By Norman Cain, June 11, 2020 — I thought that I would give a story about my experiences between ’58, ’59 and 1960, when I would work from mid-June to late September at Camp Joseph and Betty Harlam, which was a Reform Jewish camp in the Pocono Mountains, which was located in a little village called Kunkletown which was about maybe 20 miles (my geography is off) either north, east, west or south of Stroudsburg.
I got the job through my counselor at John Bartram High School. He referred me to the Vice Principal in charge of discipline whose name was Menchie Goldblatt who was a very famous man in Philadelphia and really throughout the United States around in the ‘30s and beyond. If you would go down to Palestra, Penn’s basketball facility, (it’s probably the oldest such facility in the nation) you could see his picture, because he (Mr. Goldblatt) was an All American basketball player in 1935. He did a lot to get Philadelphia College, in the early days when it was called Philadelphia Textile, their athletic program off of the ground.
Well, it was very interesting working in the Pocono Mountains in those days, because in those days – it wasn’t built up the way it was built up now. It was just beautiful pretty mountains and fresh air, and you had the Pennsylvania Dutch riding around in their buggies and whatnot. And from our school to work at the camp we had maybe about eight or nine kids, they would always have two or three girls that would work in the kitchen but they would always have at least one that would act as a babysitter for Mr. Goldblatt’s daughter who was married. We did kitchen work, and I didn’t have to do it but with my best friend, he was in charge of keeping everything at camp together, and so I would help him mow fields (not lawns), paint cabins, and once a week we would go down to Allentown to take the laundry and sometimes we had to go up to Stroudsburg.
Luckily the rabbis would loan us their cars and we would take forays into Wilkesboro. It was really a lot of fun. I got a chance to learn how to row, boat, how to canoe. Of course there was a nice swimming pool. We played softball, volleyball, and we had a basketball team. And of course with Mr. Goldblatt being an All American in basketball in 1935, we would play other camps. And that was a lot of fun. And another great recreational activity was the campfires at night. And even though we didn’t know the meanings of the words we got a chance to sing a lot of Jewish folk songs. I think the name of the dance is the Horah that we did. Oh, that was so beautiful. And see we were in our later teens so we got to be friends with the counselors. We had two sessions with the younger kids that would come in and we made a lot of money putting baggage in cars and taking baggage from cars when another group would come in, and then put the baggage in the cabins.
Altogether it was a beautiful experience with the fresh air and whatnot, and the thing was we made $250.00 (well, I did- my buddy, he made more) for the summer, plus the tips we got from assisting parents with their baggage when one group would leave and another group would come. The last group that would come in would be the college students and the teenagers, and that was the best time. And one of our activities was to set up the synagogue. And that was extremely interesting.
For those three years in the spring [when] we would be there for the weekends for retreats of the rabbis, I really, really learned a lot. Then there was a guy named Jay Mandell. He was a good basketball player with us and then later on I would see him as a basketball referee at the Baker Leagues. Sonny Hill was involved in that, that’s something I won’t expound upon but that was during the days like in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, that was actually a professional basketball league. You know, we have 32 teams now, then we probably had about 12 teams. But these fellows, they would come and play at Bright Hope Baptist Church down at 12th and Columbia at the time. Well, Jay Mandell— he didn’t get paid for it, but he was an actual professional referee and he was a sociologist. He wrote a book and he had adopted a Black kid that went on to be a great basketball player. So we made a lot of friends. It was a great opportunity for me to be enmeshed in another culture.
I forgot to mention – we had a cook, he was from the First World War, an Afro man and he was really, really a nice guy. He was a major cook and he had this assistant cook and he would tell us all of these stories about the first world war and whatnot. He was very, very good, and the food was excellent. The Jewish food, it was really, really, really excellent. And we came back in better physical shape than when we went up. I miss those days.
It was really great because I got a chance to be enmeshed in another culture and see another way of life. And up until that point each summer I was going to South Carolina. Now, you know I write about that a lot, but what would happen would be I would save enough money to be able to, around Thanksgiving, pay my own way to South Carolina. And then because I had the opportunity for the last two years of high school and my first year of college, I had the opportunity to make money so I would go to South Carolina, and I paid my own way.
In closing, I would say that once I visited when – I think I must have been in my sophomore year in college in West Virginia – and I went up to see a girlfriend at Penn State. I saw one of the counselors there and it was sort of like a reunion. So it’s a great memory, and I had a beautiful time up there in the Poconos. The only thing is that when I go up there now, it’s all different, the building and whatnot, up there and it’s not the same as it used to be.