Camp Mattatuck

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!