Wanda Fischer is a retired public relations professional working for non-profits and governmental organizations.
Since retiring a decade ago, she’s written and published short stories and published two novels: A Few Bumps, Empty Seats and most recently, her sequel to Empty Seats.
If after she reads today you might wonder why Wanda’s voice sounds so familiar, it might be because she has, since 1982, hosted and produced a folk music show on WAMC. Or, you might have caught her, back in 2012, reveling in her passion for baseball when she had the opportunity to announce – for all nine innings – one of the games between the Red Sox and the Twins.
For Wanda, the hits just keep on coming: Just a few years ago she was inducted into the Folk Radio Hall of Fame and last year the Proctors Collaborative inaugurated her into its Eddies Hall of Fame. “
Living Camp Brochures,” the story Wanda contributes to our special Summer Camp event, accurately reflects the way she was introduced to -- and ultimately attended -- summer camp in the 1960s.
Living Camp Brochures
By Wanda Fischer
Before I ever actually attended summer camp, I wrote to as many as I could find so that I could experience it firsthand.
I collected brochures from horse camps in New England when I was a pre-teen, to soak in the professional pictures of those beautifully coiffed young women wearing buff-colored jodhpurs, tall, soft, brown leather boots, and velvet-covered riding helmets, heads up, heels down, as they guided their mounts effortlessly over jumps. All looked wealthy, well-groomed, and eager to, one day, audition for the U.S. Olympic Equestrian Team.
I wanted to be one of them. But I was the chubby bookworm who spent time reading about horses, not riding them.
I was horse-crazy in the 1960s. I was that girl who drew horses in the margins of her school notebooks while wistfully dreaming that one day my parents would figure out a way to buy me a horse of my own.
That concept was foreign to my parents. They had enough problems putting food on the table and clothes on our backs.
When the camp brochures began arriving, my mother asked me, “Just what is ‘Camp Teel-a-Wooket,’ anyway?”
I explained it was a sleepaway camp in Vermont, and it had the best name of all the camps, but I knew I could never go there. “Damned straight!” she replied. “What makes you think we could afford anything like this Camp Tela-whatever?”
“I never thought you could, Ma,” I replied. “I just like the pictures of horses.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. You and your horses.”
I did catch her showing a couple of catalogues to my father. He was just as non-plussed as she had been. “How would she like to learn about mucking out stalls? That would fix her dreams about horses!”
I returned to my room and organized the brochures in order of cost, most expensive to least. I found one in Derry, New Hampshire, a famous New England town, because astronaut Alan Shepherd had grown up there. It didn’t cost anywhere nearly as much as Camp Teel-a-Wooket. I started saving my babysitting money. Maybe they’d let me go to that camp.
When I had just enough money for one week at the horse camp in Derry, I presented my plan. They mulled it over for a few days and agreed I could attend.
When I arrived for the weeklong adventure, I was shocked to discover that I was still the only non-wealthy person at the place. I was also the only chubby kid, and I took a lot of heat about that, to the point where I regressed and wet the bed a few times. That made the bullying even worse.
However, the person in charge of the horses seemed to like me. She decided she would have me ride a gentle, retired thoroughbred, a stunning auburn-colored giant who had done steeplechasing at racetracks. I had only ridden a few times — my cousin’s horse in Virginia — and he bore a western saddle. This time, it would be an English saddle, like the ones the girls in the brochures used.
The first time I rode him, he looked me in the eye, as if he were sizing me up. I mounted the saddle, and off we went, at a walk, at first, then a trot. He decided he’d jump over a small bench in the yard while I was on his back. That was a surprise! Since I was still on his back, he seemed pleased. He returned on his own to the riding instructor.
“You passed his test,” she declared. “Next time you ride him, he will let you be in charge.”
She was right. The next time, I held the reins; he did what I wanted him to. This time, it was me whose photo could be in the next brochure, I thought, even though I didn’t wear the expensive gear.