Peace Eagle

c2022 B.L.Greene   

  I see the two words and delete the email instantly.  It's come to that.  I don't want to be bothered with false narratives or dubious statistics.  What do they want anyway? Funny how something once so benign can evoke such a response.  But the news is out, and the scandal is documented.  The American Dream has taken another direct hit.  The Boy Scouts of America have become tarnished.

    Like the Catholic church, the workplace, the military, and the teacher's lounge, Scouting is the latest victim to succumb to charges of sexual abuse.  Over 80,000 documented cases in a class-action lawsuit have resulted in bankruptcy. Reality has a way of catching up.  Those uniforms, kerchiefs, merit badge sashes, and even the insignia seem forever tainted.

    I see the email vanish abruptly and that image dissolves into a multi-image collage in my mind.  A red coffee can, a ten-dollar bill, a kid's Zebco fishing pole with a built-in reel, and Boy's Life magazine. My disgust momentarily yields to memories...pleasant memories.

    Back in the late 1950s as a 12-year-old, I became an Eagle Scout.  That's why the emails keep coming.  They want me to have my name included in some vanity publication that lists those with this prestigious distinction.  I'll have none of it.  I hardly want to be associated with the organization now.  

    Yet, I  recall only good things from that time in my life.  My experience as a Boy Scout was anything but traumatic; it was, in fact, atypical.  Troop 201 and its Scout leaders were fiercely independent.  Our Scoutmaster wanted a different experience for the little rag-tag group that met weekly in the auditorium of Camelia Avenue School.  It was not uncommon to see an LAPD  black and white outside the auditorium. Don E. was an LA cop with the patience of a saint and a love of the outdoors.  He elicited respect just by smiling and he was revered by the Beaver Patrol, of which I was a member.  

    Don had secured the donation of an old Telephone Company stake truck that was our primary means of transportation.  No "Official Boy Scout" camps for us, we spent our summers camping in Kings Canyon or at Bass Lake.  There were shorter weekend trips to places with names like Cottonwood Flats or _____. On camping trip days, all the gear was piled in first, with room left for the little window that enabled those in the cab to see into the back of the truck.  What they saw was a dozen 10-12 year-olds sitting against the stakes, trying to stay in one spot, especially on mountain roads.  There were plastic bags for car sickness and a smattering of food scraps, mostly chips and candy wrappers.  One or two of us had small pillows. We began singing songs like  "100 bottles of beer on the wall," and an off-color ditty that began with the line, "Three Irishmen, three Irishmen, were digging in a ditch...one called the other a dirty..."That lasted all of 30 minutes and then most of us tried to sleep or sightsee without getting nauseous. Those were long, often dismal rides, but the reward came with the arrival in a National Forest and visions of hiking, fishing, and on occasion, kayaking.  

    The summer trips were an entire week long, but It took hours dragging my Radio Flyer wagon through the nearby neighborhoods before anybody pitched a tent. Piled high with boxes of Martino"s do-nuts at 65 cents a dozen, we'd plead our case. "Want to send a Boy Scout to camp?"  We often sold out. Each camper was allowed some spending money as well.   For a pre-teen in 1960. $10.00 was a fortune.  With soft drinks at a quarter, nickel candy bars, and kayak rental for a dollar an hour, we were living large.

    Troop 201 rivaled any Our Gang cast in personalities.  There was Tommy D, one of the oldest and biggest. Tommy was a ruddy-faced, heavy-set kid that made the thickest pancakes I ever saw.  He was gentle with the younger guys and willing to share and teach his considerable skill-set.  Jeffery was nick-named the "Pardon Me, Kid." That moniker came one day when we were all scampering down a slippery mountainside.  When Jeffery accidentally bumped into another kid he immediately responded, "pardon me."  Jimmy was quick to respond, "who says pardon me when you are careening down a mountain?" Jeffery simply reflected his upbringing with an English father and an American mother.  The name stuck.  Dale and Dean were not-so-identical twins whose father, Buck, was an Assistant Scoutmaster. Dean was mentally challenged and though Dale was close, he couldn't always be around to meet Dean's needs.  The entire troop was aware of Dean's disabilities and often served to fill in when any sort of intervention was required.  Dean, like his brother Dale, was dauntless, never shying from any opportunity to explore, take a risk, or simply enjoy being outdoors.  He could always be found in the truck or in his tent with an old red Hills Brothers coffee can.  His mom always baked a chocolate cake for him in that can when he went camping.  Dean held that coffee can close like an emotional support animal.  A bent silver spoon fit neatly over the rim of the can ready to help him enjoy this special treat.

    I think again about the deleted email and wonder how many vulnerable young boys could be impacted.  Am I missing something?  Could there have been an untold history in my own Boy Scout universe?  Nothing ever surfaced. I conclude that my experience was as I recall.  Troop 201 was scouting as it should be. There was never any pressure for anyone to do anything they were unsure of or to work up the ranks from Tenderfoot to Eagle.  Once in a while, we would attend sanctioned events that saw competition between various Troops from all over the state.  Usually, the completion was skill-based and involved knot-tying, or bridge building, or various camping skills like fire-building, and food storage.  Patrols were awarded either a blue, red, or white bead depending on how well they performed.  The blue beads were coveted and took real expertise.  My patrol usually sported a string of white beads, with a red one here and there.  But there was always one blue bead we prominently displayed on top.  That bead was awarded to us for the one event we knew we could do well: cooking.  The task was to build a fire and then cook one perfect pancake.  We worked as one to get the perfect cooking fire and then pour the batter into an old iron frying pan.  The decisive moment came when deciding when to turn the pancake.  We knew all about the 32 bubble rule, but that was often misleading depending on the size of the pancake.  This was our one chance for a blue bead and we all had to agree on when to turn the bubbling pancake.  When all had nodded, the deed was done, revealing an enormous golden brown pancake that Martha Stewart would envy.

    The image of that turned pancake being revealed makes me laugh all these years later.  My anger and frustration seem to have melted away, for the moment with these pleasant memories.  Hopefully, there are many more former Bay Scouts who identify with my experience than with those unfortunate victims of sexual abuse.  Still, the organization may not recover.  Maybe that's a good thing. I see where troops today contain girls and women......

    By the time I reached middle school, my time in the Bay Scouts ended.  My neighborhood friend Randy and I had reached Eagle just before he moved away.  I could not have accomplished earning those 24 merit badges without him.  His mom deserves the credit too, chauffeuring us to merit badge counselors and all the weekly meetings.  With high school came new challenges and new friends.  Getting a driver's license soon replaced any interest in merit badges.  

It occurred to me that even after I achieved the rank of Eagle, I never had the opportunity to wear the sash with all the merit badges displayed.  While I did receive the sterling silver Eagle medal, I never wore it anywhere.  By the late 1960s , U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War forces me to rethink all things red, white, and blue.  After a close high school friend was killed in Vietnam, I took that medal and replaced the eagle with a peace symbol one day.  It remained in my top drawer for decades that way, until I restored it to it's original appearance some 60 years later.  

Shortly before I retired from full-time teaching, one of my students had achieved the rank of Eagle and invited me to his Court of Honor ceremony.  I was advised I could wear my medal and would sit in an area reserved for Eagle Scouts.  When I mentioned that to one of my last classes, another student, Saku, mentioned that he was soon to achieve the distinction of Eagle Scout.  He stayed after class that day as he was curious about my scouting experience.  We exchanged a few stories and I mentioned that there was one thing I felt I'd left unfinished.  I told him that I first learned how to fish in the scouts and that as an adult, years later when I took up the sport of fly fishing, I often recalled my first attempts at learning the sport.  "I never earned a fishing merit badge, I told him.  I'm sure I must have completed all the requirements many times over, as I learned to tie flys, and have caught five or six species of fish over the years.  

A week later, on graduation evening, as I was giving out hugs and handshakes, Sake approached me.  I held out my hand to shake his and in it he deposited a small, soft object: one fishing merit badge.