For me, the Rec Hall represents the heart of camp, a place where so much of the best of Nebagamon is bolstered. Traditions and memories are maintained. Creativity and humor are encouraged. Achievements are celebrated. Friendships are strengthened. The camp community is fortified.

Much like the brimming plates of food that the KPs retrieve from the kitchen, the Rec Hall brims with inspiring scenes and moments and memories. So picking my favorite aspects of the Rec Hall experience… particularly after it was all made more vivid because Covid precautions meant that the summer of 2021 was the Summer Without a Rec Hall… well, that’s a tough task.

It could be the sea of smiling faces that I get to witness every morning, every midday, and every evening—the playful interaction among friends as cabins coalesce around the table. All in one place, I get to watch counselors and campers in action, albeit the chew-and-chatter variety. And rare is the unsmiling face, particularly around dessert time.

Then again, I really love the action in the form of the back-and-forth from the tables to the kitchen counter. Often, I think to myself how some parents would marvel at seeing the efforts of their 11-year-old son as he brings black a platter of grilled cheese sandwiches or fills a water pitcher or scrapes the plates and carries the stack back to the kitchen. It is a parade of responsible young men.

And those responsible young men get to have a glimpse of the hard work put forth by the members of the kitchen staff. So it is particularly heartening when I see a Logger pick up a plate of food and offer a thanks and a smile. Some parents would probably marvel at that, too.

But I also love the post-meal experience in the form of announcements. I’m always amazed at how a possibly shy young man can stand in front of 200-plus peers and ooze confidence and imagination. It’s not easy to do that. And it’s certainly not easy to find an unexpected or exciting way to tell the camp family about another offer of tie-dying or field hockey or push ball. Events like Cruiser Days and Wannado and A.K. Agikamik can be especially fun fodder for such creativity. Madison Avenue could probably learn a few things once in a while from teenagers trying to inspire their younger peers.

Of course, there is also the combination of creativity and tradition in the form of the big trip plaques that decorate the walls of the Rec Hall… as well as the ceiling of the LJ porch these days. Somehow, every wilderness crew comes up with a way of memorializing a seminal moment in their young lives in a new and quirky way. This might mean something like “Let The Wild Rumpus Begin” (Quetico, 2011)… or it might be a 1983 Long Trip memorial that consists of a long plaque, the word “TRIP,” and simply: “We Paddle, We Eat, We Sleep.” Sometimes you convey more with less.

And there are also the names engraved on the various other plaques and trophies. They are celebrations of accomplishment, whether it’s an O-Cup or Aus Cup or Horse-n-Goggle Tournament. But they are also reminders of what we at Nebagamon prioritize: effort. Awards like the Broken Racquet and the Broken Kickboard are about kids who may struggle to succeed, but who shine in their determination. So I love those, too.

I also love the events that take place in the Rec Hall. Sometimes, on rainy days, this means a Sunday Service or Council Fire or a visit from A.K. But always (at least pre-Covid) this has meant GTCs. And for decades, this has been the place where the camp family’s talents and courage converge. Over the years, we’ve all seen the musicians and magicians and jugglers and joke-tellers and on and on and on. And I have yet to see a reaction from the camp family that wasn’t appreciative and encouraging, particularly when the youngest campers take the stage. That puts the goodness in Good Time Charlie.

But if I’m being honest, it may be that my favorite Rec Hall scenes are those not-infrequent moments of spontaneity and raucousness. Maybe Axeman 2 erupts in a silly song about taco salad. Or campers and counselors suddenly form a conga line. Or a row of Lumberjacks at the back of the GTC audience swing their shirts and scream their lungs out—“Fire! Fire! Fire!”—while singing “One Dark Night.”

Impulsive exuberance in the Rec Hall. It nourishes the soul. And I eat that stuff up.

by Brad Herzog

The following has been updated from a Keylog story from 2010. But of course, sermonettes are eternal…

It is a small, metal note card file that appears to date from the Truman Administration. Rusting and slightly warped from the years, it is an eminently unassuming container. But open it, and it is like an antidote to Pandora’s box, releasing wit and wisdom, exhortation and epiphany, life lessons and clever turns of phrase. As the fading letters on the top of the box tell us, these are SERMONETTES – part, as Jessie Stein Diamond well puts it, of the “transmission of values… built into so many rituals at camp.” And as Nebagamon traditions go, few are as entrenched as this pithy pre-meal practice.

Yet it is also a box full of mystery, its origins largely lost in the Nebagahaze over the decades. Joe Hirschhorn once recalled that when he started at camp in 1940 sermonettes were usually given by Muggs Lorber himself. Now, of course, an ever-changing parade of campers reminds their peers that “nothing is harder on your laurels than resting on them” or that “the largest room in the world is the room for improvement” or that “the size of a man is not found by measuring his feet, but by measuring his footsteps.”

Where do the sermonettes come from? Considering the diversity of the note cards themselves – white cards, yellow cards, pink cards, most typed, some written, from a vast spectrum of sources – the genesis of each is a tale of its own. Back in the day, it wasn’t unusual for staff or older campers to offer Muggs sayings that they found meaningful. Roger Wallenstein used to lift clever adages from his datebook and type them onto note cards using an old IBM Selectric. Steph Hanson has come across quotable quotations while surfing the Internet. As a teenager, Jane Stein Kerr stumbled upon a catalog of inspirational posters – “the kind,” she says, “that now make me groan but to an adolescent seemed profound.” She added a handful of them to the box, including a well-known classic concerning lemons and lemonade.

That particular note card is well-worn, missing a chunk, clearly a favorite among the mini-sermonizers. In fact, a trip through that sermonette box offers hints at preferences and quirks. Some oft-repeated cards are wrinkled and stained. Others appear crisp and new – not-yet-noticed bits of wisdom. On a few occasions, the same sermonette can be found on two different cards, as if discovered by two different generations. Often, the cards have been revised in an attempt to be non-gender specific – “man” and “him” having been changed to “person” and “them.”

Often, too, the sermonette sources are given credit on the cards themselves. Packed tightly into that box are a collection of writers (Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry David Thoreau, Elie Wiesel), philosophers (Nietzsche, Voltaire, Spinoza), presidents (Lincoln, Wilson, Eisenhower, Carter) and various icons (Rosa Parks, Amelia Earhart). That 11-year-old relating words of wisdom to his peers just may be quoting Somerset Maugham or Margaret Mead or Oliver Wendell Holmes.

More interesting than the expected sources – the likes of Shakespeare and Einstein and Churchill – are the more obscure ones that have inhabited that metal container over the years. British Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell? Mid-20^th century romance novelist Faith Baldwin? Celebrity columnist Lloyd Shearer? The list ranges from Reverend R. Inman to Rabbi Morris Adler to agnostic icon Robert Ingersoll to Yiddish humorist Leo Rosten.

Indeed, humor is a sermonette staple. Sometimes it comes in the form of accidental irony. For instance, Ben Franklin is credited with saying, “An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.” However, on the note card it is spelled “Frenklin.” So much for knowledge. Usually, the comedy is intentional, often begging for a rim shot (“If someone is talking behind your back, then you’re probably heading in the right direction.”) Roger Wallenstein once contributed a line from Groucho Marx: “These are my principles, and if you don’t like them, I have others.” But to his chagrin, it remained largely unread. “I hope the card remains in the metal box,” he says.

But it may not, and that fluidity is another fascinating aspect of the sermonette box. While some join the club, others are edited for space. The Steins recall one autumn vacation in the 1960s when a drive to Chicago with relatives became a laugh-a-mile riot as they sorted through the box, separating the keepers from the rejects, some of which were staff or camper pranks. One of the discarded: “Boys are more in need of models than words.”

Still, some peculiarities remain. Like this one: “Never insult an alligator until after you have crossed the river.” And this one: “Any time you think you have influence, try ordering around someone else’s dog.”

Yes, some sermonettes can be an acquired taste. But Sally Stein has a decent explanation. “One man’s pithy saying,” she says, “is another’s puzzlement.”

Be seated.

The Rec Hall is a dining hall much in the way that the Waterfront is merely a little beach. SO MUCH MORE happens there. While the meals have been a longtime communal experience at camp, so have GTCs and movie nights and rainy day activities and (back in the day) political conventions. Here is a gallery of 30 photos covering nearly 90 years, proving the point:

We all know the iconic Rec Hall features – the second- and third-generation names that are quickly filling up one wall, the “WIN OR LOSE BE A GOOD SPORT” sign, the mounted deer head above the fireplace, the 1964 “Survival Big Trip” poncho… But there are somewhat hidden treasures amid the hodgepodge of history at the heart of camp, too. Here are a bunch of them, described in the captions below the photos: