The chapel at Quaker Meadow Camp.
This photo was taken in the middle of the camp area. There were trees everywhere, but the ground had no grass or other plants – it was all dirt. Consequently the whole place was very dusty; everything and everyone got coated with dust all day.
The interior of one of the boys’ cabins
Our church, First Friends Church of Whittier, was part of a larger denominational organization called California Yearly Meeting of Friends. California Yearly Meeting had thirty-something churches scattered throughout the state. They owned a piece of property in the Sierra Nevada mountains called Quaker Meadow Camp, which was founded in 1939. The camp is located 45 miles east of Porterville, at an elevation of 7,200 feet.
I first went to this camp in 1965, during the summer before 8th grade. I’ve shared elsewhere why this was an unlikely place for me to have gone, and told the story of my connection with God that took place there. In this chapter I’ll tell about the camp itself and some of our activities.
Camp lasted for a week. We’d get on the bus at Whittier at about 6 am and drive about 7 hours to get there. We drove up the Grapevine, a difficult climb for our old, inexpensive vehicle, and always stopped for a break at Fort Tejon just at the summit. I’m sure that the bus needed it as much as we kids did. Then we drove for another couple of hours to Porterville, where we stopped at a park for lunch just before heading up the mountain. The road up the mountain was narrow and steep, featuring a number of tight switchbacks that were a real challenge for our full-length school bus. I’m sure that one wheel was off the road on several of them.
The camp buildings consisted of four sleeping cabins, two for girls and two for boys; a bathroom building for each pair of cabins; an office and general store; a large dining room with kitchen, and a chapel. There was also a full-size swimming pool and a lake by the dining room. Facilities were set up in various places for ping-pong, horseshoes and an outdoor seating area that faced a campfire.
Each kid was assigned to a counselor; there would be 5-10 kids in each counselor’s group. We met with our counselors once or twice a day, and they tried to keep track of us. They were always available for spiritual guidance. They led us in recreational activities, including the ones I dreaded most: hikes. I was a terrible hiker, always at the end of the line, always exhausted. I’m sure I was a trial to my counselor on those hikes.
This is a typical cabin at the camp. There were several of these, all the same except for the name. They had no plumbing except what you can see on the porch in this picture; bathroom facilities were in another building that was somewhat centrally located. Floors were wooden, beds were bunk. There was no glass in the windows, no screens to keep the mosquitos out. We had to sweep the dirt out of the building every morning, a difficult chore.
Another view of the chapel, a favorite place of mine.
The dining room was large; all of the kids ate at once, seated in groups by counselor. One person at each table was designated to run up to the kitchen and get the food for the whole table, where it was passed around family-style. One table at each meal was assigned KP (kitchen patrol) duty; people at this table had to show up early to set up for the meal, and stay after to wash the dishes.
Meals were the one time during camp where it was possible to be harrassed, and after my experiences at the other camps I did everything I could to avoid it. A constant vigil was kept, watching for anyone who put their elbows on the table. If you were caught with elbows on the table, a song would go up (to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know It”), personalized with your name:
Get your elbows off the table, David Votaw!
Get your elbows off the table, David Votaw!
We have seen you do it twice, and it isn’t very nice,
Get your elbows off the table, David Votaw!
Round the lake you must go, you must go, you must go!
Round the lake you must go, you’ve been naughty!
You must take a chaperone, chaperone, chaperone!
You must take a chaperone, you’ve been naughty!
The offender was required to leave the table immediately and, picking a friend to serve as “chaperone,” to go outside and run around the lake while everyone watched and cheered. Only then could the meal be continued. I think in all my years at Quaker Meadow I only got caught once. I was really careful. And I still think about it every time I put my elbows on the table.
I had a lot of fun at camp playing ping pong – I was actually pretty competitive, a new experience for me. I loved the campfire meetings where we learned funny camp songs (I could sing you some, just ask), and there were skits and other fun activities.
Each day, in the morning, forty minutes was set aside during which we were supposed to be alone and quiet, working on a daily Bible lesson which had been assigned. (I still have some of these worksheets from my high school years.) After the quiet time, we met in our counseling groups to talk over what we had studied. It was wonderful spiritual training for me.
We met in the chapel for a worship service every evening, and I think they were my favorite part of camp. (I was pretty much spiritually starved for the other 51 weeks of the year.) I loved the songs we sang – they were old gospel songs, but they were new to me because they weren’t in our church’s hymnal. They were all about the joys of the Christian life, and the promises of heaven. (Many of them were not really biblically defensible, but I was not aware of that at the time.)
Chapel services featured special music, too. Every camp week included a visiting musical group of college-age young people, usually from George Fox or another Christian school. The students in the group would participate with us in the camp activities too, so we got a chance to get to know them. In the camp week before my senior year in high school, we had a men’s quartet from George Fox. They were really good, and I loved their music. Hearing and meeting them was one of the factors that led to my decision to go to George Fox the next year. One of the singers in that quartet was Bill Pruitt, whose younger brother (Ken) married my sister Sue eight years later. I will never forget Bill’s testimony, given in our chapel service; it was powerful.
The messages given in those services were aimed at young people, of course, and I found them interesting and challenging – which was never the case at my home church. They did me a lot of good.
I came to my first camp as a complete stranger, knowing no one else there. But over the years I saw the same kids again and again, and made some casual friends. It was great to see a few of them arrive at George Fox at the same time I did in September 1970, to join me in the freshman class there.
At the end of the week we’d head home in the bus that had brought the next week-load of kids up the mountain earlier that same day. The trip home always seemed shorter than the one coming up. (It probably WAS shorter; on the way home we went down the Grapevine, not up.) The bus full of strangers had become a bus full of friends, and we all sang camp songs on the way home. I loved it, and was already looking forward to the next year. It was a real blessing to get to go to Quaker Meadow Camp.
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