Pines on the Severn Delivered the Summer Camp Experience
By Erik Arneson, Special Guest Contributor
There is a heartfelt reason Stephen King’s classic Stand By Me is my favorite movie.
Pals walking along a railroad track, taking on multiple adventures and challenges along the way and sharing conversations that felt incredibly meaningful in the moment always serves as a signature summer memory from my youth in the waterfront community of Pines on the Severn. Between the ages of five and 14, I was blessed to live and make lifelong friends in what felt like one big summer camp. The Baltimore & Annapolis Railroad ran across the entrance of “the Pines” until the summer of 1968, when the Severn River Trestle, the “Old Train Bridge” as we knew it, was declared unsafe. When our family moved into 116 Severn Way in 1969, the tracks served as little more than a shortcut to “the Little Store,” a small butcher and grocery shop that occupied a former train depot and offered a great selection of nickel candy – Gold Rush bubblegum pouches, Wild Cherry Lifesavers and Marathon candy bars were a few of my favorites. The walk along the tracks, however short, always came with a sense of childhood curiosity – from pulling railroad spikes from rotting timbers, to collecting coal chunks scattered around the tracks to swinging from tree vines out over ravines, it was never a simple point A to point B stroll. And minus the horseback riding, anything that was going on at any summer camp in the area was happening in the Pines, usually on a grander scale and most-definitely without camp counselors.
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