Copied from our Boy Scout manual, 1944
click to enlarge
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We sat cross-legged peering into the fire
with a circle of tents at our back.
Flickering coals spotlighted the face
of the scout whose turn it was to talk.
Sucking on cigarettes, we voted on who
was the raunchiest girl in our class.
then swore on a rusty Swiss Army knife
that none of us would ever get hitched.
We wondered about our mothers and fathers
and swapped notes on our budding sisters.
By the time the sunlight began to trickle
through the treetops, we crawled back into
our tents coughing like cranes and fell
with swollen imaginations into heavy sleep.
"Boy Scouts Camping Out" by Norbert Krapf, from Somewhere in Southern Indiana: Poems of Midwestern Origins. © Time Being Books, 1993.
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This poem from today's Writers Almanac reminds us of our brief affiliation with Troop 2 BSA that met at the Waukesha Methodist Church. We boys were miscreants, evidently. We were seen window peeping in the bush-hidden back windows of the old Town Hall, ahead of a scout meeting. The Town Hall used to be right next to our scout meeting site at the church, on Wisconsin Ave. We naughtily spied into the dressing room where a weekly girls' dance class donned their tutus.
Our scoutmaster had finally had it with our troop, and disbanded us. Thus we only made it 2nd Class Scout. It was probably our first brush with authority. We didn't smoke.....
