Tar Hollow Week

For my entire adult life August has rarely, if ever, ended without the thought passing through my mind: "It's Tar Hollow week." This year is no exception, and since I am physically in the state of Ohio--home of Tar Hollow State Park--I have spent even more time this week thinking about Tar Hollow.

In my youth, Tar Hollow week was always the last full week of August; it was when my Methodist church sponsored a youth camp experience for its members from 5th grade through high school. I have no idea now whether there were 100 or 200 campers of these ages, plus or including adult counselors and activity leaders. I just know that there were a lot of people, some of whom I knew, and most of whom I did not in the early years. My one-year-older sister had the Tar Hollow experience a year before I did, of course, and she told me a little about it: you slept in cabins with four or five other campers and an adult of your own gender, you had to walk a few hundred feet to go to the group toilets and showers, segregated by gender, and your days were structured: you started with an early breakfast in the main hall and "morning watch" worship, proceeded to study and discussions on various social and religious topics, returned to the hall again for lunch, and dispersed for physical activities in the afternoon--often swimming in the small lake a short walk from the central activity area. Dinner was a substantial meal, followed, I believe, by vespers after the dining hall and kitchen had been cleaned up, all campers contributing manpower on a rotating basis.  The dining hall was transformed for various group activities in the evenings: popular music from a record player with the almost-latest hits, dancing (jitterbug and square dance), games, maybe, though I don't recall any in particular, and later in the evening a mysterious activity called "the submarine races," which  was never announced as an official event, but you always found out the next morning that so-and-so and so-and-so had enjoyed the submarine races last night.... It seemed as though the submarine races always started after the younger campers had made their way from the main lodge up the hills to their cabins with flashlight shining on the path so as not to trip on exposed tree roots or rocks or the poisonous copperhead snakes that we were warned about continuously.

I think it was not until the year I had finished sixth grade, or maybe even seventh, that the important addition to the curriculum and camp experience occurred for which Tar Hollow became such a turning point for me. That was when ten or twelve international college students were brought in to spend the week with us. I suppose that the purpose was to give those students--far from their homes in Asia or countries of Africa whose names no longer exist, and perhaps shut out of their college dorms until the next term started--a place to stay and a view of life in the United States beyond a small college campus in Ohio. For the campers, it introduced us to real live individuals from countries we had only heard of--or often had not--and to people of different colors, with different languages, and professing different beliefs from those that we were exposed to in small town life in Ohio in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They camped with us almost as equals--they were, after all, a good five or ten years older than we were--but they seemed more like us than they seemed like the adult counselors and chaperones.

I don't remember all of the international students, nor can I point to specific lessons I learned from them. This first international experience provided me more with an attitude, or an orientation, and one that has permeated throughout my life. I remember Misako from Japan showing us how to wear a kimono and fasten an obi, and Mike Badu from Ghana explaining that he needed to learn as much as possible about the modern world because he was supposed to go back to Ghana to be chief of his tribe. He was vegetarian because his people were vegetarian, and that fact provided a memorable lesson for my family when he came to our house for Christmas dinner one year and we therefore did not serve meat for this holiday dinner--this in an age and place where meatless meals were just not known.

In addition to being exposed to a world wider than I knew in my small Ohio town, I picked up a few specific skills and habits from the Tar Hollow experience. I was introduced to ping pong and became quite good at it; I enjoyed square dancing; I drank my first coffee (those early breakfasts were not for me); and I learned the value of meditation and solitude.

But to the despair of my teenage heart, no one ever invited me to watch the submarine races in the small lake at Tar Hollow.