THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 9, 1995 TAG: 9504070228
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Random Rambles
SOURCE: Tony Stein
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
I am here today to report happily that some things do not change. Like at the Boy Scout campground I visited last weekend.
In 1941, when I became a Scout, if an adult leader held up three fingers, he wanted respectful silence. He got it immediately. Last weekend, I watched adult leaders hold up three fingers and get the same respectful silence. Forget that 1995 kids are living in a world that 1942 kids never dreamed of. Boy Scout basics span any generation gap you ever saw.
The campground was at Naval Security Group Activity Northwest at the southern end of Chesapeake, where galloping suburbia hasn't infected the boondocks yet. The kids were from the PAVAB District of Virginia Beach, about 1,000 of them, Boy Scouts and their younger cousins, Cub Scouts.
The last time I went Boy Scout camping, it rained hard enough to send a message to Noah. These kids were lucky. It was beautiful and sunny and colorful. Surprisingly colorful. The Northwest woods blazed with green tents, purple tents, red, orange, gray, yellow and blue tents. A regular rainbow of hues instead of the drab canvas of my Scouting days.
Another switch from my era was the presence of women at the campground. Back in '41, if a female set foot on our turf, we bellowed, ``SNAKE!'' in aggravated adolescent alarm. In '95, I talked to Kathryn Ness, assistant leader of Cub Pack 364. Her son, Eliot (no kidding, Eliot Ness), was a Cub. You know how kids squirm when they're hanging out with other kids and their parents show up, so Mom said she tried hard to be cool.
I wished I could have stayed for dinner, which was going to be baked chicken. No time, but Bill Sandstrum, leader of the pack, gave me a recipe for my next breakfast in the wild. It's wagon wheel sausage. Arrange link sausage like spokes of a wheel. Cover the sausage with two boxes of corn meal mix and about a pound of diced apples. Bake for half an hour. Pour on the syrup and enjoy and eat your heart out, Julia Child.
Northwest being a Navy facility with some classified communications doings, they weren't about to let a reporter roam free. Not even a geezer who would probably forget the secret code before he got back to the gate. That's why I had an escort, a nice young guy named Lt. Scott Minke. He can vouch for the fact that, 53 years after I failed completely, I finally learned to tie the knot called a bowline.
Chris Haddon taught me. He's a member of Troop 375 and an instructor at a knot-tying class. He handed me a cord, showed me one time and. . . I did it!. I meant to ask Chris about a knot called the trucker's hitch, but Chris was too busy with his class. Just as well. I was a Boy Scout so long ago that the trucker's hitch was probably called the ox cart hitch.
Over at the Troop 902 camp, Scoutmaster Mike Jones assured me that campfire skits are just as corny as they ever were. Like when one kid gets down and says he's a lawn mower. A couple of kids pull an imaginary starting rope but the ``engine'' sputters out. The last kid yanks mightily and the ``mower'' starts. Punch line: ``All it takes to start the mower is a big enough jerk.''
Troop 902 also boasted the man with the greatest hat I have seen in years. It was the kind they call a Smokey Bear hat these days, and it used to be a standard part of the Scout uniform. The one I saw was on Kermit Wood, a youngster of 75, who has been wearing the hat since he bought it in 1932. He's a leader of Troop 902 and teaches the kids outdoor lore.
He was also a lesson to me about how the values Scouting represents linger through the years. I talked about them with David Davies, the Scouting professional in charge of the PAVAB District.
Davies quoted what he called a long-time saying: ``The country is returning to the values that Scouting never left.'' I think of those values as the good stuff kids learn about integrity and responsibility and self-reliance and teamwork. In a society where there are so many broken families, Davies pointed out that kids in Scout units are given a sense of belonging they may find nowhere else.
Another Scout leader, Joann West, said that at the same time Scouting boosts self-esteem, it levels inflated egos. In Scout uniforms, she said, differences disappear. All kids are equal.
It was great to know that Scouting still has a grip on the hearts and minds of a lot of kids and dedicated adults. I did get to thinking about a problem, though.
I told you that when we saw a female on the campground in 1942, we yelled ``Snake!'' For the life of me, I can't remember what we yelled when we saw a snake. by CNB