This week, the absolutely massive San Diego Comic-Con International calls all nerds and fiction enthusiasts to Southern California with its siren song. As a bit of a nerd myself, as well as a Dark Horse Comics employee, I’ll be heading down to Comic-Con for the rest of the week. I was hoping to get in a few posts beforehand, but alas, preparing for the comics community’s prom is a lot of work. In flipping through my camp photos however, I found a shot that seems particularly perfect for this “my comics job calls, so my camp blog suffers no new posts” update.

This photo features so many aspects of camp I plan to talk about later on this blog including the A-Field, the goofy items we used to purchase at thrift stores or the uniquely bizarre grocery stores of Northern Wisconsin, living without electricity and how schedules are determined by the 8 p.m. dusk of summer, my somewhat embarrassing and lamentable love of visors during my teenage years… there’s a lot I could touch on here, but I must pack my bag for San Diego, so I’ll keep it brief.

The summer of 2000 was my first year on staff. That meant, it was my first year with days and nights off to visit the small towns surrounding the remote Camp Shewahmegon. This was also the same summer that “X-Men” came out.

One night off while the rest of the staff out on the town went to carouse at the Hayward Musky Festival, Adam Kwasman, Bill Trieshmann and I went to see “X-Men” at the glamorous Hayward Cinema 4. (Actually, despite it’s small theater number size, the Hayward Cinema 4 was newly remodeled and quite nice.) Aside from loving the movie and having it inform this photo that proves I’ve at least been a huge nerd since age 15, I remember Adam Kwasman going on and on about how much he loved the opening sequence featuring a boyhood Magneto living through the terror of the Holocaust and how that lead to Professor Xavier’s arch nemesis suffering the stress that manifested his mutant abilities. It’s a badass movie sequence, make no mistake, but I remember Adam praising it almost to the point of hyperbole.

Recounting this viewing of “X-Men” actually reminds me that it was over a similarly nerdy moment that I think Adam and I actually became friends.

Camp’s fiftieth anniversary fell during the summer of 1997. One weekend, all of camp’s alumni were invited up to Drummond (At five miles away down a winding country road, the nearest town to camp.) for a big celebration. While camp was filled to the brim with SROs (Suddenly Returning Old-Timers: a phrase coined by Mac Harris.), our cabin groups were sent off on a hike to make room for the visitors. My counselor Ben McIntyre was the cousin of Bunkhouse’s counselor, my counselor a year prior in Cabin 12, John Kroupa. The duo decided to take both Cabin 14 (My cabin, the third oldest.) and Cabin Bunkhouse (The oldest cabin.) out on the same hike. You know what they say, “Less boredeom in numbers.” While Bunkhouse was full of some rad dudes, I wouldn’t have said my cabin group was particularly close to those cool, older campers. After that hike, I think our groups kind of formed a bond.

Anywho, thrown together by the aforementioned and unfavorable hiking situation, our cabin groups took to chatting and bullshitting in the hopes we could make the whole affair more enjoyable. Somewhere along the way, Kwasman and I started talking about superheroes. In hindsight, as I mentioned, I think this was when the two of us became buddies. Sadly, I don’t remember much of the actual conversation, but the one tidbit that does stick out is when Kwasman started talking about how much he liked Green Arrow. I was pretty much a strict Marvel reader at the time and had no idea who the Emerald Archer was, but years later when I became familiar with the superheroics of Ollie Queen, I remember thinking it was fitting that Kwasman was a Green Arrow fan and seemed destined for a life of politics. (Green Arrow’s known for a being a staunch liberal and was even the mayor of DC’s fictional Star City for a while.)

That’s all for now, folks! I’ll see you back here next week for more tall tales of summer camp life!

Behold, O Readers! Before your eyes I display two men whose mirth, even in their youth, rivaled that of the gods themselves! Feast your eyes upon the giggling countenances of Robert “Cece” Geilfuss and Adam “Pressy” Prestbroten!

Seriously, I love these guys. If I were to sit down and really think about it, I have no doubt I could recount at least five stories starring either of them that would make you laugh so hard milk would squirt out of your nose (even if you hadn’t recently drank any milk!). Funny guys, each with a great sense of humor, and I doubt many folks who attended camp could claim such a rad pair as friends.

I believe this photo was taken at Picnic Point during the previously mentioned All Day Hikes, which would place this photo in the year 2000. Pressy would have been around 15 years old and a first year JC while Cece, I believe, would have been about 12 years old and in Cabin 12.

This photo is as good a place as any to point out a phenomenon I’ve come across while flipping through these old pictures. The people, scenes and events featured in these snapshots are all recognizable and memorable, but I’m amazed how many bits of wardrobe are instantly recognizable as well. Shewahmegon wasn’t a place where you’d dress to impress, but after weeks and years of people sporting the same old shirts day in and day out, certain designs must have been burned into the back of my mind. I can’t for the life of me remember who the Dragons on Cece’s shirt are (Arena League Football? Minor League Soccer?), but the design is instantly and inexplicably familiar. Between the same worn-out old t-shirts and outlandish thrift wear (More on that later!), camp clothing wasn’t stylish in a traditional sense, but it was definitely memorable.

In my last post, I put out the call for Shewahmegon Song Sheets. A day later, the illustrious Brent Parker (Former Waterfront Director extraordinaire!) reminded me that he’d already posted a few on Facebook. Excellent!

While the men of Shewahmegon had flexed our vocal chords with many more songs than the ones featured here around the Council Fire or in Lodge, this is a nice smattering of songs that demonstrate the goofy and folky tunes we used to belt out at camp.

Many thanks to Brent for scanning these puppies in, and if you have more song sheets please drop me a line at jimgibbons1 [at] gmail [dot] com. I’d love to get some more up here!

The Chipmunk Chatter was Camp Shewahmegon’s newsletter, which ideally came out on a weekly basis for all of camp’s 54 years of operation. A masterpiece of clip art and colored paper during my time at camp, The Chatter was an information source for parents and a venue for the staff and campers to goof around. Introductory articles about counselors and staff, camping trip recaps written by campers, announcements of award winners and basic camp information filled the pastel pages of this publication.

While the Chipmunk Chatter was undoubtedly a great source of information for most parents, it’s true potential was achieved when staff and some savvy campers worked inside jokes into articles and used it as a way to make each other laugh. I remember working an inside joke into a report I wrote about a 1997 camping trip on the St. Croix River. Former Shewahmegonite and Wisconsin State Legislator Gary Sherman (Now a judge on the Wisconsin State Court of Appeals, believe it or not.), who accompanied us on our trip, made a particularly delicious campfire meal on the final night along the river. A tasty mixture of rice, cream sauce and chicken, someone in my cabin (Cabin 14, for the record.) dubbed the dish “Mama Gary’s Chicken St. Croix.” I’m pretty sure I can claim credit for coining the dish’s name, and I’m positive I’m the first person to ever put it into print. Noted as one of the highlights of our trip, I reported that “Mama Gary’s Chicken St. Croix” was a meal worth remembering, and what do you know, I remember it to this day!

It’s kind of crazy to look back at The Chatter after working as a writer for a legitimate newspaper, national magazine and a major online comic book news site, but that tiny pamphlet was the first print publication I cut my teeth on. Kind of crazy, indeed. Another semi-crazy tidbits about the newsletter was how Chatter articles were penned. Scribbled in a plethora of appalling forms of pre-teen to teenage male handwriting, the quickly scrawled articles were then transcribed by The Chatter‘s editor. Having done my fair share of sifting through poorly written reporter’s notes and transcribing plenty of my own chicken scratch, I definitely have a whole new appreciation for the work Becky Will and Cathy Laatsch (the Chatter editors during my years at camp) put into this publication. They definitely deserve a Locomotive.

Now, without further ado, the final Chipmunk Chatter from camp’s second to last year…

Click the images to see larger versions of them.






2000 was my first year on staff, so I wasn’t eligible to win any awards. I did, however, help instruct sailing and archery, so I’ll take a smidgen of credit for nurturing those campers’ success. Otherwise, I hope this rekindles some fun memories for folks.

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Note: I believe I have more of Chipmunk Chatters tucked away somewhere at my folks’ house, but if you’re a Shewahmegonite with Chatters or songsheets at home, I’d love to scan them in and record them. Drop me a line at jimgibbons1 [at] gmail [dot] com if you have anything like that you’d like posted.

Each year during the fifth and sixth weeks of camp, the two oldest cabins (Bunkhouse and Cabin 15 during my seven years at Shewahmegon.) would go on a 10-day canoeing trip in Canada. While the Border Trip was an amazing experience, the real kooky fun was happening back at camp. Taking a break from the everyday Shewahmegon routine, Border Week was filled with all sorts of crazy activities including a mud-chucking battle in a swamp, campers throwing whip cream pies into Staffer faces, beach parties and much, much more.

In 2000, my first year on staff in the illustrious position of Junior Counselor, the entire camper population and counselor staff went out one day during border week on a series of All Day Hikes. After trudging through the woods, we stopped at Picnic Point to cook Puffers (more on these later!) and take a break before heading back into the woods to venture forth to our next destination. I have a lot of pictures from this brief stop and plenty of fun memories even though it only encompassed two or three hours of my entire camp career. That was always one of the interesting things about camp (As far as my memory is concerned, at least.), certain days just ended up being a ton of fun for no particular reason. All Day Hikes was not a favorite event among the campers or staff, so maybe that led to all of us banding together to make the best of a bad situation—I don’t know. Perhaps when camp shrunk as the oldest cabins left, the rest of us—shocked at the loss of our, dare I say, brothers—reformed our bonds of friendship stronger and faster in their absence only to welcome them back joyfully 10 days later into a more cohesive web of camp family. Either way, I remember this particular cookout was extremely enjoyable and chock-full of some seriously great bonding.

One of the things I always enjoyed about camp and, to a degree, Northern Wisconsin was how timeless those places always felt to me. Or maybe “stuck in time” is a better way to put it. While the modern era came to camp in the form of CDs, Discmans and sleek Maglite flashlights, you could look around and see bits of the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s intermingled with the new faces and newfangled technology.

This photo, which features a fairly common and genuinely timeless tableau of Shewahmegon life, has representation from each decade of camp’s operation. The brown boathouse in the background received numerous touch-ups over the years, but I believe (If memory serves…) it was one of camp’s oldest buildings. I’ll give that one to the ’50s, and parts of it to the ’60s as well. The red and white speedboat next to the boathouse, cleverly named The 70 (Right, Shewahmegonites?) due to the horsepower of its engine, is coincidentally pure ’70s. For the ’80s, I’ll allow Tim Will’s pink shorts to wave proudly (though Tim’s steadfast beard might date back to the ’70s), as well as the other speedboat. Known as The Lund, camp’s faster speedboat was an ’80s model that I believe came to camp in the ’90s. Then you’ve got the fiberglass canoes (’80s?), aluminum paddles (’90s), white and black camo t-shirt (Sported by, I believe, Danny Trevor… so, ’90s.) and any one of the docks pictured here was probably made up of bits from the ’50s through to the year this photo was taken. It’s like traveling through time while standing still.

All these camp contants make this photo a bit hard to date, but I’m fairly certain it’s from 2001. The fiberglass canoes were only pulled out for rare occasions, one of them being a game day called The Olympiad (Or did the Olympiad feature the Swim Relay while Shewahmegon Games Day had the Canoe Relay?), which means this photo was taken on a Saturday in the afternoon.

The event everyone’s preparing for in this picture was the aforementioned Canoe Relay, the first of the day’s team events. Each of the four teams, whose names were self-chosen at the beginning of the day, had to take every single member of their team around a buoy about a quarter of a mile away on the lake. The fastest team to have each member complete this task won the race.

Complicating matters was the fact that the fiberglass canoes were notoriously wobbly and the vigorous paddling this competitive event encouraged didn’t help matters. Most strategies for this relay put three people in each heat of canoe. (As opposed to loading more in each to lesson the number of trips. That almost never panned out.) An older camper would take the stern to provide power and experienced navigation, one of the younger and tiniest campers would ride deadweight after being given plenty of encouragement to sit still and not rock the boat, and a camper somewhere in between would take the bow to add paddling power.

Essentially, the Canoe Relay was a lesson in patience. Focus on long, powerful paddle strokes and careful maneuvering and your canoe would make good time without capsizing. Let the screaming, cheering masses on the shore speed up your paddling to frantic levels and you’d flip your ship, likely after losing your cool. In the end, like so many things at camp, the experience had value outside the Northwoods—it was a practical team building exercise with a camp twist.

Taken down at the archery range on a sunny afternoon during my last year at camp (2001), I’m a second year JC (junior counselor) in this photo and instructing/supervising these fine young lads in their arrow-flinging endeavors. Obviously, I was sporting a soul patch and a “Hi, my name is Slim Shady” t-shirt because I was a super cool 16-year-old. ‘Nuff said, right?!

I’ll wager a guess that before, during and after this picture was taken, I was lamenting the fact that I had become an American Archer when I was a camper. Quick explanation: An American Archer is someone who has achieved every target shooting award at the 15, 25, 30, 40 and 50-yard lines with a bow and arrow under the Camp Archery Association’s achievement program. There were usually only one or two handfuls of American Archers at camp each summer making the bragging rights it entailed a cool perk as a camper (Note: They are also kind of cool as a 25-year-old.), but as one of only three staffers with the distinction in 2001 it was a different story. The other two American Archers on staff were Waterfront Director Brent Parker and Head Archery Instructor David Owen, a fellow JC one or two ears older than me. Brent, busy with all things waterfront-related, would have been a rare staffer to see instructing archery that year, which made me (more or less by default) Assistant Head Archery Instructor—or something like that. What that meant was David normally got the morning shift down at the range (Which was preferable because it was usually cooler and your morning was usually more relaxed—a definite perk for anyone among the sleep-deprived staff.), I ended up down there in the sweltering hot afternoons… when I would have rather been down on the waterfront… by the cool, cool water… doing anything, anything other than archery.

That said, with the rose-colored glasses of hindsight, I realize that I ended up spending most of my afternoons on staff leading a bunch of kids as we all fired dangerous projectiles at bails of hay (or sometimes an old t-shirt) for a few hours. Not too shabby.

This photo also exemplifies a lot of camp experiences. It’s a bunch of dudes, surrounded by trees, doing something potentially dangerous. Good times, indeed.

I love how maniacal Sam looks in this photo. Little would the casual viewer suspect that the half-headed Quint was the real threat here. After the photo was taken, he jabbed two or three arrows into my side, filing them in between the gaps of my rib cage like some sort of pointed and deadly piece of paperwork, before fleeing into the nearby swamp… never to be seen or heard from again.

I’m kidding, of course! In my two years instructing archery, no one was shot, stabbed or lost in the swamp. A few arrows, however, did find their way into that quagmire at my discretion…

I didn’t say being an Archery Instructor was completely without its upsides!

This picture is from Dan and my first year at camp: 1995. I’d be 11-years-old here and Dan would have been 9 or 10. The photo features my cousin Ryan and my cousin Tim. (Who are cousins to each other as well, not brothers.) Ryan, Tim, Dan and I were all second generation campers at Shewahmegon. Ryan’s dad, my uncle George (the oldest of the my mom’s siblings), made Shewahmegon his summer home as a camper for many years and then as a staff member. Tim’s dad, my uncle Jim (and the second oldest of my mom’s siblings), did the same. Though Shewahmegon was a boy’s camp, my mom spent some time up there as she was friends with one of the camp owners’ daughters. So, Dan and I were more or less second generation, as well.

Based on the fact that we’re all in our Sunday whites and my sister is in the photo, this must have been taken on Parent’s Visiting Weekend, which occurred after campers had been at Shewahmegon for four weeks. Why we wore whites for matins must have been explained to me at some point, but I now presume it was because we weren’t going to bring our Sunday best to camp and what we wore the rest of the time was pretty filthy. Camp is a ton of fun, but it’s not a very clean place. Sanitary? Sure! But not many clothes made the return trip down from Northern Wisconsin without sustaining a considerable amount of dirt or food stains and other wear-and-tear damage.

Behind us you can see Shewahmegon’s beautiful waterfront area and Lake Owen.

I went home with my parents at the end of visiting weekend that year instead of staying the full seven weeks. It was a huge mistake. Much as I loved my first bit of camp, I felt like I was missing out on stuff at home. I wanted to get back to swimming in a pool instead of a lake and playing video games or watching TV instead of paying Capture The Flag. I got home and was reminded how ridiculously boring summer can often be. You can only ride your bike around the same few streets for a certain amount of time before you realize that the comparatively limitless amount of activities you could be enjoying at camp is a far superior way to spend your summer.

That was the only summer I went home early in my seven years at Shewahmegon. My other four years as a camper, I stayed for the full seven weeks. The two years I was on staff, I was up there even longer helping set up during pre-camp and tear down during post-camp. By that final year (mine as well as camp’s), Shewahmegon and the people I saw there every summer had become such a special part of my life that the fact those extra weeks up there were primarily devoted to raking leaves and hauling brush for hours on end, well… it wasn’t too bad considering the company and the scenery.

I think I’m 11-years-old in this picture. Clearly, at the time, I was an extremely impressive dresser, as are all my compatriots here. Our counselor Andrew Porter was from the Isle of Man in the UK and I consider him to be one of the first truly cool people I have ever known—a title that, disregarding the chronological aspect, I think I likely applied to most Shewahmegon counselors while I attended camp. Andrew played guitar, informed us he was in a band called “Radiohead and the Scabby Donkeys” (the type of outlandish and playful lie you’d hear often at camp) and introduced me (with the help of Australian nurse Steve Guinea) to a song we were frequently regaled with on hiking trips that went a little something like…

There was (Name) (Name)
Looking mighty (word that rhymed with person’s name)
In the store, in the store.

There was (Name) (Name)
Looking mighty (word that rhymed with person’s name)
In the Corner Master store.

My eyes are dim
They cannot see
I left my glasses in the W.C.

I left my glasses in the W. C.!

Andrew, I also realize, taught me that W.C. stands for Water Closet. (A term synonymous with “bathroom” for some Brits and Aussies.) And, if memory serves, Andrew had a shirt that featuring a grenade-like emblem and words that I can’t remember now which had a meaning none of us younger campers, despite numerous guesses, could ever figure out. I presume it was something horribly offensive disguised by British slang—and I have to presume it was more than just a little offensive as we had pretty filthy mouths for a group on 11-year-olds.

At this point, Luis Orduña had not arrived from Toluca, Mexico, to join our cabin yet.

Lastly, memory doesn’t have to play into this reminiscence thanks to the photo, but we were clearly a well-fed group of kids. Look at those chubby cheeks!

Oh, also, I think I wore that St. Louis Cardinals hat (at least, I think it was a Cardinals cap) for 90 percent of the summer.

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Quick notes: If I mention your full name on this blog and you’d prefer I wouldn’t, drop me a line and let me know. I’m at jimgibbons1 [at] gmail [dot] com.

Also, nothing I state here is necessarily fact. I plan to relay stories the way I remember them. Memory is an imperfect thing, so I may get things wrong from time to time. If I do and you know better, comment on the post and help flesh out these long forgotten stories! Thanks!

Today is July 12, 2010. Scroll down a bit and you’ll see the last post was erected (Boner jokes already?! What kind of camp blog is this?!) almost a year ago with a “I’m gon’ get back on this shit” promise. Clearly that last boast of blogging fervor was bullshit. This next one, I think, isn’t…

Welcome back to Nothing More American, a summer camp memoir blog of an archival nature posting at regular intervals with a photoblog vibe!

So, why was this blog left oh so neglected for such a long time? Well, last year when I vowed to get this puppy back on track, I had a box full of photos and scanner. I was fully ready to populate this web space with some atrocious teenage photography from Kodak one-time-use cameras with diligence. I had decided to abandon the “maybe one day I can compile this into a novel” memoir approach I originally wanted this blog to take and moved over to a yearbook style scan-a-thon.

Clearly, I say again, that didn’t happen. But… BUT… I have a pretty decent excuse…

In early September of 2009, I was let go from my job. I woke up late. I let my beard from long. I showered infrequently at best…

…but I was also blogging up a comic-centric storm over at Enemy of Peanuts, freelancing for Comic Book Resources and applying for jobs left, right and center. On the brighter side, I was hanging down in The Village (in New York) walking “celebrity” dogs with my lady and running into the likes of Peter Dinklage, Peter Sarsgaard and Philip Seymour Hoffman—and by “running into,” I of course mean “walking by o the sidewalk.”

It was a strange limbo of a time.

Long story short, I got a job at Dark Horse Comics in Portland, Ore., and Jessi and I moved across the country in November. It’s been great so far, but finding time to get this ol’ bitch of a blog up and running again just hadn’t come along. Now, Jessi’s rocking the Rose City as a professional ballroom dancer and ballroom dance instructor working crazy hours and that leaves me with a good four hour block each evening to spend on hobbies. Hobbies like this blog! So, I’ve got my box of pictures. I’ve got the scanner out. And, I’ve got a librarian-esque drive to archive every single one of those photos on this blog.

Before I get started, here are a few quick notes…

• Nothing More American will now be primarily organized by year—the seven years I went to Camp Shewahmegon to be more precise. The main categories will be the summer of 1995 through the summer of 2001.
• Blog posts will lead with a picture and be followed by as much explanation of said photo as I can muster after that. The info may be descriptive or it may just reminisce about something slightly related. Either way, I hope to squeeze a ton of camp memories out of my brain by just rolling with the pictures. If you’re a camp friend with more insight into the images, please comment and add to the story.
• Most of these photos were taken by my brother Dan, me or someone we handed one of our cameras to. Presuming I know who took the shot, I’ll give them credit.

That’s pretty much it. Basically, this blog is taking its lead from photoblogs. I’ll show a photo and then scribble down a story of some length to explain it—pretty much like some old fart taking you through the slides from his vacation only much more fun. (I hope!)

Let’s get started…