For reasons that probably won’t interest anyone, I have rejoined the Boy Scouts of America (soon to be renamed Scouting America) as an adult member of troop 66 in Las Cruces.
In order to join, I had to pay dues and various entry fees of more than $100 and take a course called “Youth Protection Training,” which is a good thing these days.
The whole process made me think back about my son’s experiences in scouting and my own Boy Scout memories in Ruidoso years ago.
My son was in Cub Scouts in elementary school when he competed in the “Pinewood Derby,” a gravity powered model car race in which vehicles made from blocks of pine wood must use certain components and weigh a specific amount.
My son Tyler and I purchased a kit and not knowing exactly what was in store, put together a green and red racer that basically looked like a wedge-shaped potato on wheels. We accidentally managed to get the weight exactly right by pouring some lead solder in holes we had drilled in the body of the vehicle and then attached the plastic wheels with nails as axles. The wheels looked a bit wonky and out of alignment, but we figured we’d give it a go.
Before the official race, Tyler lubed up the wheels with powdered graphite, most of which got on his face, making him look like an NFL player before a SuperBowl game.
On the race course, which was about a 10-foot ramp at a 20 degree angle, Tyler’s car zipped down fast and won every heat. On the championship round, his car smoked the competition by an eyelash to win.
We felt we had conjured up the perfect balance of wood, plastic and lead and decided that for next year’s race, we would make an even faster car that would win each heat by huge margins.
It wasn’t to be. We crafted a new silver and red car, festooned it with a spoiler and fancy lead weights that looked like a tuned exhaust system from a Formula 1 car. It looked like the fastest car among the competition. But when it rolled down the ramp, it performed like a Ford Pinto instead of a Ferrari. We didn’t even win the first heat, as I recall.
My recollections of scouting are somewhat foggy, given the many years that have passed since the time I joined Troop 59 in Ruidoso. (Our cheer ended with the incredibly imaginative words “Troop 5-9 — that’s mine.”)
I remember parts of my first overnight camping excursion on the middle fork of the Rio Ruidoso on the Mescalero Apache Reservation. As expected, the older scouts made sure we knew they were in charge. They made us stay up far past our bedtime on a legendary “Snipe Hunt” in which we waved flashlights in front of open pillowcases urging the imaginary birds to run inside so we could capture them. Having heard rumors about such things, we neophytes concluded it was a ruse and quickly gave up.
The worst thing about the trip was that someone squirted something truly putrid in my canteen which I had left outside my tent overnight. When I awakened in the morning, I took an unsuspecting sip and quickly spit it out, gagging afterwards. I have an opinion on what was put in my canteen, but I could never confirm my suspicions. The experience made me always keep my source of water close by my sleeping bag during camping excursions.
What I also remember vividly is when one of our assistant Scout Masters attempted to play the bugle at one of our troop meetings. The adult assistant, Elmer Pirelli, was widely known as the town drunk. He had lost a one or two front teeth over the years from excessive drinking or in bar fights. As a former trumpet player, I can tell you that your front teeth are a necessary for producing nice sounds from the musical instrument.
That fact that he was missing important teeth didn’t seem to deter Elmer. He placed the trumpet on his lips, inflated his cheeks and then blew through the mouthpiece, producing a flatulent sound like a sputtering Cushman motor scooter without a muffler.
I’m not sure what tune he was attempting to play, but it certainly didn’t sound like taps that we hoped would end his bugling career.
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