Pronounced to-COM-ee-pog. In the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
To this day, whenever I get into a canoe I still sing:
My paddle’s clean and bright
Flashing with silver.
Follow the wild goose flight.
Dip, dip and swing.
They haven’t cleansed the place of its faux Indian kitsch. I guess that’s why they call it summer camp.
Here is where we met for assembly. Matt Butcher played reveille and taps. I was supposed to fill in if he ever got sick. He remained in perfect health my entire time at camp.
This is where I learned that Elvis died. They’ve replaced the TV set at some point since then.
We listened to the radio a lot. I was standing outside this cabin when I first heard Hurricane Smith sing that retro pop song “Oh Babe, What Would You Say?” It was a revelation at the time.
And this was my cabin the year we listened to the same cassette every day because it was the only one anybody owned, and it was Hotel California – no doubt one of the reasons that, to this day, I would gladly ban the Eagles.
One day when I was picking beans in the camp garden, not far from this spot, I had a eureka moment concerning the lyrics to “Got to Get You Into My Life.” I stopped picking, looked up and thought about the words “I was alone / I took a ride / I didn’t know what I would find there,” and I nearly shouted, “Hey, wait a minute: that song is about drugs!”
I loved communal dining. It’s one of the best things about camp. And college, for that matter. If we kept eating that way into adulthood, I bet we’d stop yearning for youth.
The walls of the dining hall offer a photographic history of the camp.
That’s me in 1976. The bald counselor behind me was Phil. I don’t remember his last name but I do remember he would go off to the Yukon by himself for long stretches of time, which seemed simultaneously excellent and terrifying.
1977. The kid to my right was from Martinique, which was as exotic as it got for me back then. That’s my stepbrother in the lower right-hand corner.
I was terrible at athletics, but quite good with a rifle.
I’m glad they named the rifle range after Warren Anthony. He was a terrifically decent man.
I loved camp so much. I remember getting so excited as our car got closer and closer when I returned for my second year. For some reason unknown to history, that second year was my last. A couple of Thanksgivings ago I was speaking fondly about Camp Tohkomeupog to my father, and a grim expression took over his face.
“Oh, that place,” he said. “No good.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“I don’t remember. Just that it was bad.”
I’m not exaggerating when I say I believe that spending more than only two summers there would have made me a better person.
