Camp Bryn Afon

know what you think. We're at Ephemeral at ihart media dot com. A femeral is a production of My Heart three D audio listened with that songs yea, yeah yeah. The amazing thing about recorded music is how it can freeze time, not only the moment in which it was performed, but the points of your life when you're listening. Most anyone who's ever fallen in love with the song can experience this phenomenon, including our friend Bob Purse. My name

is Bob Purse. I'm originally from Northfield, Illinois, which is a tiny summer of Chicago, and I have been since my early adulthood a massive collector. I suspect that I own at least ten thousand individual pieces of recorded sound. One record that scored the major events of Bob's adult life was so obscure that it set in motion his collecting obsession. Some thirty five years ago, in May, on the verge of his twenty fifth birthday, a young Bob Purse was looking for what was next to his life.

My future was staring in the face, and I didn't know exactly what I was going to do. I had had an off again, on again relationship with college, and I was just a week or two away from graduating with my bachelor's degree in human services and intended to find a job working with children. Now if everyone seated where he can see everyone out five, I was living at home. As I mentioned, I grew up in Northfield, which is sort of the baby sister of a town

called Winnetta. Winetta, Illinois, is home to a special annual event. It's built as the world's largest one day rummage sale. And looked it up and it's still built that way. Obviously, it didn't happen this year, but it's happened since nineteen o two. It's held in a building owned by the Winnetka Congressional Church, the Wineka Community House, the enormous building if it's basically used for the public. Once a year they take everything else out of all these rooms and

fill them up with grummage sail items. He writes the price on a slip of paper and attaches it to the bag, and it's a one day sail. It's on a Thursday, I think, the first Thursday in May. Bob wasn't a dedicated collector, truth be told, He only went to buy a pocalle. It's essentially a ukulele with an odd shaped body and a neck that's about two ft long, and then the curves at the end. My friend Paul and I both thought pokol ales. And while I was there,

I looked through the records. Honestly, that was probably the start of my interest in buying large numbers of unusual records in order to see if there was something interesting among them. I would guess that I bought some of the thirty and forty five albums, and probably some five, and undoubtedly some tapes. The shoes tape Shore Shoes, shoes Shooth, Shooth. I guarantee you I got that there probably benda is that church is a mile away from the school that

they mentioned island. What is that we cover this tape in our pilot episode. I probably bought some stuff that was pretty mainstream that I didn't have yet. I think I bought some sound effect records small calibration shaker in the space lab, and I may have gotten some radio production records there which had like music to use behind promos and things like that. Among the piles of musical ephemera, Bob spotted an unassuming LP. It was just in a

plane sleeve inside a plane cardboard sleeve. It looked like something that was home produced, and all it says on it is musical Memories of Camper and Avin. Part one is on the front side and part two is listed on the back and then says simple Recording Service, Ryanander, Wisconsin. If I saw a record like that anywhere, I would snatch it immediately, like, well, what is this? I then had to walk probably close to a mile to get back to my car with a box full of at

least forty albums. I graduated like ten days later. We all returned back to my house for a celebration afterwards, and I had this box of records, and I said, hey, you want to hear some of the stuff I got. I pulled out probably three or four records, and that was one of them. We touched down the needle on a couple of spots. I kept listening lists for most of my adulthood. What were listening to this week? What

we're listening to this month? I'm certain, but I didn't listen to the Musical Memories of Campering Albin album all the way through until October. In those days, I would tape record them and listen to them to and from my way to work or wherever else I was going. If there were four uniw records that I hadn't listened to me, it might take a while before I got to. Throughout the episode, we'll place selections from the original Camper and Often Way, as well as tracks reimagined by musician

Nathaniel Krause. More details on both in the credits. I really was entranced by the sound of the thing, the ambiance of it, This wonderful echoe piano going on playing some tunes that I know, a lot of tunes I don't know, and some of that I know the tune, but not know what it is, but not a single one of the songs that I do recognize has the lyrics that go with it. Every word I can make

out at least is about the camp. For example, consider Yourself from Oliver, which is so I probably never not known because it was written my nond was about four or five years old. At some point I played parts of it for my mom, who was a professional musician, and she recognized a bunch more songs, and then a whole bunch of songs that I just don't recognize at all. In addition to the ambient texture of the recording and the idiosyncratic nature of the cover songs, the vocal performance

struck a chord. I like to hear kids singing when they're singing because they want to sing, and not because someone strained them as how to sing like an adult, ab how to sing properly, And this is just a bunch of girls singing their hearts out for fun. My second favorite album is an album by the Lime Lighters, who were a wonderful FULK trio in the sixties and then came back in the eighties, and it's recorded live in concert at a show they did along with a

bunch of grade scores. It's called True Children's Eyes. Probably my favorite track anybody's ever recorded is on that album. In other words, this was a natural for me. The one I like the most immediately is near the end of the album. It's sung to the old Shirley Temple hit the cod Fish Vault. Come along and follow me the bottom up the tree, We're join in the Jamuary and the Codfish Fine. It's a song about life at

the camp. The whole first verse is composed of all the different wonderful things about the camp, and then they sing it again and everything is negative. I could not make out every word, but I got out enough of it that I got the humor of it. The key line at the end of each verse is atronovin camp for girls, and in the second verse it's sung as

a question with the girls. That's the one that I immediately played, probably five or six times, almost as much, and then within a month much more was this song. And I didn't know the song at the time, but it's called the Missouri Walts and it's from the nineteenth century. As the years have gone on, I've heard many other renditions of his melody, and I just love it the words that are very snimental and very sweet about nighttime

at Camper and Aubin. Underneath the silvery beams of Champer and Aubin's night, her lovely curtain drops and ends the day too soon. Neath the sheltering pines we find the soul of happiness. Learn to give and take and think itself a little less. Who writes like that? That's beautiful. It's maybe the only song on the album that's sung in harmony. Probably for the next year and a half. That was the track I listened to more than anything

else on the radio or in my collection. The third one that I really liked is to tune called Let's Get Away from It All and again the song is great, the melody is indelible. It was a bigger hit in the forties with its real words. From that one, he is absolutely about how the day goes by. It starts with waking up a name, what their activities are like. It ends with what they do in the evening. On the LP, there are a total of thirty seven songs, all performed in the same manner live stripe piano and

a chorus of school age girls. Over the years, I have identified all but about seven or eight of them. Just two of them are really one and a half of them are traditional camp songs, but everything else has been written. There are white songs from various colleges, Ohio Hand,

Ohio State, and more Dame. The rest of them are just a cross section of twentieth century song scatter Brain, which is the thirties hit right when You Wish Him on a Star, which is from Penocchio, see Little Lindo, which is a famous Mexican song, Enough Swanny, I Don't love You, I Don't love you, after White Coral Bells, a song called good Morning Mrs Pockhead, my Wonderful One, which is probably something my mom identified because I've never heard that song, The Sweetheart of Sigma Kai, which is

another real set of metal song, my dreams, Hey look Me Over, even the Chicken Reel, which is not a nineteenth century violin peaks Oh by Jingo, another thirties records by Along a Moon River, which has been the sixties days of Wine and Roses, Why Yea. These probably cover from the eight nineties right up until the year this album was recorded. The tracks appear to be grouped thematically, providing a window into life at camp bring often during

some long past summer. Yeah, it starts off with a group of very general welcoming and cheering from the camp sort of songs. Most camps of those days, maybe even today, assign everybody into one of two groups. If you're on the Green team, everything that you do athletic or other activity, you're trying to win points for the Green team. If you're in the Orange team, vice versa. So there are ten songs on side one. Half of them are for the Blue team and half of them are for White team.

Then it goes back into some celebratory things about life at the camps and specific things about why they liked the game, just reinforcing out one of the campus yea and including one in which there's nothing but a serious complaints about collar they get treated by other campers. After that, there's a couple of real sentimental numbers. One song for the old college song of Halls and Ivy, which is one of the longest tracks on the album, and then

two good night songs. The one song to the tune of Let's Get Away from It All breaks down the camper's daily routine wake up each morning with the bugle after a great night of sleep, dressed in a hurry, scamper and scurry to breakfast, and know how we eat, sit on the floor with our teammates, join in a song or a yell. Next comes inspection, and here's the suggestion tuck everything away. Well, now don your garb for what comes next. A swim, perhaps a ride, rifle ry

and tennis too. We'll all play side by side, more fun again in the evening after the day's setting sun Gryn Alvin's great gals and how she does great gals. It's best when it's all said and done. I always thought the rude wifeilely and tennis too was a really weird phrase. I can't think of two things that have less in common. And at the top of the first side, there's a song for visiting day everybody. It's to the tune of a song called scatter Brain, which, as a

complete unrelated note, was a favorite of John Runnins. Somebody would ask for something for us to say anything exactly. If you go to this camp, or any camp, you probably keep going every year until your age out. So if you're new there, whether you're the youngest age of these people, seven or eight, or you're just starting to go. Even though you're in the middle of range in the ages, you're surrounded by people who already know the songs, So

I think you learned a pretty quick. Bob could consider himself lucky to have stumbled upon such an endearing work, but he had no idea what rabbit holes it would eventually lead him down. By the fall of a young Bob, person's future was taking shape. I had gotten my first job that required my degree, which was as I had expected, at a daycare center. The C b A record was along for the ride. My drive to work was over half an hour, so I was probably listening to this

a lot on the way through the from work. Two weeks into my new job, one of my part time co workers told a friend of hers, Hey, there's a guy working at the daycare now. You should come over and meet him. So she walked in, and I just assumed he was a parent or maybe an employee I hadn't met yet because I've been there all of nine days.

We got to talk and she explained that she had worked there and to shorten things down, right around the time I started this going to the album is when she asked me outum, her name is Gina, and we've been together ever since. That probably corresponded down to a ten day frame between her asking me out and he listened to this record. I continue working at this job and it's not what I hoped it would. I decided at some point along the way that I needed to

go to graduate school. Gina. I had been engaged for almost a year and a half and we're actively planning a wedding for late May. I'm no longer working full time. I'm working part time. I'm doing some other stuff, and I'm going to school for a degree in psychology. We have a special department here of social workers. You go along and see one of them and you're fine. They can help you with your problem. The Amblotic condo which

was in disrepair and we were fixing it up. Are offense didn't often overlap with each other, so when I was there by myself, I often put on the whole album. My overall affection for the album grew exponentially at that point, and that's when I wanted to find out everything I put about the camp in the album. The cod fish Ball track that I mentioned her star Fast and Swimming is great. I was hearing the next line is all

that snow and what a lake? That made no sense to me because it doesn't snow in northern Wisconsin in August, but I didn't know what they were saying. I was literally buying my wedding gift for my wife at a J. C. Penny's. I'm listening to the tape of the record in my car, as I probably was incessantly in that moment. I was about to get out of my car and they're saying

Lake Snowdon. It's on Lake Snowdon. Within minutes, I'm like, oh, that's what they're saying in that other song, and two other sets of lyrics that didn't make sense to me suddenly were clearly Lake Snowdon. If campern often had seemed like a mythical place, existing only in the ballads and odes of its admirers, this single clue brought with it the hope of geographical specificity. So I'm like, well, now I know what to look for at that moment. Now I meant I'm getting married in a couple of days,

so I'm not doing anything with this. But when I got back, I went out to Northwestern and look to see whether they would have stuff that would be of help to me. I found very very detailed maps of Wisconsin and identified Lake Snowden. I found that it was out a rural route about four or five miles east of ryan Lander, on a road that made a semicircle off of the rural route, which was called Camper and

Oven Road. In the libraries archives, I found two different catalogs of camps the parents could buy to know where to send their kids and how much things were need to contact, and that this rusted camp bounded by hiking trails and lakeside activities, one from the twenties and one from the forties and fifties, I think, both of which had listings for campering, an archery range, a tennis court, and arts and crafts building, plus a large meeting hall and the campfires circle. Now I knew that it had

been around since at least the twenties. It was in an area where my family and I had vacation when I was five, and it was an area where Gina and I had already camped because she introduced me to camping. It's one of my favorite areas in terms of the look of the place, the climate, the foliage is almost entirely to these massive pine trees, which immediately brought to mind the camperovin moon Song, the ones for two of the Missouri walls neath the sheltering pines, to find the

soul of happiness. But at that point I had no idea whether the camp still existed. I requested that we make our next camping trip back up to the Rhinelander area tent camping. Yes, and me and our dog. That sounds idyllic. The first night we camped, I drove by and saw that there was indeed a camp there, and that it was called Camp Algonquin. There it is. The next day I went over and there was no life in sight. There was no camping session. This was late August.

Campin is gonna get this night. When I pulled in, it was a big gravel parking one. There's patents with cabins dotting along the way, and then the lake which is Lake Snowden, has a couple of peers going out into it, and everything pulled up on the shore. Wow, I wonder like there was an office there. I don't remember if I went up to the office or if a guy saw me pulling the parking lot, but he came out and his name was Don McKinnon. Alight all right, called I think he used to be here, and that

was it. He told me that the camp had been Campell Donquins since the nineteen seventy five season, when it had been sold by the previous owners, and that the Campernovin ended the nineteen seventy four but that virtually all of the facilities were the same as had been there when it was Camper and Avin. The camp Algonquin grounds were like a museum of the old Camper, and often Bob wondered if he may finally have his questions answered around the origin of this mysterious record. Do you know?

Do you know about this record that I'm talking about? Don McKinnon did not have a copy of the album, but he knew about it. I found it, I found and he clicked in. Really. He took me into the office and showed me some pamphlets from the Camperanovin days, and some song sheets that he had mimeographed or something unlike legal size paper, and they had the lyrics to dozens of songs typed out, each one of them numbered.

He would let me make copy machine copies. I'm looking at this There's eleven songs on the first sheet, and at least four of them are not songs that I know from the album. Here's one to the two exhibity Dodo, which is not on the album. The mimiographed pages also introduced a new character into the story. We're going to break up into groups now. And if you'll notice your locks are different colors. The sheets have a half a

dozen references to Old Bratty. When the great, big white moon shines on the camp among the pines, then think of you, dear Brady, hears to you. How do you do? Old Bratty was a lot of broad Bridge, and by the time the album was made, she had sold the camp. I was going to have the Blue Rocks going one group and the red Locks in another group, so all references to her were taken out, and new sheets must

have been how many reds are here? There was a brother camp a couple of miles down the road on a different road, called Camp teer Horn, which was still owned by a lot of Broadbridge's brother or his descendants, which he had opened shortly after a lot of opened Camper Novin my understanding is it's still in that nuy Mr McKinnon was very accommodating and told me that I could go in any building that was unlocked. You're welcome to all right, thank you. I immediately took off and

started filming around the ground sheltering pines. I interviewed him with the lens on the camera and just used it as a paper corner off in me. I don't know. I can't remember if I was actually carrying the album around our little boom box or not. As I walked through these buildings, I may have done like snowdon what are like? And then I found the cabins, and the cabins were a revelation graffiti in the bunkhouse. The cabins were full of graffiti a white Ya blues from campers

going all the way back. I think the oldest one I found was named nineteen two, right up to the president of a recent stuff. Some of it was much more coarse than would have been done by the girls in the sixties or seventies. Like I found the drawing off a middle finger that I was pretty sure had come from the mom campers disco ruless, so I think that was made after it was camping Cambo dun Quin grace.

Mr McKinnon did let me into one lock building, which was where the counselors could go to relax when they didn't have to be with the girls, and it too had graffiti, but it had very fancy stuff panels that were painted with texted, very elaborate ways. That was all the build the cans Belt in nineteen seventeen. He had told me to make sure that I saw what they called the main Bungalow or the main bungle, which still

makes me laugh. That's building place here. It had been designed by students of Frank Lloyd Wright, who was of course associated with Wisconsin. Right. This is a gorgeous large wooden building with wooden rafters, almost built like a church the film. It's basically t shaped. There's a long meeting hall with stone fireplaces at each end. Behind each fireplace and accessible through doors on either side, is a stream porch.

Extending out from the very center of that room is a second part pointing away from the lake with dining tables, and behind that as a kitchen pitting next to where the room opens up with the dining part, there's a grand piano which is covered entirely and next to the fireplace is a spin of piano. There's another piano, prahaps this is the door. The spin a piano is basically a small upright. It was clear that this was the place.

There was no doubt in my mind that that was where it was reported with that's going to be the piano. It was the record Even though one of the songs were first to the girls sitting to sing, I'm immediately picturing them for the recordings standing in front of the fireplace and singing along to this piano, which, for whatever reason, the equeness of it or the old bedrooms of it, suggests to me that she's playing on an old, worn

out piano. So I'm filming. I'm filming and filming. I put the camera down, and I am a piano player. So I sit down at the piano and start pounding on it, and no sound comes out whatsoever. It doesn't work. The keys are moving, the connection to the keys are moving. There don't seem to be any hammers in this piano, or if there are, there are no strings. That's never happened before, So I'm not going to uncover the grand

piano player. I felt like that would be overstepping. I was just incredibly glad to have been able to follow the cruise and to be allowed to be there there. It's even before we got to the campsite. I went into the town to the library to look up to see if there was a civil recording service in town, knowing that it had been twenty three years since the

album was room, that seemed rather unlikely. It seemed like a small business at the time, and there was no civil recording service, but there was a simple photography service. The objective of the sound van is to record intelligible sound. I drove to that address. It was a house. It had the name of the company out front. An older couple in their sixties. I say that I'm sixty now

invited me in. Mr Simple was a photographer, and he told me that in the mid sixties he had gotten into his head to branch out and have a local recording service for the area. Okay, let's have a sound check. And then it never really went newhere we're getting a hum from something. Simple remembered the CB a record off the top of his head. Didn't ask him, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's the only business he ever got for that In terms of how he recorded, is

that you think like single mike in a room. Yeah, it's in monrole, and very little doubt that it was done on a real TiAl machine. And then whoever he was working with transport and had they album stanped out. This is a rehearsal sound writing rolling. It didn't occur to me until at least ten years later that I should have said to him, hey, do you still have the tapes? The camp could handle as many as three

girls I think is the number. And even if they wanted to try to sell it to families who came the next year, I can't imagine they made more than four or five dred copies. So it's got to be an exceptionally rare record. A work trip put Bob in the vicinity of Rhinelander, so he paid another trip to the Office season Camp all Conquin. In two years a lot had changed, and not for the better. Some of the cabins graffiti had been painted over. I went to an area I had not gone to before where there

was storage, and it was kind of just haphazard. The piano that I mentioned that couldn't play had been moved to this storage area in a sort of an outdoor area, so it was going to get destroyed. It just felt sadder and it didn't feel like the same place again. Now that Bob and the backstory of the record, the question he was left with was what to do about its legacy. In the early nineties, Bob and Gina's lives got busier and busier, we had daughters in everything sort

of changes at that point. I found myself listening to any music far less, and yet the cb A record still seeped its way into the purse family consciousness. I think I played individual tracks for them, or they just happened to be in the car when I was listening to it. M h. I had a tradition of singing

songs to them every night. My wife would sit with one of the girls, I would sit with one of the others, and whoever I was sitting with would get to request a song, or if they didn't want to, I would just pick one, and then I would sing either one or both of good night songs should be end of the album, more often the next to last one. Now run along home and jump into bed, saying your prayers and cover your head, the very same thing I say, I'm see you you dream of me and I'll drink

of you. I don't think they ever really understood or knew her care that it came from the album, but they certainly knew it. Bob went online once I figured things out. I think to myself, hey, I should look to see if there's any references to Camper not an online What comes up is addresses that are on Camper and No Road, including Campbell Gangu, which are more your

familiar with. Nothing that's that's going to help me. But in early two thousand two, the Camp Algonquian website suddenly had an alumni page, which included a sub page for alumni of Camper and Oven. You opened it up and it had everybody who's signed up to identify itself as a Campernoven alumni and their email addresses. So I wrote to everybody hold them how much I love the album, how much joy it had brought me, and that I

would love to hear more about the camp. Seven or eight people wrote me back, one of them having been the camp secretary in the early sixties and worked under both a lot of Broadbridge and her successor, I knew a lot about the history of the camp. Others gave me more sort of the feel of what it would

like to attend. Suddenly, this unearthed time capsule had context in nineties sixty four, a lot of Broadbridge was in her eighties and I think maybe had passed on the leaders going to one group and half of the leaders going to another group, and decided to sell it to a married couple of both of whom had worked there the previous couple of years. They decided to make the album before the nineteen season, rolling under the suggestion of

the piano player that worked there. I just can't say enough good things about I play stride piano myself very badly, and her abilities are just astounding. Her name was Laura Elberry. Okay, let's have a sound check. They recorded it at some point in the summer of I was corrected in my

thought that they were standing up. I just pictured people standing when they're singing, But they were sitting in that section right in the middle of the main bungalow where it opens up in their dining hall, facing the piano, wearing their counter blue shirts and dark blue shorts, be

as they'd say. I wanted the songs. And then the errands who bought the place got divorced, and for a variety of reasons, it was too difficult for the former Mrs Arrans to continue, and she announced at the end of the seven fourth season that she couldn't find a buyer that wanted to continue with the traditions of Camper, and Avin ended up retaining the rights to the name and sold the property to the person who turned it into Campbell Countrey, which was a reading in math camp

I believe for boys initially and then eventually for the younger boys and older girls. In its heyday, Campering often held an air of exclusivity. It was kind of the camp for the elite. The wealthy set their daughters there. I don't know if Betty Ford was there as a child, but she worked there as a counselor. I'm going as myself and if they don't like it, then they'll just have to throw me out. Lorretty Young said her daughter there, that really can only do what I like to do.

And Jane Mansfield had at least one daughter that went there. A star owes it to her public to bring the public into her life. Multiple alum sent Bob copies of promotional booklets advertising Campering, often to parents at the time, touting activities like horseback riding, fencing, and a regatta weekend. Again, it reflects what a high end place this was. An he can is going to try to make the camp book the best that it is in this place looks

amazing other campering. Often ephemeris circulates aided by the Worldwide Web. There's a lot of postcards out there floating around, especially from the early days. Well here it is the And if I don't get this off thin, these guys aren't even going to get locals have turned up at some point bought a signature book that the girls were issued to get their friends like thoughts of the statements and stuff like that. I have that and people sent me

tons of pictures. But the Musical Memories album remains an absolute rarity. It's about the Dictionary definition of esoteric, so I really get it. It turns out that camp records are in fact their own small genre. Hey, okay, I have three that would probably qualify as the same general concept. I have one called Musical Memories of Chalk Hills Camp,

which is a now defunct Girl Scout camp. It was still in operation when I found that record, and I was very, very excited to find that album, hoping that it would be something along the same lines. It's entertaining, and there's probably a half a dozen songs on there I enjoy, but it doesn't have the ambience, it doesn't have the arrangements. It's acapella. There's no instrumentation at all. It's much more professionally produced. The girls sound much more trained,

and they're doing entirely established songs. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. And then the other one that I would say that I like second best and not in a close race both ways. Record is a tiny label, left wing label out of New York City that operated from the forties into the nineties when its owner died, and it is

now part of the SMITHSNY collection. In the late fifties, they recorded at holm called Songs of Camp, primarily around a campfire at a place called Camp Hilly Leads somewhere in New England, and it's remarkable for the content of the songs and also the audio verity of the recording. You know, you can hear the fire crackling and it's just spoke singers and the kids singing. And there's a couple of tracks on there that are just wonderful, but none of these examples has special quality of the CB

A record. Bob made it his mission to preserve this one of a kind work for the generations past and future. I got so many comments from folks, and I wanted to give back to them. I don't think any of them had the album. I don't think any of the people I talked to had been on the record been there that year, but they wanted a copy. And again, I'm kind of obsessive, so I made it into a big production. He darts the job, but preparing the story so it can be printed. I was already editing sound

and making CDs for myself. That's music recorded as a series of electronic pulsis, and I bought some software that allowed you to make CD booklets. The surface is covered by a layer of transparent plastic, so you don't have to worry about grubby fingers or even scratches. So I had to piece it together. It takes many lines like this do make a page right all the text picture.

It takes up the face of many lines. I've finished the CD project in the winter of two thousand two thousand three, so it was within eight or ten months. A hearing back from these people. Now, what are the market for this kind of disc remains to be seen. Bob continues to ship copies of the CD out to cb A alumni at cost. I made a point of telling people, I'm not trying to make money on this. What I'm going to charge you is as close to

what it's costing me as I can get. But I'm sure I've sold somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred and fifty two over the last eighteen years. Has the CD had any kind of reaction from people? Yeah, people are very thankful. Thank you for bringing this back to me, Thank you for making this available. I've and sing along with it all day. The question I'm left with is what was special about this time and place, the sunny little corner of Wisconsin in the summer of nine. Was

that specialness captured in the recording? And how could Bob somehow here frozen into the grooves of the record when he first brought the LP home and let the needle touch down. All I know is that people that write me about Camper and Aven have overwhelmingly wonderful memories and continue to stay in touch with people that they do their fifty and sixty years later. They obviously had a very special time and would look forward to it all year round and have retained their memories. They can still

sing some of these songs. People will write to me and say, you know, I remember this song? Is it on the album? Not having talked to anybody else about their experiences of other camps, I have no idea whether or not it's special in terms of what people would say about why they went there, but it sure is a beautiful place. I can tell you confidently that there are camps that people dread going to. Okay class are

ready to learn about music? Yeah, yeah, all told. It is still astounding to me that this incredibly rare record happened to end up in the hands that it did. Bob may have had the only extant copy of the musical Memories of Campering Offen, or at least it seemed that way. I do a search for all things Campering Aven on eBay, and for the first time two months ago, a copy of the album came up for sale and sold for fifty dollars. That's the second copy I've ever seen.

I paid a buck for mine. M ephemeral is written and assembled by and produced by Matt Frederick, Trevor Young, and Max Williams. Sample more of the vast libraries of oddities Bob Purse has collected on his blogs The Wonderful and the Obscure Bob Pert blogspot dot com and inches per Second inches dash per dash second dot blogspot dot com. And listen to the musical memories of Camper and often reimagined by Nathaniel Krauss. That's k R a U s

E at Nathaniel Kraus dot and camp dot com. You'll find links to these and more at ephemeral dot show Next time on Ephemeral. Seven years ago, I was in Greece hanging out my family. On a whim. I did an Internet search for Tony Rice and I got two hits. One was a Greek Wikipedia article that mentioned his name in quick passing, and then the other one was from

a music library in Greece. When I went to the music libraries online database, I found the thing that started at all, which was the cover of the piano and vocal score for a song that had my grandfather's portrait. And I was like, wait, what nation support Ephemeral by recommending an episode, leaving a review or dropping us a

line at ephemeral Show. More podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows, and learn more at ephemeral dot show