July 20- Camp Outings

Periodically, Lenore would arrange visits with other camps in the area. These outings were called, "Play Days." Since the area of western Massachussetts and nearby Eastern New York was filled with all-girls camps and all-boys camps, there were alot of choices. However, we tended to socialize with certain camps more than others. On this date in 1959, the Inters visited nearby girls camp, Romaca. Because of a strong Native American history in the area, a lot of these camps had Indian-sounding names. - I suppose to give them an air of ruggedness and legitimacy. The funny thing was, many of the names had nothing to do with Indian tribes or culture at all. They were just invented words; some a combination of the first syllables of the owners' first or last names. I think that was the case with Romaca. At any rate, we didn't have to travel far: Romaca was literally down the road from us. I don't remember too much about these "Play Days," other than the fact that they always involved a volleyball, newcomb or swimming competition with the other girls, and we got to check out their bunks (usually way nicer than ours...), and dining room food (usually way worse than ours.) Since we were always divided up into White and Green teams at Lenore, this was a nice opportunity for us to pull together and root for our camp. I don't remember whether we won or lost. It never seemed to really matter. Of the many camps we had an opportunity to visit though, I always felt that when the bus drove through our camp's gates and we sang, "Here We Are", we were coming home to the best one.
The other really important outing for the older girls was an "away" social with one of the many boys camps in the area: Onota, Lenox, Mah-kee-Nac and Greylock. Of those four, Greylock definitely was the favorite, and later, actually became almost a "brother' camp to ours. But, on Monday, July 20, 1959, the Hill Seniors had a social with Lenox. (which oddly, was located in Lee,) I couldn't find an eyewitness account for that event, but in 1965, when I edited the Lenorlog, Meg Simon wrote about a Play Day/Social with Lenox, held at Lenore
"Playday for Campus C and the Lane with Lenox started off with our showing them around camp...After several games, the girls went to change into their bathing suits and the boys into theirs.
When the boys spotted the lake, I happened to overhear some amusing remarks, such as "Boy, I bet it's over my head!!!" Swimming was alot of fun, and thank you, Hank (Smith) for your wonderful supervision. We changed once more into our good outfits (not green and white), But, naturally, we took longer than the boys. Meanwhile, they seemed to think that our tetherball was the greatest thing on earth! Lenox boys seem to think that anything that isn't "Lenox food" has to be pure heaven! (And ours really was very good.) After dinner we had a social. Once again, thanks to Hank. When we saw the bus take off, we went back to our bunks with contented and pleased expressions on our faces."