AUGUST 28, 2017 – By Bob Small
Snap! Craaackle! POP! Was that the sound of milk splashing onto the Rice Krispies in your cereal bowl at Camp?
No… those were the sounds made as the first board was pried away from the old kitchen wall at Camp during Alumni Weekend.
A crowd of over 50 campers, alumni, and staff watched (and listened) as Kent took a golden crowbar to the weathered, straight-grained fir board trimming the “Salad” window and pried it loose from the siding and added it to the collection of memorabilia to be saved for future display.
Deborah Kornhandler DaCosta, in the spirit of Title IX, quickly claimed equal time and skillfully dislodged a batten with another loud snap, crackle, and pop. Jennifer Cowan Lootens then recited “Ode to a Kitchen,” a poem composed by her mother Janet.
On that warm, clear, late August afternoon, demolition of the old kitchen building thus began with a nod to the future and a sentimental glance back over our group shoulder. The fabulous new kitchen now under construction on the footprint of the old, where countless thousands of meals have been prepared and served over the years, will house many improvements and much more energy-efficient appliances. It has been over 50 years since the Camp kitchen underwent its last major renovation and expansion. Change can come slowly, reluctantly, to Camp Trinity.
The demolition process got off to an inspirational start as Kent opened the ceremony by saying, “It’s with a great deal of excitement, and a fair dose of nostalgia, that we launch this project with all of you here this afternoon. It has been a long time in the works, and this day has seemed to be one of those dates that are forever in the future, one that you can’t wait to arrive, but that also one marks a the beginning of something that you can’t quite see how it’s going to end…”
Kent then thanked Marlys, for whom the building will be named, “who worked in this building, with all its flaws, for fifty summers. Someone who (rarely) complained about the difficulties of trying to do your job in a hot, cramped space, while bumping elbows with eight other people all on a deadline to feed one hundred?…two hundred?…hungry kids?”
He went on to express his appreciation for the volunteer Bar 717 Ranch Advisory Board who “who saw the need, and did something about it, putting in hours…no days… of their time to nurture the idea of building a new kitchen, beginning seven years ago, during time when the idea of building anything new seemed impossible, and who stuck with it, through year-long wildfire induced postponements, and who collectively pulled together to donate a sixth of our fundraising goal.”
The project, Kent concluded, may not have been possible without the enthusiastic and generous response by the Camp Trinity community to the Pitch In for the Kitchen fundraising campaign, which, to date, has raised almost 90% of the goal of $200,000 to outfit the kitchen with new equipment for the cooks and kitchen crew to use to deliver some 600 meals a day to campers and staff during the summers ahead.
When campers and alumni return to the Bar 717 Ranch after an absence of a few years they frequently remark that “nothing has changed” since their last visit, which is a good thing. They experience again what they had in prior years as a camper or staff member, that Bar 717 Ranch aura, that Camp Trinity way of viewing the world and going about one’s business.
After the new kitchen is complete, the “nothing has changed” mantra will not ring quite so true. But the change will be fairly subtle on the outside because the new building’s exterior design will mimic the look of the old. The big changes may be almost invisible to many campers because it will be inside the walls of the new kitchen where functionality, space, and efficiency will be vastly improved.
In a few years, no doubt, we will all once again be able to say, with a wink, that “nothing has changed.”