Scouting

At some time during my 5th grade year I joined the Boy Scouts. I have no idea how it came about--whether it was through school, a friend, or what. Because we didn't have a lot of money in the family, the list of my Boy Scout-related items was pretty short. I wasn't able to have much of anything special as far as being a scout went. I felt lucky just to have the official Boy Scout shirt and neck neck scarf that I had.  I remember that I made the scarf slide out of a piece of wood all by myself, and I was pretty proud of that.  When my birthday came around that year, I received an official Boy Scout Handbook.  I loved that book! It was so full of cool stuff--I read and re-read it over and over. Then the following Christmas I was given a genuine Boy Scout knife as a gift. I treasured that knife. It was one of my most cherished possessions. As a matter of fact, I still have it.

I attended meetings weekly I think, and in most cases I walked to and from them. It was one of my earliest recollections of me being independent and going off to some sort of a function on my own. It was during one of those nights of walking to a scout meeting that I smoked my first cigarette (stolen from my dad of course).

Our scoutmaster was not quite the usual scoutmaster. Like most scout troops, the scoutmaster was the father of one of the boys in the troop, and like most scoutmasters, he was probably somewhat reluctantly recruited.  I'm sure the level of knowledge and commitment varies greatly among scoutmasters, and probably depends a lot on whether or not they volunteered or were somewhat coaxed or coerced into taking the job. I don't know exactly where ours fell among the general ranks of scoutmasters across the country, but I think it was pretty low on the scale. A good example of this was during our one and only weekend camp out and I saw him start a campfire . He made the perfect ring of rocks and inside that he had stacked a perfect, textbook-quality arrangement of firewood just like the official handbook showed in one of its many illustrations.

That's when he deviated from the official scouting handbook.

He got out a can of spray paint, doused the entire arrangement with paint and threw a match into it, creating a nice WHOOSH as that perfect fire began roaring.

I remember that outing taking place some time during he fall because it was kind of cool and wet, with weather that was less than favorable for camping. We had a fancy feast lined up for our Saturday night meal--one that we gleaned from the manual of course. I don't remember if we had to bring the food items with us or the scoutmaster provided them, but the meal consisted of some kind of beef cut into cubes, a potato, and some sort of vegetable. Following the Handbook or the scoutmaster, we each created our own culinary masterpiece, carefully arranged within its own little cocoon of aluminum foil, which we then sealed tightly and placed within the campfire ring. When it was time to eat, I couldn't wait. I was both hungry and excited--knowing that mine would be the best ever! Well, as I recall, most of the food was both scorched and under-cooked, and mine was no exception. I got quite the stomachache from it. I don't remember much else from the outing other than a nature walk, but I do remember being very happy when I got back home to a warm house with good food.