Written by Ornella Vecchio

When my dad told me about Camp for the first time, it took me a while to understand what he was really talking about. In the ‘70s Italy was a far away place. Colour television was the big technological advance of that year and a weekly direct flight to New York was the latest in terms of traveling in style. Father said I would soon be going to Camp. To learn English, to learn the American way of life. To prepare myself to go to a US university, one day. He also told me that his best friend Si and his wife Shirley – Jeff Moss’s dad and mom!! – would take care of me and help me to get used to Camp. “How lucky is father” I thought “to have a best friend he trusts so much that he sends his daughter all over the ocean to stay with him and his family!” Well, my dad did not go to Camp but he already knew that Camp is the place where you make friends that last a lifetime.

And that was very true. Now that over 40 years have gone by since I first went to Camp. Over there, in that far away place, I made friends that have been close to my heart ever since, even if communication was not what is it today. But thank God we now have Viper and Skype!So, I eventually turned 13 – at that time in Italy your 12th birthday was a sort of rite of passage that took you from childhood to teen age – and the time came to start making preparations for Camp.When the letter from Camp arrived in January, with a list of clothes and things to prepare, mother and I had to ask my English teacher to help us with those funny terms we could not find on our Oxford English Lerner’s Dictionary. I can still remember the big brainstorming mother had with both grandmothers about “shorts”. In the years when Mary Quant’s mini-skirt was still being banned, I was supposed to wear something the Americans called shorts and that were shorter than half my thigh! To my grandma Ester this was totally unacceptable. Let alone that shorts were impossible to find. So, a tailor was summoned and entrusted with the delicate task of making “shorts” that were not “so” short. The result was obviously completely ridiculous and made me look like one of Queen Victoria’s children in her bathing suit. And on top of that, when I finally arrived at Camp, I realized that the fastest and best way to make a pair of shorts, was to cut out the legs from a pair stone washed jeans.

Yeah, of course. But the point was: were could you buy Levi’s jeans in Valenza, Piedmont, in 1974?