The "s'more" thread does bring up the obvious question: is anyone
out there collecting information on "summer camp culture"?  I was
a camper for many years, and a camp counselor after that, and the
songs, food, stories, games and other traditions of summer camps are
a source of endless fascination to me.  Each camp has its own oral
tradition, passed from counselor to camper and from the older
campers to the younger.  It's the closest I've ever come to
understanding the "feel" of a tribal society.

Along with the classic s'mores, we had a singularly repulsive
dessert called "banana boats".  Take a banana, cut a slit along
one side through the peel and the meat of the fruit, stuff the
slit with squares of Hershey bar, wrap with foil and set in the
coals of the campfire until the banana is mush and the chocolate
is melted.  Eat from the foil-wrapped peel with a spoon.  It
tasted better than it sounds, fortunately.

We also had an oral tradition of an invisible mischievious
animal named "Tadger", who would swing through the trees in
"death-defying life-leaps" and play pranks on the campers.  Years
later I learned that the Tadger stories were from a children's
book, but I never actually saw a copy.  Can anyone supply a
citation, or reports of other Tadger-sightings?

If some museum out there would like to add a department of
summer-camp studies, I would love to be one of the curators.  :-)

--
Barbara Weitbrecht
National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution
[log in to unmask]