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Arts & Entertainment

Camp Program Entertains While It Instructs

Students travel to the past at Huntington Historical Society's summer camp.

A grimace flitted over a camper's face as she took a little swallow of buttermilk, the liquid left after campers made homemade butter from heavy cream. She put down her cup and walked away, shaking her head no when asked if she liked it.

Next to her, Matthew Hearl drained his cup and held it out for seconds. "Yum, it tastes kinda like drinkable butter. I like it," he said. "Is there any more?"

So went a morning at the Passport to the Past camp at the Kissam House, a camp offered by Huntington Historical Society giving students ages 7 to 12 a look at how their contemporaries would have lived, worked and played in Colonial America and in the Victorian era.

"We're trying to bring back the past and have them experience what it would be like then," said Wendy Andersen, the society's education director.

To show how hard carrying milk or water would have been, students tried on a yoke from which two buckets were suspended. To make it more real, Andersen put a brick in each of the buckets. "They would have carried milk or water this way twice a day," she explained, as students took turns staggering across the lawn with their burden.

Other activities over the two-week camp, which ended on Friday, included candle making, using lavender from the Kissam House garden to scent the candles; weaving on looms, incorporating some of the wool the campers first carded and then spun using a drop spindle; making butter; and other old-time crafts and games.

The campers also toured the Arsenal on the Village Green and got to lift a 10-pound musket. One day, they practiced shooting with wooden dummy muskets the way early militiamen would have. Connor Madden, who also attended a camp session last year, walked them through the process. "You had to have at least two teeth," Madden explained as he mimed pulling a packet from a bag over his shoulder and tearing off the corner. "You needed to be able to rip the paper around the cartridge, which holds the gun powder and the musket balls." An experienced militiaman could load and fire a musket three times in a minute, Andersen explained.

Madden said one of his favorite activities this year was when Steve Ekers, a retired technology teacher, taught campers how to make limberjacks, a wooden toy known also as a jig doll or a yankee-doodle dancer. The wooden musical instrument is a loose-jointed doll on the end of a long stick, and performers make the legs tap rhythmically on a board as if clogging. "I like to learn about history," Madden said.

Campers also learned how to process flax, which was a big part of Long Island's Colonial-era economy, Andersen added. Flax is the stalk of a plant that is used to make yarn and linen. It is first soaked, then the tough outer shell is broken by scutching, or hitting it with a hard mallet, and then the flax is spun to create fibers that become yarn and linen. "About 80 percent of farms around here were flax farms," Andersen said.

For the last day, campers dressed in costume, including tricorn hats and vests for boys and mob caps and long skirts for girls, and listened to John Corr sing folk songs and play guitar and banjo. They also showed their parents how to wrap a Maypole with long streamers, learning how to walk their ribbons in an over-and-under pattern so the pole would be wrapped top to bottom.

The camp was offered for three two-week sessions on summer weekday mornings in July and August. There's been enough interest from parents that Andersen said she's considering offering a streamlined workshop for adults. Those interested can learn more at www.huntingtonhistoricalsociety.org/passport_to_past.htm.

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