Page 140 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
counselors, and, more important, intense group pressure. Second, the day and time when the events would actually commence, the assign- ment of each camper and counselor to a particular team, and the identities of the two or four counselors—the “generals”—who would lead the teams were (hopefully) well-kept secrets that were intended to keep everyone in a constant state of tension, trying to guess when Color War would “break” and, at least equally important, how Color War would be “broken.” In my first year at Anawana, the entire camp popula- tion was at or near the waterfront when a pontooned seaplane carrying the generals made a number of noisy passes, with music blaring from a loudspeaker, and ejected orange and blue paper and streamers before landing on the water as close to the shore as it could get, thereby announcing that the War had begun. Even at the age of seven, I under- stood full well what had just occurred.
In the “Sing,” the teams would compete by singing a “fight song,” an alma mater, and a series of parodies concerning well-known camp figures and events, all consisting of original lyrics set to existing melo- dies by the more talented of the counselors. I much later realized that the first fight song that I was taught was set to the theme from the third movement of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, Pathétique, and that my first Color War alma mater came from the fourth movement of Brahms’s Symphony No. 1. Beethoven’s Sonata Pathétique was used in some later year. As you can see, some of the counselors were not lacking in musical sophistication.
Color War split bunks right down the middle, turning good friends into bitter enemies, at least for the three-day period subsumed by it. While there was real division, there was also substantial cooperation. Even kids who did not get along at all during the first six or seven weeks of the summer found themselves pulling for each other if they were on the same team. As I noted, some camps, calling themselves “progressive,” eschewed the custom, realizing that many parents did not react well when their children were swept up in fierce, unrelenting, and sometimes bitter competition at the end of the summer. For my part, I loved it.
But I am getting a bit ahead of myself. • 122 •