A friend on Facebook recently posted a link to Camp Mattatuck (http://www.campmattatuck.org/) the Boy Scout camp associated with the Connecticut Rivers Council of the BSA. This camp was established over 80 years ago (1939) and is in the next town from where I grew up. I’d like to take the opportunity to add to several other posts I’ve written over the past years as they all have links to this place. When I had the opportunity to attend Camp Mattatuck it was in the early days of the camp, over 60 years ago. Since then, there have been many changes to the camp (adding sailboats and canoes and other facilities), but the camp still occupies the same 500 acres of property that it did when I was there. Here is a map of the central part of the camp where some of the stories below took place.
[Camp Mattatuck]
Scouting Skills
There are a number of skills
which I learned or improved upon as a result of my scouting experience. Here
are a few of them:
Hiking – Although there
are 500 acres at Camp Mattatuck, I never hiked much on that property. That was
an activity that we usually did as part of our local troop. I’ve written about
one such experience here.
I also on one occasion hiked the blue trail from Wolcott all the way to
Mattatuck and I mentioned that in an earlier posting.
Swimming – When I wrote
about all the places that I went swimming
in my youth, I realize that I forgot about swimming in Lake Kenosha. But that
was the location of one of my more memorable swims. The BSA at that time
offered a mile swim badge and I received that badge during my time at
Mattatuck. In order to swim a mile, you swam back and forth between the boat
dock and the wall under the diving boards (see “y” on the above map). The depth
under the boards is too deep for you to touch bottom, but the area by the docks
is much shallower. You are not allowed to touch the bottom at all during the
swimming of the mile. So, there is a camp leader standing on the dock to ensure
that you do not “cheat”. That person also counts all the laps – as I recall,
it’s more than 30 times and it’s easy to lose count when swimming for an hour
or so. But I was successful.
Gun range and archery –
One of the offerings at Mattatuck is learning how to use a bow and arrow on the
archery range and how to shoot a gun (22 caliber rifle) on the firing range.
But those are not skills I ever used much in later life. We did have neighbor
who went archery hunting and his sons also had bows and arrows which they could
use to shoot a target in their backyard. But I didn’t have the muscle tone to
pull back a bow very well so only did it once or twice with him.
I did go hunting once in my life,
so my practice on the range at Mattatuck proved valuable. On Thanksgiving
weekend in my sophomore year of college I went home with a friend as all the
dorms were closed for the long weekend and it was too far to travel back to
Connecticut from Michigan just for a few days. My friend’s father checked me out
that I knew proper technique (thanks to Camp Mattatuck I did) and I got to
borrow his .257 Remington (and his father’s license and hunting outfit). His
father didn’t think we’d get anything (it was deer season) as he’d been out
hunting on the property they owned (a quarter-section or 160 acres) everyday
and had not even seen anything to shoot at. But my friend and I went out on the
last day of hunting season and I ended up getting a buck (one-shot Al!) Everyone
was surprised. His dad dressed it and hung it up in the garage and the next day
before going back to college I got to eat part of the heart and liver (the rest
was not ready to cook yet). I still have the tail and broken horns from that
long ago event.
A Memorable Fall
The incident I remember most happened
on my last time camping here one summer. I’ve written about it before,
but I’d like to expand upon that story so that it can be passed on properly.
It may have been the same summer
that I received my mile swim badge, but that was all about 60 years ago so I’m
not sure. I was staying in one of the camping sites on top of the hill (I don’t
recall whether the various areas had the names that they do on the current map
above). I had to use the latrine after supper so the rest of our group had
already left for the evening campfire in the amphitheater (“t” on the map). It
was now about dusk and in order to get there quickly, I was running down the hill
on the camp road. Back in those days, the road down the hill was pretty
unimproved and there were ruts in it and some exposed tree roots from being
washed out. Anyway, I caught my foot on one of the exposed roots and took a tumble.
There was only one other scout around and it must have looked pretty
spectacular to him!
Getting back up and dusting
myself off, I continued (at a much slower pace) along the water’s edge to the
amphitheater where the evening campfire was already in progress. But I was
pretty bruised and sore. I was trying not to get noticed, but the other scout
who had observed my escapade on the hill told one of the leaders about what had
happened and he asked me to leave the campfire and go to the first aid tent (it
was about where the “w” is on the map). The adult leader on duty that night
happened to be a man from Wolcott whom I knew. He examined me, determined that
I may have broken a bone in my shoulder and decided that I needed medical
attention. He sent someone else to get my gear from the tent and bring it down
while he called my parents to have them come and get me. This was on a Saturday
evening, so I was getting my camping time terminated early when we were
planning on being there until the following afternoon.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, my
parents had been having a rough day. They were hosting a get-together of a
number of couples from church that evening and in the morning our refrigerator
had unexpectedly died. My father had had to drive to an appliance store in
Waterbury that not only had a reasonably priced replacement, but who could
deliver it immediately. They had gotten it delivered around noon, gotten all
the thawing items transferred to the new one so they would not have to throw
out any food (and so they had room for the extra things needed for the party). The
call from the camp to “come get me” came right as they were hosting this party –
not exactly an opportune moment.
Fortunately, Camp Mattatuck was
not that far from our home – about 9 miles and a 15–20-minute drive. My father excused
himself from the party, drove that distance, loaded me and my hastily packed
gear (thanks to the unknown scout who did that for me!) and took me back home.
I was then sent immediately upstairs to bed (it now being after dark) while he
rejoined my mother downstairs hosting the party. I’m sure he was wondering –
can anything else go wrong today?
The following day (Sunday), I was
confined to bed – not so much for the potentially broken bone in my shoulder,
but nursing all the other painful bruises from my unplanned tumble. My siblings
went to church with my father, and my mother stayed home to keep me company and
help ease my discomfort as much as she could. In the afternoon, there were
apparently some conversations between my parents that I was not a part of.
(I should mention here that our
family were staunch Christian Scientists. As such we relied on prayer rather
than the medical profession. None of us had ever been to a doctor, we had not
been in the hospital with the exception of being born, nor had we so much as
ever taken any medication. While my father had been in CS his entire life, my
mother had only been part of that religion since she married. So, she was not
quite as staunch in her beliefs – which were now being challenged by the first
medical issue in the family – the injury of her oldest son.)
On Monday morning, my dad didn’t
go to work as he normally did and he was driving me to school to make it easier
for me – or so I thought! But when we reached the turnoff to the school,
instead of going to the left, he went right. Despite his objections, my mother
had “won” the battle the previous day and my father was taking me to the ER at
St. Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury (where I had been born, and the closest
medical facility to Wolcott – this was in the days before all the emergency
care facilities that we now have). I was about to experience a hospital ER –
which no one else in our family had ever done before.
Being a “walk-in” instead of
coming in an ambulance meant that I was a pretty low priority case. As a
result, it took most of the day before I was finally seen. I got an x-ray and
it was determined that I had indeed broken my collarbone. The procedure for
that injury was a “figure-eight” bandage around my shoulders to keep my
shoulders back and the two ends of the bone in alignment. But as it was now
late in the day, they also made the decision to keep me overnight for
observation. (Again, this was in the days before they release people very
quickly, back then even a birth required nearly a week of “confinement” instead
of the almost out-patient mentality which we currently have.)
Having not many beds available,
they put me in the pediatric ward where everyone else was several years younger
than I was. But at least I would finally get some food (I was pretty hungry from
having missed lunch) and I could also relieve myself (since I had not been able
to use a bathroom all day as well). For the latter, they brought me a urinal
(not a bedpan) – basically an enamel pitcher. I filled it!
A brief description of the
pediatric ward… Rather than the private/semi-private rooms that we now have in
our local hospitals, this was a large room with 10-12 beds around the outside.
There were a number of windows, so it was a nice sunny room, but having so many
beds in one room (all occupied), I was able to visit with many of the other
(young) patients and see any parents who were visiting them. I was older and
mobile since I only had my shoulders bound up. There was also a single private
room right next door and I enjoyed visiting with the young man (probably age 8
or so) who was there and could cheer him up (since he couldn’t see any of the
other beds from where he was laying). As I recall, his parents had given him a
deck of cards and we played a few card games together.
The next morning, after getting
checked out by the medical team making their rounds, I was declared fit to
leave. My father once again had to take a day off of work to come get me. They
also gave me an excuse not to have to participate in PE at school for several
weeks and an appointment to see the pediatrician for the first in a series of follow-up
visits later in the week. Since I was already dressed for school (as that’s where
I thought I was going on Monday morning), my father dropped me off there with
my excuse note and went to work late that day.
Later in the week, my mother took
me to the doctor for a follow-up visit. I recall it was somewhere in
Middlebury. It was very brief. She made the determination that it was not worth
the effort (or the cost) and so we never kept any of the appointments for later
follow-up. I just wore the figure-eight bandage for several weeks, then removed
it after the bone was healed.
Conclusion
This was all over 60 years ago. I
haven’t been back to Camp Mattatuck since as our Boy Scout Troop was lacking leadership
the following year and our entire Patrol resigned after getting frustrated with
that lack of leadership. I expect that the roads in the camp no longer have
protruding roots. And I hold no grudges against them. The skills I learned
there have stayed with me and I have fond memories of my times there. Several
generations of boys have been helped in their journey into manhood since then.
May Camp Mattatuck continue in their service for many more years to come!