How Camp Chicken Got Its Name

Excepts from the Camp Chicken Diary...

That first fall, our friend Kathy wanted to come and help us and stay at camp. Now Kathy was not used to the woods at all and I don't think she slept one wink that first night at camp. Pop-up campers are really just a tent on wheels and you can hear every twig snap and noise from outside.

Now I hadn't really spent much time in the woods since I was about 13 and I was now in my middle 40's. The night noises at camp kept me awake also. I never knew that the woods could be such a noisy place at night. Don't these animals ever sleep?? There were coyote howls, brush cracking, twigs snapping, crickets chirping, some terrible screeching that Arlene said was an owl and all kinds of other noises.

But, for that September, we went to camp every single weekend. We fell into a sort of routine. We would get there on Friday night and hustle to get the pop-up set up and everything unpacked before dark. Mom and Dad would usually pull in right behind us and give us a hand. We would drag an old truck rim that Arlene found out of it's hiding spot and build a fire and cook some dinner. Sometimes we just had cold sandwiches.

Saturdays were spent hacking brush and trying to reclaim the camp clearing. We worked like dogs. Mom and Gram would come up for a visit every Saturday and Sunday afternoon.

Every night Arlene would sleep like a baby. Kathy wouldn't sleep at all and I slept with one eye open, alert for any sound. Kathy and I were sure that a big bear would sneak up on us and grab us in that pop-up camper. The camper didn't seem to offer much protection against a squirrel let alone a bear.

When we went to bed at night, we would turn off the Coleman lantern and set it on the picnic table which was right by the camper.

One particular night, at about 2:00 AM, I could hear some rustling outside. Suddenly, there was a huge CRASH, BANG and the sound of breaking glass.

Kathy and I sat up in bed and faced each other. "Was that noise inside or outside?", I asked. "Outside," Kathy replied. "I'm not going out there to see," I said. "Neither am I," she replied.

We both crawled back under the covers and pulled them right up over our heads.

Now, unknown to us, Arlene was awake and heard the whole exchange.

When morning came, we went out to investigate the sound. Something, probably a raccoon, had knocked the Coleman lantern off of the picnic table and it had fell onto the seat and then onto the ground, shattering the lantern glass.

The next afternoon when Mom and Gram came up for their visit, Arlene said, "Welcome to Camp Chicken, Gloria!" With much glee, she related the story of how scared Kathy and I had been by the midnight intruder.

And from that moment on, "The Forty" became "Camp Chicken".

Arlene painted a sign and even found a piece of wood that she carved to look like a chicken to hang from the sign.




So, now you know how Camp Chicken got it's name.

Camp Chicken - The Beginning

From the Camp Chicken Diary

Camp Chicken never used to be called Camp Chicken, it was always called "The Forty" even though it is actually 80 acres. It was always called "The Forty" by my Grandparents, Gladys and Elmer Rutledge.

In 1996, Arlene got this brainstorm that we should go camping again. We used to go tent-camping but since sleeping in a tent on the hard ground had little allure for me, she suggested that we buy a pop-up camper. I agreed and we went to our local dealer and got a real good deal on a 1995 model with a regular size bed in one end and a queen size bed in the other.

We tried going to a state forest campground but the weekend that we were there, a bunch of locals partied drunkenly for most of the time we were there. I refused to go to any more public campgrounds after that.

Arlene suggested that we ask Mom if we could camp at "The Forty" and she said we could. Now, Mom, Dad, and Grandpa and Grandma used to use the property to garden and there were two large meadows of about 3-4 acres in size that used to be big gardens. But, they hadn't been used in about 15 years!

Nature has a way of reclaiming the land and boy had it! The once huge meadow was now a mass of spruce and poplar thicket. There was one small clearing left by the old red trailer that was about 30 feet by 40 feet and the rest was woods. Dad brought up the lawn mower and mowed a spot for us to park the pop-up.

That first September weekend, Arlene, her grandson, Arnie who was about 9, and I camped out. After dark we only had the light from the fire to illuminate the dark and boy was it dark. All around us the forest creatures could be heard moving around us as they weren't used to intruders into their domain.

The very next morning, armed only with a hand saw and a hatchet, we set to work to reclaim the meadow. Arlene said that we had to limb the spruce trees up high enough so that we could see further out into the woods and more importantly so that the animals could see us and avoid walking right into camp.

We had no outhouse so you had to take a shovel, go dig a hole to do your business and then cover it up. Yikes. We had no water except what we could carry and only the power that was in the trailer battery. When that went dead we were out of lights. We hadn't even thought to bring a lantern.

But, our dog Bear loved it. I tied him up the first few weekends we went to camp until I was sure that he wouldn't take off into the woods. After that, he had the run of camp.

Mom, Dad and Gram liked it too. They hadn't been up there much in recent years. Oh, Dad and Mom would come up in the fall and spring to cut wood but never to just sit around and enjoy the woods.

So that first weekend, we worked really hard at pushing back some of the forest. Mom and Gram came up for a visit both Saturday and Sunday and watched with some amusement as we hacked away at the spruce limbs.

But, you know what? It felt great to be outdoors!

From the Camp Chicken Diary...

In the early days of Camp Chicken, I got the idea of keeping a camp diary. We could record what we did on the weekends we were there and keep a record of our camp adventures.

Here is an excerpt from our Camp Chicken Diary...

When we first began going to Camp Chicken on weekends, our good friend Kathy would go with us.

Kathy had never done any kind of outdoor activites and was a complete novice in the woods. She didn't know how to make a fire or use a hand saw to cut wood.

In those early days, we cut all of our campfire wood by hand with a small camp saw. Arlene and I took turns gathering wood for the fire and cutting up small trees for our wood pile. As you can imagine, it was a lot of work.

We tried to teach Kathy how to use the hand saw, but it took her a very long time to cut up a few small sticks of wood for our fire.

One day, Arlene and I were going to leave camp for a few hours to watch Arlene's grandson, Clifton, run at a cross-country meet. Before we left, she told Kathy that she had to cut some firewood and make a good fire so that Arlene could cook our dinner when we returned.

When we returned, a large fire was burning in the firepit and Kathy was relaxing in her chair by the fire. My Mom and Dad were sitting by the fire visiting with her.

"Wow," Arlene said, "great fire, Kath, how did you do it?"

"Well," Kathy replied, "I cut up the wood and built a fire. I know how to do stuff."

Upon a closer inspection of the fire, Arlene noticed that the logs in the fire were quite large, too large for Kathy to have cut with a hand saw.

A quick check in the back of my Dad's pickup confirmed our suspicions. Dad's chainsaw was in the pickup bed.

"All right, Kathy" Arlene said, "tell the truth. Harry cut up the wood for you with his chainsaw and he was the one who built the fire, right?"

The guilty look on Kathy and my parent's faces told the whole story. They had come up for a visit and when Kathy told them that she was supposed to cut wood and start a fire, my Dad took pity on her and did her chores.

Our good friend Kathy is no longer with us. Sadly, she passed away from stomach cancer several years ago. We miss her at Camp Chicken. In fact, she deserves much of the credit for the Camp Chicken name. But, that's another story.