I belonged to the Happy-Go-Lucky Teens. It was a progression from an informal group of pre-teens that camped and played together. However, the start of the belonging to the group really began with my parents.
Back when I was about 3 or 4 years old we went camping one weekend. It was probably in the first year or so that my parents owned a travel trailer. We camped that weekend at River Forest Campground in Weedsport. Setting up the site, Mom kept glancing up the hill to another site about two away. She asked Dad if he thought she was right about the people there.
We sat down to eat our supper and about when we were finishing, the man from that campsite walked down the hill and peered at our campsite looking at my parents and also at the name plaque hung on the front of the camper.
Smiling, he hollered up the hill. “It is them! C’mon down Barb!”
Soon all four adults were talking a mile a minute. Mom had been right. She had recognized an old classmate of hers from Skaneateles and her husband who was a year ahead of them. That night Mom put me to bed, but her and Dad sat up talking around the campfire with Barb and Bill Harper. The conversations lasted until about two in the morning from what Mom told me years later, not only Friday night, but Saturday night as well. Amongst the topics was this club that Harpers’ belonged to and were Field Directors for- NCHA— National Campers and Hikers Association. Mom and Dad’s membership application went in the mail the following week.
Thus I was a child camping with NCHA and specifically, the area club, North Central District. I had many friends that I camped and played with and we all looked forward to turning 13 and joining the “big kids” in the Happy-Go-Luckys group.
What was the Happy-Go-Lucky teens? It was a group open to any teens in the district. We camped and played together as well as worked. At state campouts we would field a softball and volleyball team to compete against other districts. We had dances and went out for ice cream or pizza, especially after the winter meetings that were held upstairs from the adults’ district meeting. We also helped the adults with campouts and held some of our own. We did fund raisers and helped out with various charities. Some of the ones that stand out were making favors and distributing them to nursing homes at holidays and cleaning up a stream in the spring. The stream was a public waterway, but we camped on the private property of some adult club members and had a grand time. While the adults sat around a campfire Saturday night, the teens along with a few pre-teen siblings, played hide and seek in an almost pitch-dark field darting here and there.
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