Be Prepared

(This piece was written in October of 2006 for a childhood friend with whom I had been in the Boy Scouts.)

BE PREPARED

Those of us in the front lines of male Baby Boomers may well remember our days as budding adolescents, starting around age 11 or 12 concurrent with graduation from the Cub Scouts to the Boy Scouts. By then, I was already somewhat aware of (and stunned by) human origins by “sexual congress,” so I was quite ready for the evil, wonderful ways of the Boy Scouts. There was much more to learn.
I was a member of Troop 141 in Roanoke Rapids, NC, a small industrial cotton- and paper-mill city. Our sponsor was the cotton mill up on the hill above our cinder-block Scout building. More of my close friends were also in the Troop, and the highlight of our scouting experiences were the 8 or 10 camping trips we took each year, winter or summer, supervised by our two long-suffering but quite tolerant Scoutmasters, a retired cotton-mill worker and a city police sergeant, who had also been my Cubmaster.
A few years ago, in a pathetic fit of would-be paternal bonding, the Scout movement decided to include fathers in their sons’ camping adventures, encouraging them to come along and be a “pal” to their sons. One of my friends was complaining about being unable to get together with me on a given weekend as he had to go on a camping trip with his son. I implored him to leave the poor boy alone and let him go on the camping trip without a parental unit on hand to kill the joy. I told him I would have been absolutely mortified if my father had been along on any of my Scout camping trips which, back in the 1950’s, were an opportunity to smoke cigars, throw eggs at cars, tip cows, roll yards with toilet paper (preferably in the rain), throw cans of beans in campfires (for an explosive “event”—never mind the shrapnel) and generally get away with bloody murder while no one was watching. Today’s self-appointed moral authorities are surely to be outraged that such shenanigans happened in the august Boy Scouts, of all places, but they did. I was a witness to history. Had my father been present, it would have been a much more boring time, indeed.
Our Scoutmasters were tolerant in the sense that they did not act like Gestapo, interrogating us about certain “events” and administering punishments, but it was understood that no one was to tempt fate by doing all manner of prohibited conduct in their presences. No point in rubbing it in their faces. I think that both men are now dead, but I honor their memories and will love each of them until I die, even though one could never get my name right. Like most Scouting volunteers, they freely gave of their spare time and efforts without any compensation other than maybe the certainty that they were good role models for each of us and maybe the notion that we were absolutely devoted to them. Having also worked for the Boy Scouts later on, I know something about the multiple differences between the unpaid volunteers and the “pros,” which are considerable.
Anyway, we were an all-southern-white, mostly Christian bunch of boys. We did not know diddly-squat about “diversity.” That word probably didn’t even exist back when I was in the Boy Scouts. We also did not obsess about homosexuals or atheists among our ranks; though we knew of some and made fun of them, we were certainly not fearful of them. It was never mentioned, and the thought that some kids might have been excluded from our tawdry ranks because of somebody else’s decree from on high sounds really stupid. Our rag-tag group was perfectly capable of making anyone’s life miserable by ourselves. I daresay the obnoxious prohibition recently declared by the Boy Scout organization against such folks seems a recent phenomenon contrived by those predatory weenies in short pants and knee socks in high places, those despicable folks who constitute the “pros” referenced earlier, for whom I worked in the Summer of 1970 as a Scout camp waterfront director in New York state.
But, I digress. There are too many wonderful stories to remember from my own Scouting days, and the monstrous wildfire is among them. I mentioned earlier that smoking cigars was one of our favored pastimes. We also bought and consumed many packs of cigarettes as well. The notion of 13-year-olds smoking is abhorrent now, but that is what we did (most of us do not smoke today). Anyway, we were on a camping adventure one weekend and were to set up our army-surplus tents in a field covered in broomsedge, with “alleys” mowed through. Those tents seemed to date from World War II, and they were somewhat water-proofed with a dried, oily residue.
That fair spring Friday afternoon, we fought a huge wind blowing across the field as we struggled to tie down our flapping tents. We had gradually gotten them under control and set up, when all of a sudden, three or four boys exploded from their tent and then, almost simultaneously, the tent exploded in fire! All of us were transfixed as we watched the tent dissolve to ash almost immediately, but we were unprepared for what happened next, as the adjacent broomsedge caught fire, too, and the wind whipped it into a screaming freight-train of pure fire, racing across the field away from our tents (thankfully) and toward some houses in the distance! I have never seen anything so frightening move so quickly.

It took perhaps 30 seconds for the fire to race across at least 100 yards of distance, and it would have likely eaten those houses but for a paved road between them and the field on fire. The wind was so strong there were no fires caught on the sides, and the fire “engine” gave out of gas at the road. Whew!
Needless to say, there was much chagrin and second-guessing about what we had witnessed. It seems that the boys within the tent had lit up some cigarettes, and something therein had caught on fire. The rest is well-known. I suppose we were all lucky that no one got hurt and nothing got destroyed but the old tent and a couple of sleeping bags and some clothes, but I would not trade that fabulous memory for anything.
I cannot finish my recollections without remembrance of “Aunt Creasy” and “Mary Jane Hockaday.” Our Troop’s preferred campsite about 8 miles from town was a wooded area down behind a hunting cabin owned by the family of one of our Troop members. We probably went there 5 or 6 times a year. One of the benefits of longer-term membership in the Troop was the “matriculation” from camping novice to seasoned elder. Aunt Creasy’s rundown shack was further down in a field behind our wooded campsite. The first time I had to go into it was terrifying. I was not even 12 years old yet, and I almost froze to death that winter weekend (or so it seemed) because I did not have a proper sleeping bag, only a borrowed woolen bag-liner, and it was COLD!

Aunt Creasy was reputed to have been a very old former black slave who had lived in the shack prior to her death. The shack was OBVIOUSLY haunted by her restless ghost! Each of us novices was tasked one night to fetch a large stick on the floor inside the shack. There was an old well out in front of the shack, and it had been rigged by one of the older Scouts in the Troop with some sort of remote noisemaker that could be actuated by pulling on a wire from a distance. As I passed the old well, a moaning sound emitted from it, and I was almost paralyzed with pure unadulterated fear. I could barely stumble up to the shack and go into its dark recesses with only a weakening flashlight beam for guidance.
I cautiously entered the shack and pushed on the front door which was barely hanging on one hinge. I knew I could not turn back to certain derisive ridicule and probably the inevitable paddling that the older kids enjoyed administering to the younger ones. (Yes, corporal punishment was frequently administered.) Trash was strewn across the floor everywhere, and the old-shack smell of wood smoke and stale grease and garbage was almost nauseating. I pushed into another room and saw, by the dim glow of my flashlight, the big stick to be retrieved.
As I bent over to pick up the stick, a huge older Scout jumped out from behind a door yelling, grabbed me roughly and scared the living you-know-what out of me! I almost peed in my pants. I swear. I have often wondered, however, if he, too, was somewhat scared, listening to the well moan and waiting for some naïve Tenderfoot to come along looking for the stick. I know, when I later assumed the same role, I was apprehensive about being in that “haunted” shack by myself.

The 10-foot-long sunken grave of Mary Jane Hockaday was across a dirt road from the shack of Aunt Creasy in some woods. We knew her name because it was on the tombstone at the head of the grave. She had died a long time earlier according to the dates also on the stone. It was common practice to tell campfire stories about Mary Jane Hockaday, the monstrous, evil woman 9 feet tall who had gone to an early grave after eating children and dying, etc. It was all totally believable, especially by the solitary glow of a campfire. Again, the task was to retrieve a big stick on the grave, and at the moment of retrieval, an older Scout would jump out from behind a big tree adjacent and grab the hapless novice. It is a wonder there were no heart attacks on those camping trips!
I had to experience the terrifying gauntlets of both Aunt Creasy and Mary Jane Hockaday as a novice Boy Scout, all without the assistance of my father, who would surely have been worthless under the circumstances. It is probably good that he never had to apologize for my terror or cowardice. I am not sure he could have handled it.