Yes. A LOT of summer camps. (My parents invested just about their entire incomes in giving us year-round academically enrichment. They also were physically and emotionally abusive to a degree you might not believe even if I told you. I was grateful for the chance to be among normal people at the summer camps.)
Here are some experiences:
(1) nearby summer camp for poor kids (which of course included us), sponsored by the Boys and Girls Club of Raleigh
The converted school bus, already at least 10 years old in the early 1980s, would pick us up and we'd fight with each other as the bus took us each morning into north Raleigh to a 100-acre day camp with a pond and trails around it. Yes, when it rained, red mud abounded, except under the 1940s-era covered basketball court, which also had the only bathrooms for seemingly miles around (three stalls/urinals for each gender, and 200 kids at that camp each day).
My three older brothers and I learned how to carry canoes down to the water, launch them, and paddle around at that camp. We learned how to do "crafts" at a rather run-down "cabin" made of plywood. A "nature trail" led to a "swamp" with interesting amphibians and reptiles.
We also learned how desperately poor some of the other kids were--even poorer than we were: They took our lunches and even our lip balm and sun block (to eat, not to use). I was sorry for some of the most angry and desperate guys because it was painfully obvious that the sandwiches our mother packed for us in those 1970s metal lunch boxes--and the lip balm and sun block--were the only food they were going to eat that day. But when my mother found out about it, we were sent to other camps.
Some of those same children were in elementary school with us, and the community or the teachers would periodically take up a collection for them to have adequate clothing (shoes and coats in the winter, especially). A few standouts among this same group became violent criminals (rape, muggings, beatings, domestic violence, murder, armed robbery).
(2) a United Methodist Church camp down near New Bern / Oriental and next to the large and over-funded Seagull (YMCA)/Seafarer (YWCA) camps
We lived in mid-1940s concrete "cabins" that each consisted of two rooms with eight bunk beds each and a "counselor" room with two bunk beds. Each room had old dressers that we used to store our clothes for the week. There was no air conditioning, but luckily mature trees provided shade and the screened windows (no glass, just screens) provided flow-through ventilation from the breezes off the Neuse River. OUTSIDE shutters kept out the rain, during thunderstorms.
A bodybuilder counselor--a mesomorph with curly brown hair and an Australian accent--used to wear black Speedos that just barely covered his fairly large package. One week when he was my counselor, he joined me in the kids' shower area because the counselors' shower was full. I sprang a full hard-on at his amazing body and large cut cock and full, egg-sized balls; he stared a bit at my cock when I pulled back my foreskin and washed underneath it and got about half-hard.
Another evening that same week, he walked into our room naked to tell us it was past time to go to bed; he stopped conversation immediately, and everyone stared until he grew a little embarrassed and left. The other guys talked about his muscles and cock, but I didn't join in because I thought it might make my gayness obvious. I was twelve that year and almost the same height I am now, but with a lot less hair (it was just starting to grow in around my nipples and below my bellybuttom). All he had was a beard and a rather interesting happy trail.
Later in life, I contacted him and learned that he'd been 19 years old at the time and had just discovered the significant pleasures of anonymous blow jobs (from men, even though he was about 70% straight) and therefore knew what our stares meant in the shower or in our room. He said he now has a Prince Albert piercing and wanted me to check it out in person. But since he was in Newport News and I was about 10 hours away when we got back in touch, it didn't work out and I lost touch again--but only after an amazing phone sex conversation that allowed us both to imagine some rather erotic intergenerational interactions that would have been both taboo and illegal had we done those things together when I was 12 and he was my 19-year-old camp counselor. Yes, we both came, judging from the moans and groans and post-orgasmic sighs.
My three older brothers and I learned to sail at that camp on those little Sunfish sailboats that are only big enough for two people. We also canoed on a nearby creek, swam in a nearby pond (that was a little bit chlorinated in the area where we swam--I still have no idea how that could have been legal, since the rest of the pond had tadpoles, turtles, snakes, etc.), and went on excursions to a haunted house (true story: I saw something I couldn't explain out on the lawn that evening) and to look for sharks' teeth at a nearby sandbar.
My mother had been among the first group of campers there when the camp first opened in nineteen-forty-whatever. She's now recognized every summer as the oldest living camper (she's 72, about to turn 73).
(3) Camp Broadstone in the mountains (exwhysee, was this the academic camp you talked about?)
This was a blend of (1) and (2); we lived in wood cabins instead of concrete ones, but the outside shutters kept out the rain when thunderstorms came through that week, and the facilities were a bit better (both newer and in better condition) than the ones at either (1) or (2).
The pool was COLD, which pissed me off. And there was no sailing. But the inner tubing and the rappelling were really fun.
Two interesting stories:
(a) Driving up there, no sooner had my mother told me that the mountain communities were poor and that I could expect to see shacks on either side of the road at many places, three cars came around the next curve going the other direction. You guessed it: one was a Mercedes, one was a Cadillac, and one was a Rolls Royce--the first I'd seen "in the flesh," so to speak. I quirked an eyebrow at my mother in a way that let her know I knew she was full of shit, and she fell all over herself explaining how that was an aberration. :biggrin1: I know now that she really hadn't realized how many truly rich people had started owning homes in the mountains; she was still stuck in the 1950s, when the Andy Griffith Show represented real NC mountain life.
(b) Boys from another cabin snuck out at night and threw water balloons against our window screens, splattering us with cold water. Our counselor jumped out of bed naked and stood there shouting at them to go back to their cabin. Our overhead light wasn't on, but the light from the parking lot lit up his entire front, and we weren't shy about looking at him. He was tall and lanky, brown-haired, with a medium-sized cut cock and small balls. He only had a pubic bush and armpit hair, but we thought he was masculine because he had a deep voice. He realized we were looking at him and said, "What? Haven't you seen an older guy naked before?" He then sauntered out, his cock swinging to and fro.
NCbear (who'll share the Boy Scout camp stories in another post
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