Mr. Dale Westman was a Saint.  A Fireman by trade, his calling was to be our Scoutmaster.  He had two sons, Rick was a lot older than me, Denny was a couple of years younger.  They were good guys, and scouts.  Mr. Westman treated us all like his own.  His patience was infinite but he commanded respect.  He never gave up on a kid, ever.  Even if the kid gave up on scouts.  We had some scouts that were rough around the edges.  He made room for everyone.

 

He was a diplomat.  The local Elks Lodge was our sponsor and we put a lot of wear and tear on the building.  Fortunately for us, so did the Elks.  After some of their parties, the place looked like there had been a scout meeting.  The damage was often quite similar.  The main difference was the Elks had booze at their meetings.

 

We had more than a few “cleanup days” at the Elks Lodge, that involved a bit of construction before we cleaned up.  Seems that a couple of the scouts specialized in punching holes in sheetrock.  We figured out who they were because they ended up breaking bones when they happened to hit the sheetrock over a stud.  On cleanup days the scouts with casts on their arms learned how to repair sheetrock.

 

One year the Elks decided to evict the scouts after an incident.  The past Exalted Rulers, quickly quashed the rebellion.  They were the patriarchs of the community and had all been scouts.  They understood.

 

I didn’t know until many years later, but Mr. Westman was often a character witness for scouts who got into trouble.  Mr. Westman and the local authorities plea-bargained more than one kid into the military.  I remember more than one former scout coming out to our camp to talk to Mr. Westman after they made it through basic training. Del G. the local Chief of Police had sons who were scouts.  The Chief was on the committee too.  It was a good thing that the firehouse and the police station shared the same building.

 

“Hey Mr. Westman!”   Was a greeting, a distress call, and sometimes an announcement.  Occasionally it was a plea for mercy.  It was usually shouted by a scout from a distance.  Once and a while it was murmured through tears.  He was always there.

 

Our troop did a 50 mile hike one year.  It was a big deal.  He hiked the whole way with us.  To many of you who are hikers, 50 miles doesn’t sound like much.  It was a very long hike.  Most of the participants were the younger scouts, their packs were too heavy, they didn’t have much scouting experience, but they were determined.  We didn’t have training hikes or shakedowns, like modern scouts; we only had enough resources for the main event.  We were not an affluent community, most of the hikers didn’t have the right shoes, let alone the proper camping gear.  We had plenty of grit.  We did fun stuff, like catch and cook rattlesnakes.  Fifty miles in five days was a lifetime.  We had a few casualties but no regrets.

 

Every year we went to Camp Fleischmann, the main event of the scouting year.  Mr. Westman usually didn’t go.  I don’t think his wife wanted him using up his vacation time.  It was a chance for some of the other adult leaders (parents) to take the helm.  We did cool stuff like snipe hunts, raid other camps, rig snares and set booby traps.  We also did the mundane stuff like hiking, merit badges, swim, canoe and row.  There were always a couple of the adult leaders who developed nervous conditions after a couple of days and had to go home.  I don’t think we ever had a parent go to camp a second time.

 

Arts and crafts were fun.  We did a lot of carving.  We made neckerchief slides and carved faces on hiking sticks.  We got to practice a lot of first aid.  Usually from carving on our fingers with dull pocket knives.

 

There were rites of passage for new scouts; and adult leaders.  Trap them in sleeping bags.  Get them lost at night.  Smoke up their tent while they were asleep, hold the edges down and shout fire.  You learn a lot about adult leaders when there is a snake in their sleeping bag.  Then there were the outhouses…

 

Canned prunes were in the rations, probably for the adults.  The scouts knew better than to eat them.  They ended up hidden in fire pits, and stuffed in the back of our cook stoves.  The hot cans would swell and burst.  The sugary syrup would catch fire and flare up nicely.  Sometimes there was a respectable explosion; the fire would burp out of the stove onto the ground, or the cook, and molten sludge would erupt out of the chimney.  The cooking merit badge developed a new degree of respect.

 

We got to practice first aid for burns too.

 

In those days the camp had a sport that I have never seen anywhere else.  We would take turns climbing to the top of a small fir tree.  As many scouts as possible would grab the trunk whip it back and forth, trying to throw the rider off.  It was great sport as long as you could hold on.  If you lost your grip you could easily be thrown a mile or two.  If you were lucky, you landed in another small fir tree, if not, you hit things like fences, rocks, or manzanita brush.   After a while the tree got so limp it would no longer stand on it’s own.  I wonder if they ever recovered.

 

The adult leaders who went to camp with us returned with a hell of a lot more respect, and a lot less advice, for Mr. Westman.