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Friday, December 28, 2012

The "Comment From The Past" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Checking some of the stats that are on my blog.  One tells me how many people read my story from yesterday, one tells me what country they live in, and other tells me how many hits I had this past month.  Then there is the link I can visit that shows the comments that people have written to me about a story they might have read.  I wrote a story December 8th, 2009 about a church camp that I used to attend in the summer as a kid.  Loved the place called Camp Rodgers which was located on Shelley Island in the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, PA.  Well, December 21 of this year I received a comment from Anonymous about the story.  My guess is that Anon was checking "Google" and came across my story on Camp Rodgers.  He clicked on it and eventually sent me a comment.  Really neat to hear from a friend from my childhood.  Only problem is I don't know who he is. He pointed out himself in the photo of the group I had included with the story, but I never had names to put with the faces.  I will include his comments as well as the photo.  Someday I will stumble across the name of Anon and may be able to talk with him again about our time at Camp Rodgers.  His comment is:


It's a pleasure seeing this site and notes about Camp Rogders. I have so many wonderful memories of this experience. I was a member of St. John's Episcopal Church choir in York and attended Camp Rodgers every summer from '54 to '57.

Yes I do remember the camp when it was located on Shelley's Island. I recall it was run by St. James' and the 2 directors were 'Pop' and 'Mom' Thompson. The cook was 'Aunt' Clara Croft and, boy, could she cook. A real central Pennsylvania Dutch cook.

The experiences by LDub are pleasant memories. I can add a few of my own. The fishing, the daily rowing across to 'Sandy Beach', a small island about 50 yards from our dock, to swim. We really loved that monkey rope swing. Of course, someone always seemed to go underwater and bank rocks, which inflicted pain on your ears if you were swimming underwater yourself.

There were the afternoon softball games, the trips to the old barn for crafts and the weekly hikes to the mainland in Goldsboro. The older kids would hike 5 miles, the younger, 2 miles.

I am on several of these pictures, the one on the left holding the ping pong paddle and in the group picture, the one behind LDub's right shoulder.

Because half of us were from York and the other half from Lancaster, there were the constant 'discussions' which city was better.

Of course, since both cities had pro baseball teams in those days, the arguments usually centered around whether the York White Roses were better than the Lancaster Red Roses, or vice versa.

There were the tournaments with brackets to see who was the best at badminton, quoits, archery and other sports competitions. Ribbons were given to the winners.

I looked forward to camp every summer and was quite disappointed when the main house burned on the island. As LDub said, it was impossible to get fire trucks to an island in the middle of a river.

If you want to read the original story, click on The "Camp Rodgers" Story.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.  PS - In the group photo I am the one standing in the middle of the photo without a Camp Rodgers shirt on.  I happened to be fishing when they handed the shirts out.



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