"The camp"

During the month of June 1970, Bud Rue (my father) sat with me under an Innisfree pine by the front wall by River Road and informed me straight-out that from then on I was "free" to make all my own choices, including those the outcome of which could alter the rest of my life. We did not get too specific with "what if" speculation. He simply said he hoped I would take his and my mother's wishes into account when making decisions, but at just shy of age twelve, as my father told me, I was now free! At least in theory. At the end of the summer, I learned that I would soon be entering sixth grade. An argument ensued, after which I ran out the door, down the hill toward the general store and hid in a friend's barn. This outburst ended soon enough, but when autumn arrived, the struggle continued until the next year. That conversation, and my subsequent determination to "live at Innisfree" impacted much of my adolescence and even later in life. In my childhood, and maybe for some other people, the connection to Innisfree was not just familial and social, but in some sense mystic.

Any reader interested in a curious literary aside on the meaning of the "Innisfree" poem, see Genevieve Pettijohn (2017), "The Magic of Yeats' "The Lake Isle of Innisfree": Kabbalism, Numerology, and Tarot Cards," Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism: Vol. 10: Issue. 1, Article 10 (available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/criterion/vol10/iss1/10).

The pastoral appearance of River Road was offset by the nightlife of what I think is widely remembered as a loud and wild biker bar called The Black Horse Inn. Living across the Milanville Bridge as a young teenager, from my present-day perspective, it was out of control. At the time, I was just pleased to be served beer at the age of, as long as the place was crowded and the owner too busy (or intoxicated to ask me for ID), at the age of twelve. In 1975, Robert Lander, Sr. of Narrowsburg bought it under the corporate name of Ten Mile River Enterprises (see the attached county real property database card) and operated it for a time as the Lenape Tavern. According to Rick Lander, his company eventually sold the tavern due to the cost of liability insurance. At the age of twelve, I was served beer in the Black Horse bar and was allowed to sit and drink with friends and others with whom I had walked across the bridge from Innisfree. I recall one sexual assault that took place in the Black Horse parking lot during those years. The now long-gone saloon's reputation combined with that experience suggests to this writer there probably were others. The building, now the private home of Gabriel and Floarea Vladu, still stands, according to a June 2, 2024 article in The River Reporter.

Another memory of the Black Horse during the summers of 1970 and 1971 was how the substantial crowd that filled sometimes filled the dining hall at adjoining table. Some reacted with joy and celebrating freedom when a then current hit "Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog", often being outnumbered by louder and more numerous audience participation when "I'm Proud to Be an Okee From Muskogee" came on the box.

The theoretical model of the first summers of Innisfree in Milanville was Summerhill, though the name of that English school was rarely invoked that I can recall during Innisfree's meetings after the initial pre-incorporation phase in Montclair. We hoped to try our own hand at communal self-government, with A.S. Neill's anti-establishment ideas woven into Innisfree's philosophy. Commencing in June 1970, this took the form of a summer-long intentional community divided into two terms (some attended one, some both). At the outset, it was agreed the community had no rules and was essentially a blank slate except for the consciences and good will of participants. It was understood that future decisions governing the community would be by consensus. It was said that general meetings would last all night if consensus was not reached. Some did last all night. My recollection of general meetings is mixed. Some meetings were successful; others ended in frustration.

The actions of Innisfree kids sometimes leaked into the community and led to small conflicts. According to accounts that I heard from more than one source, one summer day in 1970, neighbor George Hocker walked up the drive and asked to speak to the camp director. Very quickly, accounts agree, the tone of the conversation escalated. Mr. Hocker was understandably angry about a peace symbol that an unknown person had painted on the Township Route 63027 in front of the Innisfree property. As the two men spoke at each other, one what hedefending free speech, civil disobedience, alternative teaching approaches, etc; and the other describing the "broken cross" as evil, communist, and the sign of a broken cross, not to mention it being a township road, my mother approached to see the cause of the shouting. She suddenly quieted both sides by injecting, "We'll cover it up!" (meaning with black paint or coal tar emulsion). This was soon done. Bud Rue was one of the people I heard tell this story, using it to illustrate the healthy and calming influence that Ann often had on his reasoning. There was no good argument for tagging grafitti on the road.

Unfortunately, the same summer, some unknown person painted a large white peace symbol on the large rock ("rafting rock") in the Delaware, presumably using some kind of enamel paint since the rough image remained visible for a few years, leading to the name "peace rock" which is still sometimes used in conversation. I truly have no clue who tagged either image. It is not unfair to guess that someone from Innisfree might have been responsible for both incidents of vandalism, but I have never heard anyone's name mentioned in connection with either action. 

After the summer of freedom ended, I was enrolled in sixth grade at a conventional public school a few miles from Innisfree where the educational philosophy did not at all resemble that of what I was coming from. I was also educated even more than I had been during earlier grades on the nature and abusive power of compulsory education. Even beyond what I expected based on my prior experience as a public-school student in my earlier school years in New Jersey, I was unaccustomed to the lawful application of corporal punishment of students by teachers. At that time, the practice as I experienced it at Damascus School was one of being smacked with a ruler more than once for the offense of talking back. It did not teach respect; just surprise and annoyance which could have escalated though it never did. I also recall school science lessons taught in a manner that seemed heavily influenced by the religious beliefs of the one teaching, more so in science than in other subjects. It was quite a dramatic snap back to authoritarianism from the reality that I had experienced at Innisfree. My view of the learning experience provided by the public schools I was forced to attend (until graduating a year early to get away from home) was shaped in part by the writings of A.S. Neill. Fortunately, or unfortunately, during the rest of my public-school education, though at least one application was made on my behalf while I was in eighth grade, I completed the requirements to graduate high school amid what my father described as an "oppressive" system, but in which he had continued to participate by teaching in traditional public schools for as long as he did. This ethical conflict was something he discussed with me at times and which I understood.

From my childhood through completion of graduate school, much of my family's and my own energies were devoted to Innisfree in one manner another, whether it was the never-ending load physical maintenance of the property (which my parents often paid local people to do or they did themselves), legal correspondence with state licensing agencies and AYH, promotion and marketing, and countless other tasks. In 1976, I went away to college in Utah, thereafter living in two other states out west until returning east in 1981. When I arrived home, my father had just days before been served with a summons and complaint in a civil lawsuit by a former friend, to be described in more detail below.

During the early seventies and eighties, Innisfree was licensed by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources (DER) as a organized summer camp and as a public eating and drinking place but was not your typical children's camp. Throughout his high school years, Innisfree founder Bud Rue himself worked steadily as a camp counsellor at a Clearlake Camp near Battle Creek, Michigan, attaining the rank Eagle. Whether or not any of the experience he gained in a youth leadership role at a summer camp affiliated at that time with Fort Street Presbyterian Church in Detroit aided his vison and contributions to the Innisfree project is unknown, but they probably did to an extent, though the programs themselves were vastly dissimilar.

The vision that seemed to move Innisfree's first organizers was the idea of forming an intentional community based on community self-government by consensus, offering freedom and accountability leading to an exercise of freedom that is mindful that the consequences of one each person's impacts on others and on the planet. The program was said to be modeled after Summerhill by A.S. Neill [link], which has been called "the first Libertarian school". Innisfree's organizing group, which included high school students, teachers and family members, placed an emphasis on sensitivity training (T-groups), and general meetings for community decision making.

The June 2, 1970 issue of The Wayne Independent reported: "The staff, under the direction of Bud Rue, Montclair, includes two mathematic teachers, an English and drama coach, musicians, school psychologist, a noted New Jersey artist, journalist, nurse and other professionals. The camp, named Innisfree after W.B. Yeates' poem 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree,' was founded with the intent of offering teenagers the opportunity to experience self-direction."

Most active among the promoters were three couples -- the Rues, the Browns, and the Maylones, though well over a hundred of all ages were involved in the original organization -- which was initially dubbed "the Summerhill Association," with the intent of modeling a school in Milanville after the alternative educational institution founded by A.S. Neill. The program concept was modeled after the famous free-school in England described by A.S. Neill in his book Summerhill, though the Innisfree program had to be conceptually downsized to a camp, due to difficulties becoming chartered as a school by the Pennsylvania Department of Education. To aid with fund-raising and promotion, a publisher donated a case of copies of Neill's book for distribution with materials about the proposed camp.

Bud was recognized by Innisfree's early participants as the project's initiator and a chief source of its energy. It took Bud's zeal (perhaps exceeded only by the mania of A.J. Thomas) to bring to fruition a plan developed by what a brochure written by Ann Rue called "this starry-eyed group of idealists."

Funding sources for a down-payment on the Milanville property were channeled through the Sanfurd Bluestein Foundation of Montclair, which itself was a major contributor to the project. Professional fund-raiser Peter Malcolm of Montclair made a sizable contribution which, at the time, he chose to do anonymously. Benefitting from the tax-exempt status of Innisfree Corporation, over ensuing years, came donations of money, corporate stock, furniture, equipment, used clothing, books, and other materials, by individuals and corporations for Innisfree and its participants continued to flow.

In 1970 alone, minute books of Innisfree Corporation and other records show the following individuals made donations which helped make the purchase of the camp possible: Ford Schumann of Montclair, Sanfurd Bluestein of Montclair, Roy Sackett of Glen Ridge, Clyde Rue of Montclair, William Brown Jr. of Montclair, Peter Malcolm of Montclair, William Woldin of Bound Brook, Charles Gehrie of Montclair, William Brown Sr. of Lantana, Florida, Mr. and Mrs. Lee Condelmo of Piscataway, Vickie Kaufman of Montclair, Doris Lada of Montclair, Ted Tiffany of Paterson, and Charity Eva Runden of Montclair. One other donor was John D. Rhodes, who visited the camp with a friend in 1972 and, on July 25, made a gift to the corporation of 170 shares of Rank Organisation Ltd., Inc. valued at $4,696.25. Undoubtedly, this list is incomplete.

Innisfree's founders also included dozens of high school and middle school aged students from Montclair, in addition to the adult staff. The incorporating trustees that got the ball rolling with the first summer's program included the following: Bud Rue, (president), P. Clarke Maylone (vice-president), Gail Wilson Brown (treasurer), Ann Rue (secretary), William W. Brown III, Peter Malcolm, and Sanfurd G. Bluestein, M.D. Most of these people were Montclair teachers. Dr. Bluestein was a radiologist whose son was an Innisfree participant, and Mr. Malcolm, as noted above, was a professional promoter. Without their energy and real-world contributions, Innisfree would never have come about.

The camp philosophy was based on ideals of self-government, group decision-making, and individual responsibility. It was the summer after the summer of love, July 1970. Participants in the Innisfree community, or "camp," came for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was to take part in building a community in which members could learn about themselves in relation to others.

When someone at Innisfree rang the dinner bell, other than at mealtimes, all 60 community members were expected to assemble and participate in a group process until the problem (whatever it was) was resolved by group consensus.

One such meeting, outstanding in the memory of this writer, had to do with theft at Innisfree. After a few hours of discussion, it became clear to all that the root of the problem was that some had, while others had not (or at least not as much as they wanted). A simple solution was agreed upon. Consensus was that a "pot" -- actually, it was more like a Tupperware bowl -- would be placed in the living room. Anyone who had money to spare would place it in the pot. Those who needed it would be free to take as their needs required. Pure socialism, in a teapot. As the vessel made its way around the room, generous idealists filled it with paper currency and change. Finally, it was placed on the shelf.

There would be no more stealing. The money belonged to everyone, so stealing was not possible, the group concluded. "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need," someone quoted hopefully. 

The next day, the meeting bell rang once again. The money pot was empty! A quick investigation revealed that the six-year-old son of Innisfree's founder, who himself had been a central focus of the original discussion had helped himself to the entire amount and purchased a stock of candy at a local store. After all, he asserted, it was his right. The child (who grew up to be a successful lawyer) simply took what was up for grabs.

Adding insult to the community's injury, the young entrepreneur opened a "store" of his own on the Innisfree lawn, arranging chocolate bars on the top of a small crate with a board affixed, and doubling their sale price. Penny candy went for two cents, a nickel chocolate bar for a dime, etc. Not surprisingly, some campers bought from the "store" on the lawn; to save themselves the one mile walk to the Milanville General Store.