Gadzooks and a hardy har har to all. My shoes smell of something vile right now; something that should be thrown off a tall bridge and into a deep ocean while being pulled to the bottom by a cartoonish one ton anvil. Today I shall reminisce as my nerves show signs of needing to relax after my right hand began to shake for no particular reason while I ate lunch today. Could this be the strain of finals pushing me to a mental breaking point? Nope. I have only one and if I ever let college push me to such a point I will run, or walk, to someplace better. But these are good times, as Dan Bryan stated in his wonderful article from last week, and I will now reek of nostalgia while talking about one of my favorite periods in my past: being a member of Boy Scout Troop 510.
Boy Scouts are the butts of many terrible, and on rare occasion humorous, homosexual jokes. My time going to Troop 510 meetings in the American Legion on the corner of East 57 Street in Brooklyn was high on humor, but short on homosexuality. Actually there was the time when Brett attempted to turn cooking hot dogs on an open fire into a strange story of betrayal and homosexual incest, but these moments were rare. Many think that Boy Scout troops are filled with geeks who have nothing to do on Friday nights; this is true, but the geeks of Troop 510 tended to have a good time.
Entering the troop in the spring of 1994, I knew some of the members already because they were friends from Cub Scouts entering into Boy Scouts that year, or guys I'd met years earlier when they were Cub Scouts. My older brother had also been a member of 510 for a few years by the time I joined. Our first trip was to Boston and—like most of my time in 510—brings back only entertaining memories. We spent an entire weekend running around in the woods surrounding our cabin or walking Boston's Freedom Trail.
The peak moment of the trip came when the older scouts gathered all the new scouts for our "initiation." We were told to meet them at a location a few hundred yards away from the cabin where they attempted to ambush us while wearing a variety of crappy rubber masks left over from Halloween. The only problem was the masks aren't known for their high visibility and most of the older scouts ran into each other, fell into bushes, or in my older brother's case, sprinted head first into a tree and knocked themselves out. Looking back at these times I remember the youthful innocence of being able to go on trips away from home for a brief time and act like buffoons. I will also always remember the car rides.
One of the saddest moments of my life came the day my Scout Master informed me that he was finally sending his van off to the junkyard. If I were only old enough to drive and rich enough to pay the insurance I'd probably still be driving the monster today. The van had many highlights: wooden panels covering the interior which fell off after hitting a pothole, a fan that never worked, a radio that worked only when it was in the mood, a removable middle seat that was simply a folding chair with a bungee cord for a seatbelt, and the Grateful Dead sticker on the dashboard.
This car is the most disgustingly beautiful thing I've seen in my entire life. Honorable mentions go to Mr. O.'s Oldsmobile, or more specifically the back seat on the driver's side where a poor scout would spend an entire ride being hit in the face by the ashes and smoke of one of his cigars, and Jay's custom Camaro with the leather seats and the megaphone on top that allowed Jay to scream "Brett's a dick!" for 15 miles on I-81. These cars and many others drove Boy Scouts to many different locations, but none more entertaining than Twin Oaks Campground in Middleburgh, New York.
Twin Oaks had been the traditional location of Troop 510's summer camp for many years by the time I visited in 1994. Middleburgh seems a bit desolate town to those coming from New York City, but has that rural charm one misses when living surrounded by bright lights and tall buildings. Twin Oaks was not an official Boy Scout campground. Actually, I think we were the only scout troop that used it as a campground. The other inhabitants were regular folk who kept trailers for the entire summer, or slept in tents for a brief weekend get-away. The camp consisted of the owners' home, a basketball hoop with a crooked rim, a pavilion containing a pool table and jukebox (containing the Right Said Fred song "I'm Too Sexy" in English and Spanish), and the previously mentioned trailers. One would also find Troop 510 camped out way back in the woods in mid-July.
The set-up for Troop 510 rarely changed while I was a scout. There would be a large tent where the adults would reside, a tent for the kitchen and the adults' dinner table, smaller tents set up sporadically by the scouts, two tables for the scouts' meals, and the dreaded K.P. Table. K.P. stands for Kitchen Patrol, easily the worst job of summer camp, especially on chili night. Good times happened down by the lake. During the day, we would swim, row boats or canoes, and generally attempt not to drown ourselves.
Night time at Twin Oaks consisted of many games of basketball and billiards, listening to the odd variety of songs played on the radio (example: "Another Brick in the Wall" by Pink Floyd, followed by "Jump" by Kriss Kross), and the usual conclusion of the troop stargazing. Stargazing in the middle of nowhere for a group of city kids is a bit of a shock because at home the NYC skyline tends to block out all but the brightest stars, but at Twin Oaks were all amazed by the true mass of stars, planets, shooting stars, and "My God is that a bat!" that fill up the nighttime sky, and the always entertaining tales of Scout Master Anthony. Anthony had been a member of Troop 510 as a scout and later scout master for over 25 years so he had an unlimited number of stories about scouting to tell. As a child of the 1970s, he also had ridiculous knowledge and number of stories on Rock and Roll—especially the Who and Grateful Dead—that always kept me entertained.
Last year I went with some college friends to a site in my Boy Scout past when we traveled to the Hickory Run State Park Stone Trail. The last time I visited the place I was eleven years-old hiking the trail with a group of guys wearing a Beavis and Butthead tee-shirt. When I went last year, I was nineteen years-old, wearing the famous big wooly sweater, and accompanied by members of the female gender as well. Then I had spent the entire time provoking and running from the wrath of Brian C.; this time I spent the entire time doing the same actions, but with Rob. It was interesting to visit a place I had not been to since I was a scout, remember the good times I'd had there in the past with scouts, and enjoy the time I was having with a different group of people.
What I've written here is the clichéd "tip of the iceberg" of my time in the Boy Scouts of America. There are many other specific events and people who were a part of the fun times I had in Troop 510 when I was a bit younger. What I enjoy most about reflecting on my time in Scouts is I tend to remember only the good times I had while scouting, most especially the times I laughed, and any bad times have all but faded away. Now I leave you with a deep and meaningful question of life that Joey G. constantly tried to have answered during our years in Boy Scouts: "Where's my snack-pack?!" If you know the answer, please inform me and I will send it over to Joseph so the poor bastard can finally be happy.