Jean

During the summers of ’59, ’60, and ’61, I was on the staff of a religious boys-camp in northeastern Maryland.
It was on a Chesapeake Bay tributary, and was a great place.
I was a Counselor-in-Training (CIT); only age 15-to-17 those summers.
The Counselor-in-Training program was aimed at making experienced campers like me into valuable camp-staffers.
How I got hired is anybody’s guess. I was sort of a misfit — mostly because I wasn’t religious. —I always say it was my ability to sling words on the application.
In 1960 there was a girl on the camp-staff; her name was Jean.
She was skinny and only semi-attractive, but she was the only girl on the staff.
There were others, like the camp-director’s wife, for example. But they were all attached or spoken-for. Jean was single. (The camp nurse was also female, but she was a bespectacled drudge.)
Jean supervised the camp dining-hall.
As the only girl in camp, she flirted profusely.
1960 was the worst year I ever worked at that camp.
I worked as a stablehand in the horsemanship program.
The long-time previous camp senior-staff had quit, and was replaced by the stodgy guy that hired me.
That guy quit after two summers (only one summer with me; ’59), and was replaced by zealots from Delaware-County Christian School near Philadelphia — people who apparently convinced the head-honcho they could do a better job.
They didn’t. What they did was set themselves apart from the camp. They let the camp run itself, since it could.
What they did was be on vacation the entire summer from schoolwork.
Their stupidest move was taking over the camp speedboat. No one else was allowed to use it. They’d lazily while away the summer-days cruising Chesapeake Bay, and water-skiing fellow senior-staffers.
Those Delaware-County Christian School guys lasted only one summer. They were a bunch of lazy layabouts the head-honcho saw through; which was good for him, since he was usually a jerk.
Meanwhile, in the camp itself, there were a bunch of zealots from Philadelphia College of Bible (now renamed Cairn University), who considered themselves holier-than-thou.
As a CIT, I shared a cabin with one of these guys. Our campers stayed in cabins, 10 to a cabin, with a supervising Counselor, and sometimes a CIT. (I think there were only four CITs, but many more cabins, perhaps 15 or so.)
It was awful; that guy was always loudly badmouthing me, passing judgment, and declaring me “of-the-Devil.”
Toward the end of the summer I got switched to a porcine red-head who was weird, totally unfit to be a counselor. I had to protect my campers from this pervert.
So 1960 was the worst summer I ever had at camp.
Jean was the bright-spot.
I wonder if Jean is still alive, and if she found the good mate she deserved? — A bright-and-shining beacon amidst madness.