Hello Grandmudda, Hello Grandfadda

Greetings from Camp Mt. Crags.

Today we had crafts. I made a yarn dog. The games are really fun--I won a medal in the Frisbee toss--and there’s a big swimming pool. The food’s great, barbecue chicken and ribs and brownies and stuff. I think we have the best cabin. I’m not a bit homesick.

Love, Grandma

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A few of the little old ladies are sitting in a circle, blowing bubbles with the gizmos they’ve found in their camper goody bags and talking, well, you know, little old lady talk.

Beverly Adams, 69, is regaling the group with the story of how she once received a fan letter intended for Beverly Adams, the film actress who’d just appeared in “How to Stuff a Wild Bikini.” “He wanted a picture of me in my bikini,” says Adams. “I weighed 196 at the time.” She’s trimmed down since but still wages a battle with the scale. When she comes to camp, she brings a diet lunch, “and then I eat it and theirs too. I never lose, but I’m never hungry.” She laughs. “According to the charts, I should be a 6-foot-2-inch man with a large frame.”

Smurfy Evans, a transplanted Brooklynite who says she’s “over 60,” retorts, “I wish you were a 6-foot-2-inch man with a large frame.”

The others howl in appreciation.

Rena McArthur, 74, who wears purple pants and has purple flowers tucked into her white hair, is telling about having visited the home of the Loch Ness monster in her native Scotland. Adams listens, then says, “I married the monster.” More laughter.

The women in this group belong to the Salvation Army’s Van Nuys Home League, part of its women’s ministry, and they’re among about 125 campers at the army’s annual summer camp for older adults, men and women, at Camp Mt. Crags in Calabasas. Average age of campers: late 70s to early 80s.

“They let us out every Wednesday, under close supervision,” deadpans Adams. And are there more like them at home? Oh, yes, says Evans, but not everyone is “ambulatory at the same time.”

Hearing that another camper, Frances Friedman of Pasadena, is celebrating her 94th birthday this day, they invite her to pull up a chair. Soon, Friedman, an ardent Dodgers fan, is leading the group in a spirited rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” And then she is explaining why she has no regrets about not having children. “First thing they want to do,” she says, “is put you in a rest home.”

Those who have come to camp are not candidates for a rest home, thank you. Some may have plastic knees or a bit of arthritis, and may walk with a cane, but they’re out to have fun. Some are revisiting a long-ago time when they went away to summer camp. Others are enjoying an experience they never had as children.

In an era of computer camps, weight-loss camps and sports camps, why not a senior citizen camp? Although a number of groups offer day-camp experiences for seniors, the Salvation Army’s Maj. Ardis Fuge, secretary of older adult ministries, believes this sleep-away camp is unique in Southern California.

The three-day adventure begins with an orientation meeting presided over by Fuge. This is her show. “Are you all ready for an exciting time?” she asks campers, some of whom are decked out in red, white and blue in keeping with the camp theme, “Celebrate America!”

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The answer is a resounding “yes.” More than half of the campers have been to the annual camp at least once and look forward to it each summer. Soon after settling into their cabins--tile-roofed, dorm-like facilities with spartan twin-bedded rooms--the sleepover campers set about the business of having fun. The setting is idyllic, in a serene valley sheltered by live oaks.

There’s standing room only in the crafts room, where they are making miniature topiary trees, covering Styrofoam balls with tufts of colorful fabric and gluing ribbons and beads to the rims of little clay pots. Nearby, in Flick, the big octagonal meeting hall, the bingo crowd is in hot competition for T-shirts, mugs and other new merchandise that’s been donated to the Salvation Army. Bingo is big at older-adults camp.

A white golf cart bearing a decal, “God Squad,” rumbles past with a young staffer at the wheel, carrying a less mobile camper from one campsite to another.

“Last year we had four or five on walkers,” observes Fuge. “But they get older and they just aren’t able to come.”

Never mind. You should have seen them at the opening night barbecue, dancing the chicken dance. It involves flapping one’s arms, wiggling one’s hips and generally jumping about.

Campers also love to eat. No nouvelle cuisine here. We’re talking comfort food--eggs and sausages, fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Some campers are on limited incomes, and at home, Fuge knows, “many of them don’t eat well. One man told me a can of Spaghetti-Os lasts him three days.”

Although three days of camp costs only $60, “most pay only $10 or $20,” Fuge says. “It depends on what they can afford.” One man told her he wasn’t sure he could come this year, as he hadn’t yet received his gas bill and didn’t know if there would be money enough left over. She arranged matters.

Most campers are affiliated in some way with the Salvation Army, either as residents of its Silvercrest senior residences or as members of its corps, as Army churches are called. So it is no surprise that there’s a dollop of religion in the camp mix.

After the barbecue, retired Lt. Col. Herbert Wiseman holds up a dollar bill to remind everyone that it bears the words “In God We Trust.” He then suggests mischievously that campers hand him their tens and twenties so he can “take them home to examine them.”

For Lois Rellinger, 75, of Hacienda Heights, camp is a respite from caring for an ill husband. Growing up in Michigan, she never got to go to camp. “I was born when the bomb dropped, the 1929 crash.”

Others, like ex-New Yorker Evans, who as a Girl Scout went to Laughing Water Camp somewhere in the Adirondacks, have memories of other camping experiences. Memories of short-sheeted beds and poison ivy and geeky cabin mates.

Here at Camp Mt. Crags, Doris Mays, 75, of San Fernando has come with husband Lawrence, 79. Wed 57 years, they’re repeat campers, and they’re having a ball. Mays volunteers a little marital advice: “Don’t let anybody tell you what your husband’s doing--unless you see it. It just makes trouble.”

Another camping couple are Bob and Helen Wrightson, 85 and 82, from Simi Valley. They’ve been coming here for years. “We love it,” she says. “Everybody’s very loving and thoughtful.” Adds her husband, who wears a lapel badge explaining, “I Can’t Hear,” “There’s so much to do, but they don’t pressure you in any way.”

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Women greatly outnumber men. “So many of the men are dead,” says Elizabeth Thomas, 76, of Pacoima, here with husband Lency, 79. “It’s so sad.”

First day of camp ends with a movie at 9:15 p.m. As the film “Yankee Doodle Dandy” with James Cagney opens, about 35 campers are in the audience. Slowly, the number dwindles to 20 and, before the film’s end more than two hours later, only six remain.

It is early to bed for those campers planning to take part in the next morning’s 7:15 prayer walk. The mountains are still shrouded in mist as they gather at the flagpole. “Little Bo Peep and her sheep,” says Maj. Marilyn Bawden of the Santa Monica corps, leading a group of about 35 along a dirt road among the big oaks.

At stops during the 40-minute outing, campers offer spontaneous prayers. They thank the Lord for the trees and mountains, and for being born American. There is a prayer that a peace agreement will be reached at the Mideast summit at Camp David. Finally, there is a silent prayer punctuated only by the chirping of birds and the splash of a waterfall. The walkers head back to camp, singing “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

After breakfast, Fuge asks campers, “What are you doing this afternoon?” A lone voice shouts, “Bingo!” No, no, Fuge says. “We’re having our own Olympic games.”

As John Williams’ “Olympic Fanfare,” composed for the 1984 games in Los Angeles, wafts through the tall trees, the Olympic torch--a pair of Tiki torches--is lit. Don Mowery, resident camp manager, proclaims, “Let the games begin.”

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One event is scratched: No one has signed up for the greased watermelon relay race in the pool. Bowling, on a slightly off-balance makeshift plywood lane, is a big draw. The Frisbee toss and archery draw respectable numbers, but staff has to fill in to complete two teams for beach volleyball.

Brownie Johnson, 83, of Duarte tries his hand at bowling, his wife Evelyn, 81, at Frisbee. Later, he jokes, “And we participated in the lunch.”

A retired parts manager for a Ford dealership, Johnson savors life with the joy of someone who figures he ought not be here. As a young woman, his mother immigrated from Sweden: “She was supposed to come over on the Titanic. The passage was full. They told her to come back the next day.” During World War II, Johnson was among troops put ashore on a South Pacific island. Twenty minutes later, “a torpedo sank our ship.”

Camp is not all fun and games. Workshops include “Gracious Grandparenting” and “Prescription Drugs in Medicare.” The former is sparsely attended. As one camper says, “I came here to get away from my grandchildren.”

Among those skipping that session is Jessie Almada, 73, of Buena Park, a second-time camper. She figures, “Child rearing should be done by the parents, not by me.” Her only complaint about camp: It ends too soon. “It’s like giving me two licks of an ice cream cone. I want the whole thing, down to the soggy little tip.”

Frances Friedman, in a Dodgers warmup jacket and red-white-and-blue crocheted hat, is here, there and everywhere. At 94, she says, “You gotta keep busy.” She mows her own lawn and still drives a stick-shift 1962 Ford. Age? “That’s just a number God gave you.” She has her pension, earned through years working in the laundry at Huntington Hospital. And, she takes some satisfaction in mentioning that, while her late husband, a railroad man, never gave her mad money, she is really enjoying his pension.

Friedman flits from event to event, even trying her hand at the bowling. She says, “I always say God’s keeping me here so I won’t miss anything.”

On the last night of camp, there is a concert by young Salvation Army musicians who have been sharing the campsite with the seniors. And there is the Olympics medal ceremony. The gold medal in target shooting goes to Lucy Alba, 69, of El Monte. Although she was the only contestant, she earned it. She actually hit the target. Accepting, Alba says, “I want to thank all of you who signed up and didn’t show up.”

Keith Dunn, 59, of Ojai, who gets around with the help of two canes, takes home the gold in horseshoe pitching. Beverly Adams wins two golds in Frisbee toss, while Mavis Burnett, 79, of Venice, takes first in archery. One of the jolly Van Nuys ladies, Jean Cassidy, who gives her age as “AARP eligible,” captures first in bowling.

The purple team bests the orange team in the relay race, which is run and walked over a course covering about three blocks--this despite the fact that purple’s Kitty Yeargain, 64, of El Monte, is competing with one arm in a sling.

There are prizes too, for those who took part in the senior art fair, which drew entries ranging from needlepoint to painting. Gerry Moffatt, 87, of South El Monte, wins a first but isn’t on hand to accept. She has gone to bed.

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Beverly Beyette can be reached at beverly.beyette@latimes.com.