From ages 6 to 12, I spent eight weeks every summer at Menominee, an all-boys camp in Eagle River, Wis. I was taught archery at Menominee, how to shoot a rifle, roll a kayak, cross the lake on a single water ski, bus a table, operate a Lazy-susan, tell a ghost story, make a bed with hospital corners and mark a trail, but those are not the only things I learned. In the manner of a public school or army base, what I learned was usually not what was being taught. I learned how to form an alliance, survive a bully, win a fight against a stronger person, spark a softball rally, sneak off the grounds and into Eagle River taverns without leaving a trace, gamble, chew tobacco, throw a knife, dismember a daddy long legs, barter and bluff.
Those who spent summers there come from towns across the country and world, but we all grew up at Menominee. We loved it, and that’s why we cried at the banquet held the last night of every summer, tears streaming as we sang, “Fill a stein, sing a song, to the camp I love.” It’s why we did not merely try to defeat but to demolish the kids from our archrival, Kawaga, at the midseason Olympiad. Mike Dunleavy Jr., who went on to play basketball at Duke, had been a Menominee standout in those games. When a “kid from Menominee” introduced himself to Dunleavy on the floor amid the celebration that followed Duke’s 2000 NCAA championship, Dunleavy, turning serious, asked, “Did we beat Kawaga?”