your summers riding horses in Virginia, but my mother sent me to a sleep-away camp in upstate New York. Camp Pontiac, named after the Indian chief. At the end of the summer, they’d divide everyone into two teams, and for the next four or five days different groups from the two sides would compete against one another.’
‘Compete at what?’
‘Baseball, basketball, tennis, swimming, tug-of-war – even egg-and-spoon races and singing contests. Since the camp colors were red and white, one side was called the Red Team and the other was called the White Team.’
‘And that’s color war.’
‘For a sports maniac like me, it was terrific fun. Some years I was on the White Team and other years on the Red. After a while, though, a third team was formed, a kind of secret society, a brotherhood of kindred souls. I haven’t thought about it in years, but it was very important to me at the time. The Blue Team.’
‘A secret brotherhood. It sounds like silly boys’ stuff to me.’
‘It was. No … actually it wasn’t. When I think about it now, I don’t find it silly at all.’
‘You must have been different then. You never want to join anything.’
‘I didn’t join, I was chosen. As one of the charter members, in fact. I felt very honored.’
‘You’re already on Red and White. What’s so special about Blue?’
‘It started when I was fourteen. A new counselor came to the camp that year, someone a little older than the rest of the people on the staff – who were mostly nineteen-and twenty-year-old college students. Bruce … Bruce something … the last name will come to me later. Bruce had his BA and had already finished a year at Columbia Law School. A scrawny, gnomish little guy, a strict nonathlete working at a camp devoted to sports. But sharp-witted and funny, always challenging you with difficult questions. Adler. That’s it. Bruce Adler. Commonly known as the Rabbi.’
‘And he invented the Blue Team?’
‘Sort of. To be more exact, he re-created it as an exercise in nostalgia.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘A few years earlier, he’d worked as a counselor at another camp. The colors of that camp were blue and gray. When color war broke out at the end of summer, Bruce was put on the Blue Team, and when he looked around and saw who was on the team with him, he realized it was everyone he liked, everyone he most respected. The Gray Team was just the opposite – filled with whining, unpleasant people, the dregs of the camp. In Bruce’s mind, the words Blue Team came to stand for something more than just a bunch of rinky-dink relay races. They represented a human ideal, a tight-knit association of tolerant and sympathetic individuals, the dream of a perfect society.’
‘This is getting pretty strange, Sid.’
‘I know. But Bruce didn’t take it seriously. That was the beauty of the Blue Team. The whole thing was kind of a joke.’
‘I didn’t know rabbis were allowed to make jokes.’
‘They probably aren’t. But Bruce wasn’t a rabbi. He was just a law student with a summer job, looking for a little entertainment. When he came to work at our camp, he told one of the other counselors about the Blue Team, and together they decided to form a new branch, to reinvent it as a secret organization.’
‘How did they choose you?’
‘In the middle of the night. I was fast asleep in my bed, and Bruce and the other counselor shook me awake. “Come on,” they said, “we have something to tell you,” and then they led me and two other boys into the woods with flashlights. They had a little campfire going, and so we sat around the fire and they told us what the Blue Team was, why they had selected us as charter members, and what qualifications they were looking for – in case we wanted to recommend other candidates.’
‘What were they?’
‘Nothing specific, really. Blue Team members didn’t conform to a single type, and each one was a distinct and independent person. But no one
‘Compete at what?’
‘Baseball, basketball, tennis, swimming, tug-of-war – even egg-and-spoon races and singing contests. Since the camp colors were red and white, one side was called the Red Team and the other was called the White Team.’
‘And that’s color war.’
‘For a sports maniac like me, it was terrific fun. Some years I was on the White Team and other years on the Red. After a while, though, a third team was formed, a kind of secret society, a brotherhood of kindred souls. I haven’t thought about it in years, but it was very important to me at the time. The Blue Team.’
‘A secret brotherhood. It sounds like silly boys’ stuff to me.’
‘It was. No … actually it wasn’t. When I think about it now, I don’t find it silly at all.’
‘You must have been different then. You never want to join anything.’
‘I didn’t join, I was chosen. As one of the charter members, in fact. I felt very honored.’
‘You’re already on Red and White. What’s so special about Blue?’
‘It started when I was fourteen. A new counselor came to the camp that year, someone a little older than the rest of the people on the staff – who were mostly nineteen-and twenty-year-old college students. Bruce … Bruce something … the last name will come to me later. Bruce had his BA and had already finished a year at Columbia Law School. A scrawny, gnomish little guy, a strict nonathlete working at a camp devoted to sports. But sharp-witted and funny, always challenging you with difficult questions. Adler. That’s it. Bruce Adler. Commonly known as the Rabbi.’
‘And he invented the Blue Team?’
‘Sort of. To be more exact, he re-created it as an exercise in nostalgia.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘A few years earlier, he’d worked as a counselor at another camp. The colors of that camp were blue and gray. When color war broke out at the end of summer, Bruce was put on the Blue Team, and when he looked around and saw who was on the team with him, he realized it was everyone he liked, everyone he most respected. The Gray Team was just the opposite – filled with whining, unpleasant people, the dregs of the camp. In Bruce’s mind, the words Blue Team came to stand for something more than just a bunch of rinky-dink relay races. They represented a human ideal, a tight-knit association of tolerant and sympathetic individuals, the dream of a perfect society.’
‘This is getting pretty strange, Sid.’
‘I know. But Bruce didn’t take it seriously. That was the beauty of the Blue Team. The whole thing was kind of a joke.’
‘I didn’t know rabbis were allowed to make jokes.’
‘They probably aren’t. But Bruce wasn’t a rabbi. He was just a law student with a summer job, looking for a little entertainment. When he came to work at our camp, he told one of the other counselors about the Blue Team, and together they decided to form a new branch, to reinvent it as a secret organization.’
‘How did they choose you?’
‘In the middle of the night. I was fast asleep in my bed, and Bruce and the other counselor shook me awake. “Come on,” they said, “we have something to tell you,” and then they led me and two other boys into the woods with flashlights. They had a little campfire going, and so we sat around the fire and they told us what the Blue Team was, why they had selected us as charter members, and what qualifications they were looking for – in case we wanted to recommend other candidates.’
‘What were they?’
‘Nothing specific, really. Blue Team members didn’t conform to a single type, and each one was a distinct and independent person. But no one
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