This Life : The Care-Package Wars

Instantly I was transported to a time of capture the flag, campfires, singalongs and, of course, bulging care packages from home containing everything from spray cheese to Fig Newtons. Hurry, better eat the Milk Duds before the raccoons arrive!

In almost every way, the camps were exactly as I had romanticized them. Except one: care packages are now strictly banned. In camp after camp, directors described how they had outlawed such packages after getting fed up with hypercompetitive parents sending oversize teddy bears and bathtubs of M&M’s.

And they’re not alone. Across the country, sleep-away programs of all sizes are fighting back against overzealous status-mongers.

Not taking this in stride, parents have turned to increasingly elaborate smuggling routines, from hollowing out Harry Potter books to burrowing holes in tennis balls to get their little dumplings a taste of the checkout aisle. We have entered the age of the care-package wars, where strong-willed camps and strong-willed parents battle over control of their children’s loyalty and downtime.

Heightening the stakes, a new crop of online merchants has emerged to navigate the shoals and speed up delivery of treats to America’s campers. These companies, some of which operate out of Walmart-size warehouses, market to parents too busy to hunt down a shoe box, visit the market and wrangle up postage, because, hey, nothing says “I’m thinking of you” more than paying someone else to say it for you.

So how did we arrive at this moment of brinkmanship and where do we go from here?

For as long as American children have attended summer camp (around 150 years), parents have sent them stuff. The term “care package” originated after World War II when the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe (CARE) began sending food relief across the Atlantic. The group bought up surplus 10-in-1 food parcels from the American military, which had prepared them for an invasion of Japan.

Each package included a pound of steak and kidneys; 8 ounces of liver loaf; 12 ounces of luncheon loaf (Spam); 2 pounds of coffee; and a pound each of lard, honey, raisins and chocolate. In its first two decades, the organization delivered over 100 million packages.

With such widespread popularity, the name “care package” (the acronym was lowercased in popular usage) quickly carried over to any shipment of supplies to service personnel, college students, inmates or anyone away from home. By the time I went to summer camp in the 1970s, care packages were a rare but treasured joy, as my bunkmates and I would pass around Toll House cookies, beef jerky, Mad magazine and Richie Rich comics.

While camps and parents have always clashed to some degree, everyone agrees that the problems have only worsened in recent years. Gay Gasser, the president of Mirth in a Box, a care-package distribution company in Fairfield, Conn., keeps a list of 122 camps in 22 states that now restrict deliveries. “We get parents who call us up and say: ‘Oh, my God, my kid is in a bunk with someone who gets a care package every single day. We have to keep up.’?”

Sealed With a Kiss, based in Merriam, Kan., bills itself as the largest care-package distributor in the United States and has a 12,000-square-foot distribution center, 25 employees and what its co-owner, Malcolm Petty, calls a “Level 3 call center.” “During our season, we’re the fourth largest shipper in the state,” he said. The company has 1,800 camps in its database, he said; twice as many have restrictions today as in 2007.

“Some camps don’t want water toys or water blasters,” Mr. Petty said. “Others don’t do water balloons, chalk or anything that looks like a gun.”

Bruce Feiler’s latest book is “The Secrets of Happy Families.” “This Life” appears monthly.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 22, 2013

An earlier version of this article misattributed a warning from Camp Kabeyun in Alton Bay, N.H., that boys must come to the office during rest hour and open packages with a counselor, who will confiscate food and candy. It was not a quotation from Ken Robbins, the camp’s director. The earlier version also incorrectly transcribed part of that warning. It does not say, “Your children’s time opening packages in the office is time away from their cabin mates and counselors.”?

View the original article here