In addition to spending time at the swimming pool, partaking of delicious summer foods, and enjoying other summertime activities, experiencing a summer camp created anticipation and made many good memories.
Camp Lasater was a Boy Scout Camp located near Walkertown. In the photos, the boys are just arriving, getting settled and lining up with their papers, working on tents, taking a hike…many hikes.
Camp Raven Knob came after Camp Lasater, and here the scouts are involved in the Order of the Arrow ceremony.
Camp Hanes was the YMCA camp for boys, and here is a group of Winston-Salem Journal employees having a staff day at Camp Hanes.
Now camps are not just for boys. There was Camp Betty Hastings, the YWCA camp near Walkertown, and Camp Shirley Rogers for girl scouts. Every day started with a salute to the flag.
Girls had choices of activities, such as basket-making, shuffleboard, swimming and socializing around the record player.
Summertime is great for reading, just for the fun of it. Miss Reid, librarian at the public library, helped children select books and made reading fun. Even looking at the pictures could be fun too. And if you couldn’t get to the library, the bookmobile brought a steady supply of books to you, and took them back.
There were serious students in town, such as these young men who came to Governor’s School at Salem College. Boys and girls came from all over to expand their minds for a few months.
While summertime included a lot of play, many teenagers had jobs. All swimming pools needed lifeguards, so boys and girls took the required courses to work as a lifeguard.
Working at the hospital, as a candy striper, was popular with the girls.
Some people scored jobs in a store, such as this young man working in a hardware store.
In North Carolina, there were jobs working in tobacco on local farms. The tobacco had already been planted, so summertime was filled with priming (or picking) the leaves, stringing the tobacco so that it could be put into the tobacco barn for curing, then checking the temperature regularly.
The fire burned day and night, so someone always slept at the barn, and usually several people slept there and took shifts.
When the last barn was in, it was time to celebrate with a chicken stew for all the hands.
And, eventually the tobacco made its way to the tobacco warehouse, and to the tobacco company, where college students worked and inspected the cigarette packs during their summer vacations.
Enjoy the rest of your summer and stay cool!
Stay tuned for the next post on September 1st.
I remember going to Camp Shirley Rogers at Roaring Gap, and Camp Shirley Rogers! Wonderful memories!
Worked my uncle farm in summer. Prime tobacco and picked tomatoes. Pay was a Pepsi and all the field corn we could eat. Highlight was a swim in the cow pond!