When I was 11, I went away to Camp Palomar for five days.

Our whole sixth grade class went – it was a scheduled part of the curriculum back then (1961). We were bused one spring Monday morning from Hilltop Elementary in Chula Vista to a camp built below the famous observatory, and we didn’t return till Friday afternoon.

I was assigned a cabin with three or five other girls; I don’t remember whom. I unpacked the clothes so recently labeled by my (“who has time for this?”) mother. I was given a lower bunk, and I had no trouble sleeping till the last night, Thursday, when I was so stricken with homesickness that it hurt my chest and made me too itchy and warm.

The food was eatable. The crafts were the usual unnecessary boring activities, and the stories were by and large too slow. One day (probably Wednesday), the craft activity was a mandatory letter home.

But I liked the singing around the campfire. I was tickled to look at planets through the big telescope. And I enjoyed hiking. What I remember most is trooping behind a male counselor through meadows and among mature trees, clambering over some friendly rocks, watching birds and butterflies.

At one point we stopped and the counselor offered us water. No one carried a personal bottle back then; the counselor had a big container or canteen. He let us each have a gulp or two and then he stood up, tipped the mouth of the container to his own, and enjoyed a healthy quaff.

“Hey!” objected one of the boys in our group. “How come you get so much?”

The counselor smiled and knelt down to us again. He capped the container as he said words I’ll never forget: “Big truck radiators need more water than little sports cars.”