Patricia A Eretto, MD, is a retired ophthalmologist. She grew up in Tottenville, Staten Island where she attended a combination of NYC public schools and Catholic schools in a predominantly blue-collar Irish Catholic neighborhood.
She attended RPI and Albany Medical College, settled in the Capital Region and practiced as an ophthalmologist at Albany Eye Associates. Patricia is married with two grown children and two beautiful granddaughters.
Free for all
By Patricia Eretto
Echoes of summer camp stories are childhood memories that consume the minds of my Westchester-raised Jewish husband and his friends. Stories of bunkmates, campfires, color wars, play productions and mess halls filled with fun, horror and camaraderie.
For myself, raised a second-generation Italian girl in a blue-collar Irish Catholic neighborhood on Staten Island in the 50s and 60s, “summer camp” was something entirely different. It was a time when children ran free, neighbors watched out for you and were ordained with the right to mete out discipline. It was a time when you left your house in the morning to roam free and were required to come in for dinner or “when the street lights came on.”
Summer camp for me was a FREE (and the operative word here IS free!) day camp at PS1 run by the City of New York. We loved it with a passion because it was a free for all. Mom signed you up at the beginning of the summer and you came and went as you pleased, sometimes staying for an hour, or all day when the city turned on the fire hydrants in the cement playgrounds.
At 5 years old, I was allowed to leave my house with my brother and sister whenever we felt like going to camp, making our way through the backyard, under the fence, and into the OBriens’s yard where we would walk down a steep driveway and cross the street to PS1. We had arrived! Summer camp nirvana!
We made many loop loom potholders that graced pots of bubbling spaghetti sauce and trays of sausage and peppers. We played dodge ball, hand ball and kickball to our hearts’ content. Was there a counselor or supervisor? Probably, but I don’t remember them or any rules.
It was a glorious liberated childhood time. Friday was 10-cent movie day and we would sit in the wooden seats of the school auditorium clutching our grease-stained paper bags of home-popped popcorn in anticipation! “Pinocchio,” “Cinderella,” or “101 Dalmations” would scratchily play on the white pulldown screen and we would pitch popcorn at each other. Sometimes the ancient movie projector failed and there would be roars of disapproval, a lot of popcorn throwing, and tears from the disgrunted “campers.”
It didn’t matter. This was our summer life and camp as we knew it. So when I think summer camp memories, it is running up the mold- smelling steps at PS1. Finding the potty on my own. Friends, siblings, and neighborhood kids all shouting, fighting, and playing joyfully. Our dining hall was home at mom’s kitchen table and our bunk mates were our siblings, but it was our summer camp and we were free, happy, independent, and growing slowly into the adults we all came to be.
I’ve heard all the stories about sleepaway “summer camp” and even let my own children try it, but honestly the memories we made are priceless and I wouldn’t have traded them for that other world. The city of New York hit a home run on this one and I belatedly thank them. Thoughts of my summer camp still bring a twinkle to my eye and make me smile.