The Songs and Stories of Camp Cory

By Bo Shoemaker

Camp Cory's amazing culture and traditions are captured in this collection! Here are the lyrics to the songs, the frameworks of the campfire stories, and notes on their histories and origins. Camp Cory, located in the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York, is one of the oldest summer camps in the world, and continues to have its own unique personality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Worthy Shorts
• Release date: Nov 16, 2010
• ISBN: 9781935340706

Bo Shoemaker

Bo Shoemaker is from Brighton, New York, and obtained degrees from SUNY Geneseo (BA in history), Fordham University (MA in history) and Syracuse University College of Law (JD). He worked for eleven summers at Camp Cory as counselor, Waterfront coordinator, Maijgren Village head, leadership director, program director and eventually senior program director. He is currently the camp historian.

Book preview

The Songs and Stories of Camp Cory

Collected and Edited by Bo Shoemaker, Camp Historian

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2010 Bo Shoemaker

Published by Worthy Shorts

The On-Line Private Press for Professionals

on Smashwords

Design and organizing elements copyright © 2010 by Worthy Shorts®.

Sale of this work in this imprint or design, except by Worthy Shorts or its agents, is prohibited.

ISBN: 978-1-935340-70-6

WS154

Worthy Shorts® is a registered trademark.

For more information, visit www.WorthyShorts.com

For Dave Ghidiu, Mark Dibble, and Bill Smith: storytellers extraordinaire

Table of Contents

A Note on the Text

The Songs of Camp Cory

The Stories of Camp Cory

Appendices:

Appendix A: Notes

Appendix B: Songs and Stories Not Included in this Collection

Appendix C: Index

A Note on the Text

YMCA Camp Cory is an overnight and day camp located on Keuka Lake, just south of the Village of Penn Yan, New York. It was dedicated in 1921, although it was operating at that site in 1920, and had been operating elsewhere, under the name Camp Iola or without an official name, since 1892.

This is a collection of many of the songs and stories sung and told at Camp Cory in 2010. I didn't include several songs and stories that some may remember or cherish, either because they are no longer sung or told with any regularity, because they are too widespread to reveal anything about the culture of Camp Cory in particular, or because they are copyrighted stories that have been published elsewhere.

It is my hope that, in years to come, Camp Cory will be able to publish a book of older stories. It is also my hope that another publication of contemporary songs and stories will be made years from now, if the Camp Cory repertoire changes enough to warrant it.

Reading the lyrics to songs is a poor substitute for singing; nevertheless, I think this volume might be helpful to those who want to learn the songs of Camp Cory, or who want to remember the songs as they were around the year 2010.

Similarly, reading the stories in this book is a poor substitute for hearing one of them at a campfire. The inflection, timing, extemporaneous asides, and milieu of campfire storytelling are all missing when a person simply reads the stories in a book, perhaps curled up in a comfortable chair next to a warm lamp. The stories here might be better understood as frameworks: a good storyteller will learn the elements of the story by reading them in this book, but will then give the story a life of its own during a campfire. I might have attempted to capture, in writing, the styles of certain storytellers who I thought the most skillful. This would have made for perhaps more colloquial stories, but it would have been only one version of a story. I could have, for example, written three different versions of the story Pink, told by three different storytellers, and the complete potential personality of that story still could not be captured. Readers might feel that they were obligated to tell the story as written, rather than imbuing it with the storyteller's own personality. Instead, I have tried to write only the personality that is intrinsic to a story – the rest will vary depending on the time, place, and storyteller.

Bo Shoemaker

Rochester, NY

October 2010

The Songs and Stories of Camp Cory

The Morning Song

Waaaay up in the sky

The little birds fly

While down in the nest

The Little birds rest

With a wing on the left,

And a wind on the right,

The poor little birdies

Sleep all through the night

Shh…you'll WAKE the darn birds!

The bright sun comes up,

The dew falls away,

Good morning, good morning,

The little birds say.

Junior Birdsmen

Up in the air,

The Junior Birdsmen

Up in the air,

And upside-down

Up in the air,

The Junior Birdsmen

With their noses to the ground

When you hear the grand announcement

That their wings are made of tin,

Then you know the Junior