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SubTitle: Way back when
Posted by: Old Timer (mdaniels@jps.net) on 4/26/1998@02:41hrs:
R.S. mentioned in a blurb about Tompkinsville Pool that when he was a child growing up vacations were so different. That going to the pool was a vacation. Unless one went to scoot camp etc.
Well my mother was a volunteer at the Staten Island T.B. and Health
Association in the thirties.
The New York Herald Tribune had in those days what they called a fresh air fund. This money was raised or donated by them to send the inner city kids of families who could not afford otherwise to go to a camp in the Catskills or to a private family somewhere for two weeks in the summer.The volunteer families were paid sometimes a small stipend to help defray the cost of food. My mother being a volunteer escorted the groups of kids to their destinations. Some of the trips were in a distant state. Maryland, Virginia and the New England area were ones I remember. The kids had a packed lunch and were to have a list of items of clothing etc. tied up in a soft drawstring bag about the size of a large pillow case. They would gather at a bus or train and get tagged and off they went for two weeks..I got to go to camp with them as a freebie for mother a couple of summers. One camp I went to was on the Harriman Estate in upstate New York. It was a great time and I met some kids that I never would have come in contact with any other way. To them it probably was a way to get out of the city. I met kids from Hell's Kitchen and all of the lower East Side of the city. Great Vacation