Curry Boy Scout Family Tree

nearby Camp Guyasuta.  Temperature around 15 degrees. Around 12-15 scouts and 6 adults on an overnight camping trip in tents.  Steep valley provides good sledding and tubing down the slopes.  Great fun for the scouts.

All tents were up and dinner preparations under way. Scouts had things under control. Adults were in a separate area and preparing own meal.  One adult had not shown up by dinner time and we were almost ready to execute plan B. – Pizza from nearby Sharpsburg. But shortly before the pizza run, our missing partner, Rip, showed up with the main course- delicious ribeye steaks! We started the fire, baked potatoes on, and salad tossed.  And then the surprise, some Cabernet.  We knew that was a No no but it was soooooo cold.   And the scouts were doing their thing in their camp. 

Then we started on tossed salad – ooops- frozen lettuce. Had to put lid on salad to keep from freezing.  The potatoes finally baked and the steaks were rare but delicious.  

After cleanup and some campfire activity, we prepared to sack out.  Rip, our missing steak man was my tent mate.   I had an air mattress and sleeping bag from my scout days. We squeezed into the pup tent to try to sleep.  The air mattress leaked and I met the cold hard ground in about 10 minutes.  The sleeping bag had no insulation in the lower part of the bag so my feet froze immediately.  And to top it off, Rip really snored.  

The scouts had a great time!

With children in grade school, it was a great time to be involved in working with the Cub Scout program.  Bay Village, a Cleveland suburb, was the model town.  A large soft ball program was run by the Cub Scouts and of course the kids wanted to play.  And the only requirement was to be in the Cub Scout program.  As a Webelos leader, I also volunteered as an umpire,  amazing fun, trying to sort out who was out when there were 3 players on second base.  

The cub pack had over 60 kids and lots of adult volunteers.  The Cubmaster, Bill Fierbaugh, was great at getting the kids motivated and cheering and entertaining the cubs (and the parents). Unfortunately the “fireball”, as he was nicknamed, was transferred and left a big hole in the leadership.  After discussion, I was drafted and held the position for another year or so as our boys were moving on to the equally active Boy Scout program. A memorable part of the scout troop was OMAR, a school bus which was modified to handle the large number of Scouts and their gear on the many camping trips.  

A grand experience. 

in a provisional troop after my own troop’s two weeks were over. I remember my tent mate, Melvin Jung. We were both pretty savvy Scouts and weren’ t bashful about showing it. At the end of each week there was the “Delmont Olympics” where troops competed against each other in a variety of skills from swimming to nature to turtle races, and so forth. Our provisional troop was a (too) frequent winner based on the skills of the Scouts who spent the summer at camp. In fact, with just the points that Melvin and I collected, our combined scores sometimes exceeded any of the competing troops. We were complimented by the staff, but nicely asked to allow others to win.

in our cots listening to hear a skunk come to sample the snack we left behind the tent, so we could carefully follow it and catch it. If you could grab a skunk’s tail and pick it up, once the hind feet were off the ground, it couldn’t spray you. And that took some skill. After staying up late several nights in a row, with no skunk visiting, we came up with a “better” plan. We got ourselves half of a hoagie (how is another story), placed it on the floorboards of our tent between our cots, and surrounded it by Coke bottles. Our theory was that a skunk would come into the tent, knock over the bottles which would wake us up, one of us would lean over from our cot and grab the tail and lift it up – voila, we would have us a skunk. The rest of the story: The plan worked to an extent. The hoagie attracted not only one but two skunks entered our tent, knocked over the bottles and got into a squabble with each other; and yes, they both sprayed and ran. Melvin and I were not very popular for about a week 🙂