January 2006
I live with my wife Kelly and son Nicholas in Weston, CT. I commute to the city each day where I manage a hedge fund. We still have a house in Small Point and we go there for as long as we can each summer. Small Point on the whole is pretty much unchanged. It is still as beautiful and unspoiled as you remember it, with long days at the beach, amazing views from the top of Morse Mountain, and crisp blue mornings looking out at Seguin or sailing out by Wood Island. What is always missing, of course, is Alliquippa. As a former camper I feel that loss whenever I go by the old house, now architecturally redacted into a footnote of its former self. I often wonder if the new owners have any idea of all the fun that went on inside those walls--the lunch bells, the dances, the pillow fights, and the friendships formed. All of that is just an echo now.
There are of course a few changes. Wymans store--always a favorite for candy and other treats--closed long ago and has been torn down. There are a few new houses on the point but they are unobtrusive for the most part. The shape of the beach down by the Sprague River has altered as the tides have rearranged the sand, and last year a big storm swept away a large part of the beach below the cliff. I regret to report that the historic Square House next door to the camp (where the Mattisons lived) has been torn down by new owners and replaced with what can only be described as a giant suburban smudge mark. This is alas yet another installment in the homogenization of America, and to an Alliquippa alum the alteration looks from the water as if someone drew buck teeth on the Mona Lisa.
Alliquippa is missed in so many other ways that even Small Pointers who did not attend the camp have commented on it. They note that the sailboat races are more sparsely attended and less hotly contested than when the camp was in full swing, and the committee boat services the camp provided are also missed. Gone too are the long lines of campers walking everywhere on the point, and the community service that the campers provided--expeditions to pick up trash on the beach, and the many other things that made the camp more quietly significant to the community than anybody realized until the camp was gone. So the camp is missed and you are missed. I hope everyone is well and that if you come to Small Point for a visit (which you should) that you will look us up."
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