Top Secret: Project Myrtle!

During my first few summers (beginning in 1978) on staff at Quaker Lake Camp, Martha Ratledge Farlow was a lifeguard and the guitar player and song leader for our nightly worship times with junior and senior high campers (As an aside, these times were often shown on the camp schedule as Singing and Meditation, abbreviated S & M. This always drew snickers from the staff. We were, after all, college students!). Martha was great. She could sing like an angel, played guitar quite well and motivated the campers to sing. She only had one problem.  Well...three problems.  And they were named Alan Brown, Carl Semmler and Carl Jones. 


We loved Martha.  We had known her for a long time, with Carl and I having gone to high school with her and Alan having dated her.  And we just couldn't resist torturing her at music time.  If I had known then that when she left I would replace her in that role, I might have been more considerate...but I seriously doubt it, because we had way too much fun!  We would request songs she didn't like.  We would request songs she didn't know!  We would sing the words to the George Fox Song (George Fox was the first Quaker) when she would play Simple Gifts, and then do the opposite when she would play George Fox.  We made up new parts to songs like I Shall Be Released and Walking In the Light.  Alan would randomly break into singing "they called her Lizzie," which was not actually part of any song, and people would join in.  And the kids would occasionally get more into our silly stuff than the actual songs, which frustrated Martha, a true musician.  We thought we might push her over the edge when we put the lyrics of the George Fox Song to the tune of Night Moves by Bob Seegar and called it Fox Moves.  She REALLY hated that one!


But our masterpiece of torture, and final stroke of genius in our desire to make her crazy, was Project Myrtle.  To understand what this devious plot entailed, I need to take you back, kiddies!  Back before computers, before Power Point, even before copiers.  We used song sheets at camp then, and those song sheets had to be typed on to a duplicate master and then run on a mimeograph machine. It was painstaking work, because any typos were fatal- you just had to start over.  Project Myrtle was simple, yet diabolical.  We would create our own song sheet and then one night substitute it for the real song sheet.  And Project Myrtle would contain songs the likes of which Quaker Lake had never seen before.  Along with Fox Moves and The Animal Song of our own creation, the list included The Ballad of Lizzie Borden (with the added "they called her Lizzie chorus!); Wild Thing; She's Been After Man Ever Since; Row, Row, Row Your Boat (in the key of C, naturally); and the never performed but often discussed The Parakeet Song (Google "the biggest parakeets in town" and you will see why we could never perform it at QLC!). This would be our finest hour! As we secretly typed the masters, we stored them in an empty refrigerator in a winter cabin that was not used during summer camp at that time.  After hours of typing and a month of so of sneaking around and clandestine activity, we were almost ready to reveal Project Myrtle to the world- and then it was gone. We still don't know what happened. We went to retrieve it from our secret frig, and it simply was not there. We were devastated, Project Myrtle was abandoned, and music time at camp was safe...for a while.


Most people never knew of Project Myrtle, and yet in its own way it did go on to change music at camp. Only a couple of years later wild and crazy songs like Barbara Ann and Lahinia would cause the Fireplace Room to rock out on hot summer evenings, and that was the legacy of Project Myrtle.  Or not...  In any case, it's now some 35 years later, and I am a little bit sorry for all the trouble we caused Martha.  But I am even more sorry Project Myrtle died before we ever had a chance to spring it on the staff and sing The Parakeet Song for everyone. I wish I knew where it went. But I do have a confession to make. Yesterday, while no one was around, I picked up my guitar and start singing "working on the Fox moves..."  It still rocks! Quaker Lake NEVER gets out of your blood.  :)


Because of Jesus,