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362 When I was a child living in the housing complex known as Bellevue Square in the 1960s, I initially had a very good life. I had all of the resources necessary to be a very happy kid. Then at around the age of six things began to change drastically. My father became very ill and could no longer support our household. The most obvious evidence of this was the lack of food in the house. I can literally recall a time when the only thing in our refrigerator was a bottle of water. We frequently would have to rely on family and neighbors for our meals, which is why some people I knew back then are like family to me even now. In the midst of all of this were many families of like circumstance. I distinctly recall the first summer that my sister Karen and I spent living under these conditions. We were playing outside one morning when the children of the Jones family passed us by. Two of them were twins, Debra and Dianne, and one of them said, “Hey, Charlie, do you want to go to Camp Courant?” I said “Camp Courant , what’s that?” Upon hearing my question she stepped back and looked at me like I had two heads. She then replied, “You don’t know what Camp Courant is?” Now one thing that all of the Jones kids could do was run, so she ran up the four flights of stairs to my mother, and the next thing I knew I was standing in front of the Keney Clock Tower on Main Street, waiting for the bus to go to Camp Courant. Immediately upon entering the bus the children began singing songs that everyone seemed to know but me. I don’t think I said a word until we reached the entrance of Camp Courant, which meant that we had to climb a huge hill. At that time I joined in the chant “We’ve got to make it up the hill,” which we repeated until there was no more hill to climb. When we got off the bus it was like stepping off of a plane and walking into Disneyworld. Because the project I lived in was almost all asphalt and there was no level grassy area to be found, we used Charles A. Teale, Sr. 52 My Summers at Camp Courant My Summers at Camp Courant / C. A. Teale, Sr. 363 to go to the front lawn of Union Baptist Church on Main Street to play football. From time to time someone would kick the ball inaccurately and it would end up in Old North Cemetery. (You could prove how brave you were by just climbing over the fence and retrieving the ball). There was no swimming pool or anything of the sort to be found outside. The basketball court was crowded with teenagers, and a kid of age six wasn’t welcome there. But at Camp Courant I simply followed my friends from one activity to another for hours until I heard someone yell the words “lunch time.” As anyone will tell you who went to Camp Courant in the early 1960s, it was time for a glass of milk, two cookies, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. After that we had to wait an hour, and then we could go swimming in the pool that still stands in the same location today. As if days like these weren’t exciting enough, there were special days for dignitaries and stars, like Hartford jewelry story owner Bill Savitt (Mr. P.O.M.G., his store’s slogan stood for “Peace of Mind Guaranteed”) day and Pat Hogan Day. Although Bill Savitt day meant free ice cream, my favorite day was Pat Hogan day. Pat Hogan was the High Sheriff at the time, and he would have people hand out cowboy hats with his name embroidered on them. Walking home from the bus was always interesting on Pat Hogan day because if you were not careful someone would snatch the hat off of your head and the next thing you knew your hat would be on someone else’s head. I was nine years old when we moved from the neighborhood where I used to take the bus to Camp Courant, and it would be another thirty years exactly before I would return to celebrate the 100th anniversary of this institution. With the exception of the maypole (which was gone), everything...

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