one day about halfway through the session, when we were served a barbecue lunch. Being the helpful people that they were, the dining hall staff placed bottles of Texas Pete on every lunch table. Most people probably know exactly what that stuff is, but in case anyone reading this doesn't know, it's a hot and spicy barbecue sauce, like ordinary barbecue sauce combined with tabasco sauce. Anyway, having bottles of Texas Pete at the table seems like the sort of thing that no one would think twice about. I'm sure the dining hall staff didn't think twice about it. But what they didn't bargain for was just how nutty a bunch of teenage kids will get when away at camp for a week.

I don't know who did it first--  continue reading »

First of all, let me preface this entry by saying that it's 3 in the morning and I'm extremely tired. I don't have work in the morning, thank God, but I should nonetheless be in bed. But this site and Chanco have been foremost in my thoughts for a couple of days, and despite the fact that I have a lot of other writing projects that I should be working on, this blog will not leave me alone and let me sleep peacefully. So, inspired by a comment on Brian Counselor's profile page, I feel the need to tell a couple of stories from my first year at camp, first session, 1986.

Here's the comment in question: "As Program Director, I think my imagination was bigger than my ability to do the job. I hated doing the announcements, but I totally got carried away with the evening program. [...] Earlier I laughed at Dave Davenport’s picture of him scratching his head as he talked to me when I was program Director (1986 Photo Album). I think I had some kind of crazy outdoor game going on every other night that summer. Later my little brother Cooper (now a pilot for US Air) told me it was the only summer he remembers that we almost never went inside."

Boy, did this bring back a strong memory. And it is of an outdoor game that, sure enough, was crazy. I don't really remember all of the details,  continue reading »

During the 7 years it takes to get from age 10 to age 16, a lot of things change in a person's life--so much more than changes in any given 7-year period of adulthood, or at least that's how it seems. One big thing that changed for me was my attitude, as well as those of the boys around me, towards girls. The first summer I went to camp, when I was 10 years old, the boys in my campsite and I presented a united front: girls were annoying and we wanted little to do with them. This was an easy stance to take, and in my own prepubescent infinite wisdom, I never imagined that I'd change my mind about it.

The first year I was at camp, when I was 10, my campsite (Luke II) staged a raid on a girls' campsite. This involved all of us waking up in the dead of night--probably really only at midnight or thereabouts, which seems incredibly early to me now, but would have been insanely late by the standards of an 10 year old with a 9 PM bedtime when he was at home. We then snuck down the path past the bathhouse, very quietly and with no flashlights at all. Once we arrived in the girls' campsite  continue reading »