- Campers at Beard’s Hollow, c. 1950 – CPHM Collection
This afternoon, while Nyel and our houseguests go to the Farmer’s Market in Long Beach, I’ll be heading to Astoria with Betsy Millard to be on Carol Newman’s KMUN program “Arts: Live and Local.” We’ll be talking about next week’s opening of “Summer Camps on the North Beach Peninsula” at the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum.
I spent some time at the museum yesterday “consulting” (mostly ooohing and aaaahing) with Betsy and staff about the exhibit. Already it’s a trip down memory lane for anyone who has ever been to any camp anywhere – or even for anyone who was ever in Scouts or 4-H or Camp Fire Girls. The uniforms and costumes! The camp fire with hot dogs and s’mores! The photographs of campers and the almost familiar landmarks, as in “Oh! The railroad tracks in Long Beach ran right through the Hill Summer Camp!”
When I returned home I had two messages. One was from my cousin Stephen Taylor who will be visiting here with his brother and sister-in-law next week. Steve lives in Australia and this will be our first meeting. He and his brother are my sixth-cousins-once-removed! The mind boggles.
Steve comes back to the states each year to spend time working on the revival of the Taylor Family Association which was begun in the 1920s. He is also helping to clean up Taylor cemeteries in Virginia. I don’t really know anything about any of that and I will be interested in talking with him next week. I do wish Willard were still alive and could participate in the conversation. He was the genealogist in our branch of the family and he would have been so interested in all that Steve is doing.
And, speaking of Willard… my second message yesterday was from Sandy Nielson who called to talk about an idea for a musical presentation based on his book Skullduggery – possibly in the Oysterville church, possibly in November. Unfortunately, I can’t say “yay” or “nay” to such a grand idea – I do not own the copyright to Willard’s works and, although I have written permission to use his material for my own purposes, I can’t legally extend that privilege to anyone else.
But, with fingers and toes crossed, I gave Sandy some information about who to contact. To paraphrase one of my extended family members, Father Tom Williams: It was the least I could do; it was the most I could do; it was all I could do.
All in all, the atmosphere in Oysterville seems charged with possibilities!
Goodness, Sydney, what a lot of excitement in your little village! I hope KMUN will archive your interview so that I can find it online since we’re in Gig Harbor right now. I always enjoy listening to you talk about history. And I am certainly glad you can keep the whole cousin-removed thing straight and that you even are aquainted with these people. I have trouble getting emails from my first cousins in Missouri, much less somewhere such as Australia. And finally, a play about Oysterville history and performed in Oysterville, BRILLIANT! I do hope that whom/whatever hold the rights to your uncle’s writing will oblige. Anything that helps preserve the history of the village and brings culture into people’s lives could be seen as very good indeed.