Boy Scouts




My brother and I were both in the Boy Scouts.  While today there is much controversy concerning the scouts, in the 80's it was a great time to be a scout.  There was a handy group of us who were friends at school.  There are a multitude of reasons for our friend group to have been established.  One factor was brothers.  Two of the boys in our class had brothers two grades ahead of us.  It was a very different time.  The cold war with Russia recently ended.  The Wall in Germany had just fell.  and the Original Red Dawn movie had been released.  It was also a time when people had real civic and national pride in the US.  Nothing like the turmoil of today.  The "progressive screamers" were there, but as a nation, we were still adjusting to the new world organization with our main enemy since WWII falling apart.  Here are a couple of books about that time, the wall, and Russia breaking up.



Big hair bands, communist conspiracy theories, survivalists, the fall out of the 70's drug era, cheesy sitcoms, rednecks, making fun of racists, dealing with the real problems of the nation in congress instead of creating them.  Although, I suspect congress has been creating most of the problems the American Citizen faces for centuries.  But I digress.

Our Troup of Boy Scouts was led by none other than our band director from school.  There were only a couple of us who were not in both programs.  Our Scout Master was the quintessential nerd.  He knew it, we knew it, and we loved him all the more.  Do not read into this.  He was not the stereotypical Scout Master portrayed today.  He was genuinely concerned and involved with real scouting.  Growth and development of young men willing and ready to positively contribute to society, and also to be able to care for ourselves and our families if the time ever came.  My book looked like this, but there are new versions out there.


One summer we took a canoe trip down the Sabine River in Texas.  This was one of the trips our father took with us. We launched from a public boat ramp just south of Longview on a Friday afternoon, and the plan was to spend two days on the river, camping, bush crafting, honing our knife skills in survival, and in general experience nature.  It was very hot, humid and at times overbearing.  But as boys will be boys, we cooled off the best we could by jumping into the water with the snakes, water spiders, fish and other water creatures.  It was an amazing experience. 



I think the most memorable experience was with a "ramming" experience.  One of the boys saw a branch sticking out of the water at an angle.  He decided to steer their canoe into the branch to try and break it off or push it under.  I remember hearing one of them yell, "Watch this, we are going to ram it!".  And ram it they did. As they hit the branch, their canoe started a sideways roll, dumping them, their gear and their groups cooler full of food into the water.  We were in a deep area and only the canoe was recovered.  That night was filled with laughter and aggravation as we divided up the remaining food between the entire group.  No one went to be hungry, but we all agreed the loss was really stupid.  We all had a really good time that first night none the less.  We slept in two man tents and cooked over open fires.  Following Scout teachings to ensure we left our campsites better off than we found them.



Mid-morning as we passed under a highway overpass, we were hailed by the local sheriff's department.  Our grandfather had passed away, and my father, brother. and I had to head home early.  It was a sad time.  Our grandfather had suffered from Parkinsons disease for as long as I could remember.  He finally succumbed to the ravages of it.  More on this in my next post.  


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