Camp Kiwanis

There Are Places I Remember 

by Lauraine Alberetti Lombara

I hear the Beatles singing, “There are places I remember”  and my memories return to when I was in my early preteen years. These places were a touchstone to recall very happy times discovering new parts of Massachusetts and new experiences.  

We lived in South Boston and had cousins in Cambridge. Our  parents were offered a beach house in Onset to rent for a week at a discount, as it belonged to a co-worker of my father. Off we went...parents, my three cousins, my two brothers and I. Of course we had to take lots of food, so both families, unaware of what the other had specifically brought, arrived with two large hams. Suffice it to say, aside from wonderful romps into Onset Bay, games and walks to get ice cream cones, we subsisted on ham in every iteration, at every meal.  No use asking what’s for dinner, lunch or breakfast, the answer was always HAM. Ham and eggs, ham sandwiches, ham with sides for dinner..our parents were good cooks so each meal was good but boy were we tired of ham after that week. We get a laughing fit each time my cousins or my family would recall Onset...the ham week.

Another outing as a youngster was to a family camp our close friends were building in Marlboro. Driving there seemed to take hours and I was a car sick prone child so it was a difficult ride but I made it without incident. The rustic, unfinished, but livable house was on a little pond where we could swim, which I loved to do.  I also relished taking care of two younger boys at the camp, grandsons of the owners. I played games, took short walks around the perimeter of the house and thoroughly enjoyed my supervisory role as the babysitter.

A few years later, now a ten year old, I was a Camp Fire Girl and the leader convinced my mother that I would enjoy going to summer camp outside the city in bucolic, at the time anyway, Hanson. Off I went to Camp Kiwanis for a week, the only girl from our troop to go, never having been away from home that long.  A family friend, a bachelor who always had a new, expensive car drove us and I did manage to have him stop so I could use the shoulder on the road before I soiled his car. My stomach was not quite normal even afterwards as I was quite nervous about the whole ordeal ahead. I acclimated easily and remember passing swimming tests, learning to canoe and archery lessons, craft sessions. There was singing around campfires; “Come to Camp Kiwanis where the green grass grows”, Kumbaya, and other ditties, discovering “smores” and Spam at the dining hall…a ”what kind of meat is this?” moment. I can’t remember the girls I met there, only that I had a very happy time but I was happier to be back home.

My parents belonged to the Italian Cisalpina Society in Boston which fostered community among the Italian immigrants from the North of Italy..Cis Alpine. I remember fondly dances in a hall in South. Boston, not far from our home, where families gathered a few times a year to eat, drink, dance and socialize with relatives and friends from the greater Boston area who may not have been in contact often with each other. An orchestra played and dance we did. I learned waltzes, foxtrots, tangos and polkas, watching and dancing with my father, mother and brothers. I still remember the music, the singing, even the Italian lyrics.

The Society also sponsored picnics every summer at a grove in Billerica. I don’t recall the name  but I do remember well the pine trees, wooden picnic tables and benches, a good sized gazebo with a wooden floor for the dancing throughout the afternoon, a small pond which was not appealing for swimming(to me anyway), but fishing was attempted by some. A major focus of the gatherings was the food! Every family made and brought multiple dishes, salads, breads, desserts, wine and beer. Lasagne and cannelloni, among the pasta specialties, rice timbales, risotto, roasted beef, veal, pork and chicken in every Italian manner possible, antipasti and cooked vegetables served warm or cold, tortas of vegetables, crostatas of peaches, apples, berries, dried stewed fruits, cookies. There was never a dearth of mouth watering, delicious and  home-made food. Not a ham in sight!  Everyone shared so we tasted and ate and danced away the calories. Singing continued after the small, live combo departed and as the day began to wane we all packed up, cleaned the area and set out, sated, tired, but oh so happy.  Another treasured memory. Another place I remember quite distinctly. So when I hear the song, my heart is warmed.

Bob, Lauraine, Joe, Marlboro July 1949