Colorado! And a difficult quiz. . .

I just got back from a trip to Colorado to interview several Shiloh folks and help host a Colorado History Party.  My thanks to everyone involved!  In Colorado I got a chance to talk to:

ca. 1951

 a camper/counselor who helped get camp ready for its first summer (1951).  He lived in the New Jersey neighborhood, and his Sunday school teacher was the man who bought the first land for Camp Shiloh;

a Long Island kid who came to Shiloh every chance she could, including as a camper, a"canteen girl," and a volunteer in the year-round program.  She was baptized at summer camp, and she and her friends celebrated with ice cream;

2012

ca. 1974

a conscientious objector whose draft board permitted him two years at Shiloh, and classified him as a minister.  He would give his two years and stay five more, and he would become the executive director of Shiloh;

1977

2012

and I met more people who came in and out of Shiloh, people who now call Colorado their home.

If you were at Shiloh then, can you identify any of these folks?

The picture above is me (seated on the floor, in the center of the frame) with most of the people who came to the Colorado History Party.  

In Colorado, I learned from one person about some frighteningly violent experiences that happened to Shiloh workers living in the inner city.  I learned from another person about how Shiloh opened up new possibilities for campers.  And I heard from another about how strange it was for an African-American who grew up in Civil Rights-era Memphis to encounter urban New York.

I heard some stories about some wild field trips.

I took a difficult quiz.

                                

Here it is.  I wasn't alone in taking this quiz.  Above is a scan of a paper that was given at Shiloh's orientation session, which happened in the fall of 1972.  A Colorado Shiloh alum kept his quiz all these years.  He only got four answers right, earning, he is not afraid to say, a score that ranked him as "idiot".

The purpose of this quiz was to get new Shiloh staffers used to the idea that, even though they were intelligent people, they suddenly might not have all of the answers, and they might even be idiots now and then.  How do you fare?  Can you figure out what these words would have meant to a kid in East New York in 1972?

1. Anklebuster     13. Johnny pump
2. Bulldogger      14. The dozens
3. Highwaters      15. Screet
4. Stomps            16. Booty
5. Tubes              17. Skelly
6. J                      18. Dukey
7. Butch              19. Biter
8. Mother's Day    20. Peasy head (?)
9. Snoppies  (?)       21. Behind
10. Gem              22. Holding
11. Snap              23. Get over
12. Greyboy        24. Get a run
                            25. Stoop

I took the test and was an idiot, too.  I looked up the answers in the Urban Dictionary, and I really felt like an idiot, to be so white.  Well, I did know at least one answer, #17, because I'd heard quite a few Shiloh people talk about it.  Skelly is a kids' game played on the New York streets and sidewalks with bottlecaps, and there's a play area in chalk.  The players try to flick their bottle caps into numbered zones.  It's a clever game.  Did you ever play it?

And it's not on the quiz, but there's double dutch.  I heard how important that was, too.  Play.  Maybe what I am learning makes a grander, deeper story, or maybe it is about little moments in time, but in Colorado I learned about some people who played together.  Two of them are below.  One of them I met in NYC and one in Colorado, and they are now separated by many years and many miles.  Well, back then they found that they weren't so far apart in their desire to have fun, and for a few months they played double dutch together on a New York City street.  In their stomps (shoes).

ca. 1974

2012