Recalled by Reed Maidenberg with Mike Maidenberg
It’s the fall of 1958. Muggs and Janet Lorber drive to my home in Marion, Indiana to present to me and my parents a funky slide show and eight mm movie about a place called Camp Nebagamon, which we had heard about from my parents’ friends, the Pragers in Indianapolis. Their son Tom had gone there and had high praise. Suitably impressed with the Muggs and Janet presentation, we agree that I should try Nebagamon for the eight-week session beginning near the end of June 1959.
With our plans cemented, I say I would like to try the camp train option leaving from Indianapolis to Chicago on the Monon Railroad. Campers and staff would gather in Chicago, attend a baseball game, then leave in the evening for Wisconsin on the overnight train.
I am beyond excited, and of course nervous about the summer ahead, the newness of the experience, and the unknown. But I am a pretty adventurous kid. I like to try new things. I’m up for it.
I don’t recall much about the gathering with campers and staff. That’s all a blur. But the baseball game was unforgettable, for entirely unforeseen reasons. It’s the Yankees vs. the White Sox in Comiskey Park. The White Sox have one of the best teams in years, and they will go on to win the pennant, though lose to the Dodgers in the World Series. For the moment, though, I am a big- time Yankees fan, and I’m thrilled to see my team!
All of us campers are seated together with Nebagamon staff along the first base line behind the Yankees dugout. The parents are seated a bit further away. My dad, Milt Maidenberg, is at the game but he will be leaving to drive home to Indiana well before the game ends.
It’s Billy Pierce pitching for the Sox, Art Ditmar for the Yankees, who have their now legendary players on the roster: Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Gil McDougald, Hector Lopez, Bobby Richardson, Bill “Moose” Skowron, Hank Bauer.
It’s the top of the sixth inning. The Yankees are leading 6-2. Moose Skowron is up to bat. He hits a towering pop-up that soars above the dugout, and we watch it with rapt attention. Some campers have brought their mitts to the game. They take them out, eyes on the now plunging ball.
Down it comes, nearer and nearer. The mitts are outstretched, like flowers awaiting raindrops. All eyes follow the ball’s descent. Down, down, down…
Blam! The ball hits the top of the dugout and caroms toward us! I watch it fly over my head behind me, then I see a hand reach up and make a barehand catch! It’s my dad! Pure reflex! He is walking over to find me to say goodbye and catches the ball! The stadium crowd erupts in a cheer. I am beside myself with excitement!
Milt, my hero in so many ways, adds another feather to his cap. He comes down a few rows, presents me with the ball, gives me a hug and kiss, and leaves for the drive back to Marion.
I have a cool thing to share with my cabinmates. I’ll be in Swamper One this summer, Muggs’s last as director, with the great Paul Kent as counselor. The overnight train ride from Chicago to Hayward is magical and memorable. I’m sleeping in the upper bunk, and the rocking and rolling motion portends the changes coming in my life, and in the lives of all others in the years to come. I don’t remember sleeping that much.
The railroads are nearing the end of their heyday, and their many decades of service to the travelers of the country. President Eisenhower has championed a great network of Interstate Highways that will serve the ever growing number of private automobiles, with their bombastic and often grandiose designs, giant tail fins, huge iconic lumbering machines that will cruise this great network of roads and render the railroads obsolete for mass passenger travel.
I have this beautiful scuffed baseball, along with a few others, in my drawer in my room at home for years. Then, as I grow older and look to places far away for new experiences and adventures, I leave my home in Indiana, and the treasures of my boyhood gathered in a few shoeboxes. One day I will return to find not only my room has been completely gutted, my built-in desk and dresser removed, but my treasured objects are also gone! I thought they were safe, but the vicissitudes of time and my seeming indifference to their fate made these totems of my youth vulnerable to the crusading remodeling instincts of my mother.
I don’t have the scuffed Skowron foul ball anymore. My parents have both passed away, and the family home was sold in 2009 after having been built and occupied by our family for 61 years.
What remains are the memories formed in the head and heart of a young boy. They are as vital to me today as in that instant when I saw the grin on my father’s face as he put a baseball in my hand, and I left for my first summer at Camp Nebagamon.
