One of my current items on Etsy is a crocheted necklace using vintage Camp Fire Girl beads. [
Update: This necklace sold on 7/19/11!] Although I was a Bluebird, I never was a full-fledged Camp Fire Girl. However, I knew all about their beads and patches and would have loved to amass my own collection. I also was enchanted with the idea of having a Native American-style gown on which to sew my beads. I read about this option in the Camp Fire Girls handbook, which for whatever reason I asked to receive for my birthday when I was 11 or 12.
The only patch I earned as a Bluebird was red felt with a campfire printed on it in gold. I earned it by selling Christmas candy, although my sales were meager, mostly to family. Sometime in the months following, my mother washed my Bluebird vest, with the patch sewn to it, and the patch came out looking like a pot scrubber. Mom diligently tired to paint over the remnants of the campfire with gilt paint, but it still wasn't a very stately-looking patch. I don't think I stayed with Bluebirds very long after that, although it had nothing at all to do with the mutant patch. I've simply never been much of a joiner.
I did suffer a disappointment when I was 11. My girlfriends convinced me to come with them to Camp Fire Girls daycamp. The literature clearly said non-members were welcome, although I think my parents had to pay a higher fee. Each week I rode the bus with my Camp Fire Girl friends, dressed in a white school blouse and navy blue shorts, the sit-upon my mother sewed for me looped over my belt and a frozen canteen sweating rivulets down the side of my shorts and trickling down the rubber-matted floor of the bus. (It wasn't my fault; the literature said to freeze the canteen so the water would be cold when I needed it.)
For several weeks I did everything the Camp Fire Girls did: We made sand paintings; built a fire and cooked a lunch of ham, pineapple, and sweet potato wrapped in foil and roasted in the fire; took nature hikes; and swept the floor of the primitive lodge building. The finale was to be a campfire ceremony in which beads would be awarded. I was thrilled; except our leader told us to wear our vests and neckerchiefs.
"I don't have a vest," I told her. "I'm not in Camp Fire Girls."
"How did you get into this camp if you're not a member?" the leader wondered aloud, embarrassing me because it seemed as if I'd sneaked in. She consulted an authority in the camp and said wearing my usual blouse and shorts would be fine.
My mother, sympathetic to my feeling of being slightly ostracized, even offered to buy me a vest, but I knew that wasn't the answer. I got over it and was ticked, actually, that the leader didn't know the camp allowed non-members. When you're naturally not a joiner in things, you don't sweat too much about being an outsider.
I don't remember now if Mom or anyone else raised the question of whether I would get any beads if I wasn't a Camp Fire Girl. Maybe I even wondered myself but pushed the possibility to the back of my brain. I allowed myself to be optimistically expectant as we seated ourselves around the campfire in a council-like setting.
I waited and waited for my name to be called to come up and get my beads, watching as each of my friends trotted up for their tiny string of beads, looking quite proud. When all the names but mine had been called and the program moved on to a final sing-along, I was so disappointed I almost cried. I didn't have to feign polite interest in my friends' beads--I really did want to see and touch them--but I don't think I talked much. The lump in my throat made it too hard.
For awhile I "played" at getting beads by buying bags of plastic tube beads at Woolworth's. For just a dime I could purchase a small sack of quite a few beads in pale colors. For 29 cents a larger sack would swell my supply. I'd scatter them all out on the living room rug, sorting them by color and driving my mother nuts. I'd pretend certain colors represented certain accomplishments; I even made jewelry such as the necklaces and bracelets in the Camp Fire Girls handbook. They were bulky things, with the thin beads strung on yarn.
My collection of beads ceased to be the autumn I was 12. Mom had made me the coveted squaw dress out of muslin the year before, and I'd sewn on a few beads. For Halloween, though, I went all out, stringing long garlands of beads which I tacked all over the front of the gown. I didn't use the yarn, apparently, but must have turned to sewing thread. The ropes of beads broke one after the other while I walked to the party, played games, and knelt for a picture. By the time I went home, my supply was depleted, but I'd grown beyond playing pretend with my beads anyhow. In a few weeks I would start a journal, or "notebook" as it was called in
Harriet the Spy, and thus began a whole new phase of my life.
I think that awards ceremony disappointment led to my fascination with Camp Fire Girl beads as well as winning awards of my own. A few years later I started entering the county fair, putting my needlework and crafts in competition with adults. The second year I got my first ribbons; the third year I won my first rosette. I was gluttonous about accumulating awards of all kinds for decades and have only recently slowed down. I've won ribbons, rosettes, engraved silver bowls, certificates, trophies and medals for needlework, crafts, some cooking, writing, poetry, clogging, and Irish dancing. Never, though, a string of painted wooden beads or an embroidered patch.
That's probably why, when I spotted a jar of Camp Fire Girl beads at an antique mall for a low price, I pounced, even though I had no idea what I would do with them. So far I've used only the red, white, and blue citizenship/patriotism beads and some round red beads. I'm still thinking how to use up the rest.
My sister has written blog posts about her
patch envy as my niece earned her Girl Scout Daisy patches; this week she revisited the subject, blogging
about my niece participating in the Loveland, Ohio 4th of July parade as a newly ordained Brownie. I guess this awards thing just runs in the family.
