PERSON: Camp meeting days

Several years my senior, my brothers and their contemporaries have vivid memories from the 1940s and Fifties of a caravan of sedans and station wagons loaded with kids, suitcases, sleeping bags and provisions making the trek up to Camp Glisson near Dahlonega for Methodist Family Camp. Families would spend the week at camp in the mountains where the breeze was cool, the water freezing, and everything just tasted a whole lot better cooked over a fire in the mountain air. Campers slept in tents, others in dormitory-style housing, still others in one- or two-family cabins.

The Sixties ushered in dramatic shifts in family lifestyles and dynamics. Mom often took on a job to supplement the family income, provide for a second automobile, and allow the family to afford amenities previously out of reach on Dad’s income alone. As family incomes grew, so did the family’s mobility. Nowadays, it is not unusual for families to have one vehicle per driver plus a truck or other vehicle for family activities.

Just to offer an example, the summer of 1962 saw my father purchase three automobiles: one for each of my oldest two brothers and a new mint green Oldsmobile Super 88 that ran like a scared rabbit. Every licensed driver in the family had a vehicle while we still had an older Studebaker parked in the driveway awaiting the youngest son’s turn to begin driving.

More cars equaled more mobility equaled less togetherness, less communication, less meaningful dialogue among family members. Because people had fewer issues with transportation around town, evening meetings became the norm for the parents. After school sports, dance, piano, and jobs took the kids away from home and put Mom in the road more afternoons than not. Family dinner became sporadic.

Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting dried up as more and more activities took precedence over attending mid-week church. By the mid-1980s, Sunday night worship had been ceased as families were having to spend Sunday evenings getting ready for the work week to begin on Monday. Soon, more and more workers were having to spend Sundays earning a living.

When we hop off the hamster wheel long enough to really look at our lifestyles today, it’s no wonder we have some of the societal issues we do.
So, when we celebrated Camp Meeting month during August, the old hymns from the Cokesbury took me back to days I remember so vividly even though Family Camp had been ended before I got big enough to recall those memories myself. My memories are of the old Methodist Church on Candler at Center Streets and Sunday nights in the waning summer sunlight sitting on old ladderback chairs at the old Methodist Men’s Club (today’s Masonic Lodge) with Miss Beulah playing an upright piano rolled from the building onto the lawn.

Simplicity better suits the human nature, don’t you think? We hide behind busyness and electronic devices because it takes the focus off our personalities and associated warts. If we could turn back the clocks to the simplicity of our childhoods (or that of our parents and grandparents), it would be an amazing thing to see how much better is communication among neighbors, friends and family members. It’d be like having Camp Meeting all over again.

Helen Person is a Winder resident and columnist for the Barrow Journal. You can reach her at helenperson@windstream.net.