Editor’s Note: As part of our year-long celebration of our 100th Year Anniversary (1922-2022), we’ll post a Throwback Thursday edition of our Alleghany Rattler Newspaper to give you a peek into life at camp across those 100 summers!
In this busy holiday season it’s nice to recall the value of rest, as this piece does in praising camp’s daily Rest Hour that we still practice today!
The Blessing of Rest Hour
By Betty Osterlin
Talking, running feet, a great pandemonium all indicate the joy of camping. Over on the courts are several couples playing tennis. All down Tent Row is heard laughing and joking mingling with the moody voice of a victrola. Now sounds the silver notes of a bugle, beautiful to the ears of the unknowing, but what a mournful knell to us!
Why? Oh, it is the waring sound for Rest Hour. The girls leisurely stroll back to their tents until again the notes of the bugle rise over the camp. Now the walk to plunge on their own bed. It is time to rest. That sounds bad at first but it isn’t so bad once a person has experienced the thing.
Just glance along the Tent Row and see what a multitude of things are done.
To start at our tent, May Louise writing a letter, Ruth apparently resting, Vivian writing a poem, and myself writing this article for the Alley Rat.
In another tent, I see a girl reading and farther down the row a bed is jigging suspiciously.
Oh! down there in that tent — I’m pointing my finger now — is a girl staring into space — she is a thinker, I guess.
Well now! Isn’t Rest Hour a blessing? Just think of all the genius that would go to waste if we didn’t have it! No prospective poet, philosopher, or may-be-writer, or many other geniuses I may have overlooked.
