It was after their return from the 1937 Accord season that the Philadelphia haverim realized the necessity for their own Camp Kvutza. It was a crime to travel hundreds of miles for the inspiration and learning we could achieve on our own grounds.
So the determined Quakers set to work. They formed committees, printed stationary, contacted sympathizers, and nagged the National Executive.
Camp Tax became the byword. They slept and ate and grew gray hair over pledges. But soon the cash thermometer rose and $250 became a realization.
And now, a site for camp. Far and wide they traveled. Through mosquito-ridden New Jersey to mosquito-ridden Pennsylvania until they came upon Camp Germinal -former anarchist hangout and spiders' hideout.
In May, the Sunday of the 23rd, the first expedition set out armed to the hilt with mops, buckets, brooms, and soap. The scrubbed and rubbed. They screened and painted. They transformed a chicken coop into a habitable shack.
Then came the eventful day when fourteen haverim, and a rosh Kvutza set foot on forty acres of poison ivy studded with two outhouses, hot and cold water, and ten stall showers which, influenced by their anarchist background, worked with characteristic irregularity.
The manor house after being scrubbed from top to bottom revealed an immense dining room, three kitchens, one of which leaked from the luxurious bath upstairs every time one of the girls decided to miss a discussion, and the other which had a natural waterfall coming from the center roof every time the dishes fell. The six master bedrooms did come in handy when the fourteen pioneers increased to sixty.
The office served as a lounge, music room, and dance studio.
Who of us can ever forget Sir Ferdinand, named for his predecessor, the bull, who often stopped to admire the flowers by the wayside? He carried our haverim down to the swimming hole in the Shamony, or on a line to the Delaware, and then after a sojourn with the flowers, could be persuaded only by Schmeer up to the hill again to camp.
Or can we forget our staff-rising and falling like the stock market? One week ten and the next week four. And their famous idiosyncrasies. Yak and his travels in Ferdy; Cookie and the chocolate pudding; Leslie and his hair washing; Yona and her trying girls; Tzip and her hatred of kitchen duty; Clara's operetta; Aba Kibbile's drama group; Leo and his driving mania; Ernst who drowned you trying to teach life saving; Edi and Brown Betty; Sossy from Chicago; and Shlomo and his hat.
Galil Diary, 1938