The earliest photos we have of the camp waterfront area come out of the 1939 camp brochure. Back then, the camp was called “Naidni,” which is “Indian” spelled backwards. One glance at that publication solidifies the notion that its directors were serious educators, despite the corny name for their camp. Naidni became Kingswood Camp for Boys eight years later when the property was purchased by Bob Smith, a teacher from upstate New York.

Take a look at Naidni’s tower slide. It was enormous. I have a sketch of the slide at Camp Norway, where I got my start in camping. Their slide tower was 18 feet high and had a chute of 38 feet. My guess is that Naidni’s was about that size.  You bet, I would love to see the return of the huge slide at today’s Kingswood.

The early dock system at camp featured a sizable sundeck attached to the immediate shore. But photos indicate that the structure was used for instructional purposes. For example, a group of boys would all lie on their backs and practice the backstroke moves on the deck before going into the water. I’ll bet that on cold days, the counselors ran the entire clinic on dry land.

By the time the Wipfler family came onto the scene in 1985, most of these dock sections had rotted in places. Having no money, we had no choice but to put them into the water and hope for the best. That did not always happen since one time I reached out to shake the hand of a new counselor and, he, stepping forward onto the dock for the greeting, put his foot completely through the boards. 

As luck would have it, Camp Norway went out of business in the late 1980’s and Kingswood inherited their very rugged docks. Norway, however, was located at the far end of Lake Fairlee and got very little wave action, while Kingswood is on the southwestern shore of Tarleton, meaning that we always got those strong winds out of the northwest, not to mention enormous amounts of boat waves, mostly (but not all) of our own making. Long story short, a person often had a wobbly walk along those docks.

Then, one day about eight years ago, Mike Fusco and I went over to Camp Pemi to see their new docks, made entirely out of aluminum. Wow! They were far lighter and never required much maintenance, especially in the scraping and painting department! We bit the bullet and purchased an entire system to include the regular swim area, the fishing dock, and even the power boat parking garage next to the Wipfler cabin. 

This was in 2020, when camp did not open. What a bummer but it gave us time to organize the sections so that the “tower” was part of the H design, instead of a short swim from the far dock. The positive effect, noted immediately, was that the dock structure (all of it) became the social center of the entire waterfront span. 

For example, every sort of ball known to mankind could be used for one game or another, all within the confines of the enclosure. A crowd of onlookers appears every time “Tarleton Tennis” is sponsored. Simple. A person jumps off the tower and tries to catch a tennis ball mid-air. Seeing that, Charlie Scruton hauled down a soccer goal, and balls were kicked in midair towards the net. A few went in. 

That got Andy Luther’s mind a brewing and he arranged for a small ring buoy with a center hole just slightly larger than a tennis ball to be dangled at the far end from the tower. No one has ever put one through the hole. “That’s what brings them back,” allowed Andy.  Great idea, said the Kingswood marketing department.