The Joy of Scouting an Adventure at the Campfire

In the late 1960's my home town, Oakdale, LA, boomed with activity. Industries that depended on the surrounding pine and hardwood forest for raw materials thrived around us. One of these industries depended on the pine stumps that littered the south.

After clear cutting the virgin forest in the late 19th and early 20th century, these huge, rosin laden stumps were left. These were collected in mountainous piles and the sap extracted and made into different chemical products for the American consumer. The picture below shows barrels of naval stores, pine rosin, waiting for shipment to processing plants around the country.

I had a friend, that was not only a classmate but a fellow Boy Scout. His father was the manager of the chemical plant.

This kid was my hero, on account of being fearless. He cared little of the consequences of a thing. If the thing sounded like fun, he did it, and with the charm and the dimples to get completely out of trouble, or at least mitigate the punishment. If you happened to be involved in such a "thing" with him, there was no better friend or ally than Donny. He was famous too! Famous, among our little group of delinquents, because he was the only boy with the distinction of shocking his mom so bad she swooned!

Once, he and his brother experienced an unfortunate accident involving bicycle spokes and a bare foot.

His brother rushed into the kitchen one day screaming bloody murder. His mom was busy trying to keep the injured party from bleeding all over her clean floor when Donny rushed in too...... I imagine the conversation went something like this.

"Quit hopping around! You're bleeding all over the place!"

Moms of young boys have been conditioned by age 10 to expect a few cuts and bruises. The best way to assess the patient is to stay calm and try to get the story from the sobbing victim while applying direct pressure to the wound.

She occupied herself bringing calm to the chaos, but Donny kept pestering her.

" Mom!"

"Not now Donny I'm busy."

"But MOM!" "Not NOW Donny!"

"BUT MOMMMM!"

"WHAT, for heavens sake?"

"You might need this," he says and drops his brother's amputated pinky toe into her outstretched hand.

Yeah, she went out like a light! I think two members of his family got transported to the ER that day.

One day, Donny and I were playing in the toxic waste dump that belonged to the plant his father managed.

Yeah, you could do that in the 1960's. I don't know why we haven't come down with the big C but as far as I know we are both healthy.

We found these round boxes, similar to small hat boxes, filled with rosin samples. Of course, we took a few home with us. We discovered, quite by accident, because we were't allowed to play with matches, if you pounded this rosin into powder and threw it on an open flame the effect was impressive.

That weekend we had a Boy Scout camp out and we planned to take an ample supply of our "Fire Powder" to impress our friends.

The routine of these events went something like this. All the scouts and their gear arrived at the parking lot of the local Methodist Church. We kissed our parents goodbye, then were transferred into the care of the responsible adult volunteers. We loaded our gear, and left as a caravan of rusted out pickup trucks and family cars. About 30 minutes and 20 miles later we arrived at a well used camping area provided by a local timber company .

A small patch of improved land off the highway was the campsite. The timber company had built a small pavilion and supplied picnic tables and fire pits for the public to use at their leisure.

In no time we had our tents erected and fire wood gathered for the campfire.

We divided into groups according to our ranks and were assigned a tent. There were four or five of us 1st Class scouts, and we endured an afternoon of tedious instruction on first aid.

We cooked "foil packs" for our evening meal.

These are a common thing in the Boy Scout world and consist of ground meat, potatoes, carrots, onions, and whatnot, arranged on a sheet of aluminum foil, seasoned to perfection, sealed tightly and placed on the fire to become charcoal.

A good scout could usually salvage a piece of charred carrot and perhaps three kernels of corn if lucky. The meal finished with a course of moon pie and a can of warm Coca-Cola.

After supper we had some time to play. A skit was required of each group, and was performed at the evening camp fire. We planned one as well.

We gathered in our tent and came up with an idea. Donny and I told the rest of our group about our secret "Fire Powder" and we came up with a skit including the use of it.

The plan involved an Indian dance around the fire while Donny occasionally called out to the Great Spirit. "Oh, Great Spirit," hear us," or some such dribble! We pleaded for divine guidance, on account of our imagined upcoming buffalo hunt.

Each boy would fill his hands from our supply of "Fire Powder" and at the appropriate time we would all stop, raise a final plea, then we would simultaneously throw the powdered rosin into the flames!

Luckily, I had a small accident, involving a broken beer bottle and my ankle, requiring a trip into town for a few stitches.

I actually wasn't too disappointed about missing out on the skit, because Donny was determined to use me as a guinea pig to test his newly acquired first aid skills.

I learned afterward the skit went better than we had expected. It certainly impressed our friends and our leaders too, although in a somewhat more negative fashion. Our little group was confined to quarters after this unfortunate turn of events.

A small amount of "Fire Powder" was all one required for a splendid demonstration. Eight handfuls were comparable to test firing a Saturn V rocket booster. They say, the after effect produced a mushroom cloud that hung over the campsite for 45 minutes. I know this for a fact, on account of I saw it in the moonlight on the trip back from the ER. I remember wondering why someone would burn tires so late in the evening.

My tent mates gave me up, so I shared responsibility for bringing this volatile substance to the event. I remember this chewing out well!

Mr. DC (our Scout Master) yelled something like, "WHAT POSSESSED YOU BOYS TO BRING GUNPOWDER TO A CAMPOUT???"

We were sent to "The Tent of Shame", to think about the consequences of our despicable, un-scoutly, behavior. What a sad group of boys we were.

Anyway, Donny cheered everyone up when he shared a few choice four letter words he had learned from the adults during the recent "evacuation". We added these to our growing list of profanity. The kid could always find a silver lining!

We took orders for 16 pounds of "Fire Powder" at 50 cents a pound the next morning. We were rich!

We planned an IPO for the following week and dreamed of red Lamborghinis in our futures.

Unfortunately, adults have the bad habit of sharing information with each other.

My father seized the assets of our burgeoning business and we had to refund the deposits our customers had paid.

We failed miserably as entrepreneurs.

I hope you enjoyed this little tale, it is based on true events but of course didn't happen exactly as written. Writers tend to jazz things up with lies, uh, artistic license.

I welcome your comments, Thanks for reading and,

Carry On!

Photos: 1,3,4,5and 6 courtesy of Upslash.com free photos

Photo 2 is the property of the author