My first official boy Scout Camping trip was in the fall of 1963 or 1964.\u00a0 I was probably working on the rank of tenderfoot.<\/p>\n
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The outing was memorable for three reasons; it was my first overnight with the scouts, the biscuit scandal, and my fight with Jim.<\/p>\n
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We were at a Forest Service campground not far from our small town.\u00a0 Since it was public, we shared the campground with a number of civilian campers.\u00a0 We quickly learned this was a mistake.\u00a0 No good could come from any fraternization, even incidental.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Deer hunting season was coming soon and many of the campers were hunters from out of the area.\u00a0 They were conducting reconnaissance missions; learning the lay of the land, finding game and locating sources of supply for groceries, liquor, and ammunition.<\/p>\n
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Most of the civilians were pretty well off compared to us.\u00a0 They had RV\u2019s, fancy trucks, new gear and a selection of off road vehicles.\u00a0 We had army surplus camping gear and hunted in old pickup trucks with our fathers while getting firewood for the winter.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The first morning my friend Rich and I had breakfast duty.\u00a0 We were assigned to make biscuits.\u00a0 We made a great bowl of Bisquick batter, and dolloped it out on a large cookie sheet.\u00a0 As we were walking over to the reflector oven to bake them, I tripped,\u00a0 dropping the raw biscuits in the pine needles and dirt.\u00a0 Our Patrol Leader came by, told us to get rid of the mess and whip up another batch.\u00a0 We had plenty of fixings.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It was still dark, and we could not see well.\u00a0 Rich and I scooped up the dirty dough and decided to throw it in the bushes rather than wander around looking for a garbage can.\u00a0 The bears would find it later.\u00a0 We heard the sickening thump of the projectiles landing on sheet metal. We crept around the brush and found a civilian campsite on the other side of the bushes.\u00a0 A great wad of sticky, dirty dough was in the middle of the hood on a new four wheel drive truck.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We crept over to wipe it off.\u00a0 All we managed to do was to smear the mass over the hood and grille of the vehicle.\u00a0 The situation had gone from bad to worse.\u00a0 Before we could figure what to do we had to retreat, the civilians were getting up.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We ran back to the camp, started on the next batch; and waited for hell to break loose.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jim was a new kid in town, my age and seemed to be a fairly decent guy.\u00a0 He moved a lot because of his dad\u2019s job.\u00a0 Jim didn\u2019t really know anybody and was trying to fit in, however he could. \u00a0 He had been showing off a bit on the camping trip.\u00a0 While Rich and I were cooking biscuits, he decided to show everyone how tough he was.\u00a0 I was a little smaller than he was and he to picked me as the goat.\u00a0 He started boxing my ears and I told him to knock it off.\u00a0 The gauntlet was thrown.\u00a0 We were starting to draw an audience.\u00a0 I had a pair of pliers in my hand to move the biscuit pan in the hot oven. \u00a0Jim had the advantage of size so I had to improvise.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I quickly reached out with the pliers and got a finger.\u00a0 He was quickly on his knees bawling in undignified surrender.\u00a0 I really wasn\u2019t going to remove the finger but he wasn\u2019t sure. \u00a0 After ensuring that Jim was past any attempt at retaliation, I let him go.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After that morning, the older scouts didn\u2019t seem to haze me as much.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jim and I ultimately came to be on friendly terms.\u00a0 He never again tried to bully me, but did occasionally show a mean streak.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the gods had been smiling over the biscuit dough.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t discovered until\u00a0 the next day when we were breaking camp.\u00a0 There was a lot of loud talk about vandalism from next door but Mr. Westman and one of the adult leaders, a minister, went over and somehow managed a reconciliation.\u00a0 The perpetrators were never identified.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
On the way home our patrol leader winked at Rich and I and complimented us on our camp biscuits.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My first official boy Scout Camping trip was in the fall of 1963 or 1964.\u00a0 I was probably working on the rank of tenderfoot. The outing was memorable for three reasons; it was my first overnight with the scouts, the biscuit scandal, and my fight with Jim. We were at a Forest Service […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":340,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions\/340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}