Last time you said you have more to say about Boy Scouts.
Right. First let me show you again the photo of the three of us.
Remember, that was George, Jack, and me. George was our patrol leader.
Patrol?
Funny you should ask. Just so happens I saved my insignia. Look at these.
Would you believe I still have these?
What are they?
I wore them on my uniform. At the top is my town. Then, within Baldwin, we were in Troop 122. And, within that troop, we were in the Flaming Arrow Patrol.
I see.
I wish I could say I still have my Scout Handbook. But somehow that got lost.
Along with your baseball cards?
Hey. Don’t rub it in. But guess what. I found a picture of the book I had. I recognized the cover right away and, when I checked the date, that confirmed it. 1943. That was the one.
It was a handy little book. Wish I still had it. A lot of useful info. Here’s two pages from a later edition.
Now here’s a recollection for you. Remember how I told you about meat rationing during the war?
Yes.
Well, it was the day before rationing started, I think. Cooking was one of the tests we had to pass to be a Scout. And I remember that I cooked beef shish kabob That would soon be hard to do with meat rationing.
Anyway, first we had to start a fire with flint and steel.
That’s not me, but you get the idea. Then, when I got the fire going …
… I cooked the shish kabob over it. I speared the beef pieces on wooden sticks — not on metal skewers, as in this picture.
I had maybe two skewers and, by the time the scoutmaster and other troop leaders helped themselves, I wound up with only a couple of pieces of beef. But, hey, I passed the test.
Good.
Now, if I may, I’d like to blow my own horn a little.
In what way?
Well, in addition to cooking, we learned a lot of other skills. Knot-tieing, for instance.
And how to use a compass.
And then there was Morse Code. Remember that? With the dots and dashes?
Yes, I recall that.
Seems funny now. With cellphones and all the modern ways to communicate. But back when I was in Scouts it was big.
I guess.
Well, of course all of us in Troop 122 practiced it at meetings. We would connect two signalers with wires and send and receive code.
But when we had competition between troops, each troop would pick one pair of Scouts to represent it. One would send and the other receive and decode the secret message. And my troop picked me and another Scout to represent us.
The competition was outdoors, and we didn’t connect signalers as we did inside. Instead, standing further apart, we used flashlights that had buttons to press to make the dots and dashes.
And the troop leaders picked me to receive and decode the message. That was the harder part. I had to think quickly. And figure out the message, even if the sender made mistakes. Like making dots too long or dashes too short. It was a challenge. And, because of all that, I guess they considered me the best in my troop at Morse Code.
That was an honor.
I like to think so.
Say, there was one other aspect of Morse Code. You’re familiar with semaphore?
That’s with the two flags?
Right. I remember, at the beach, lifeguards signaling back and forth that way. Well, I never learned semaphore, but there’s a way to signal with one flag and Morse Code.
How’s that?
It’s called wigwag.
You wave the flag on one side for a dot and on the other side for a dash. And you hold it in vertical positions for the end of a letter and the end of a word. We didn’t do that much, but it’s another way to communicate. It takes longer. Up to four waves to make a letter. But it works.
I guess that’s all I have about Boy Scouts.
Well, thanks for the briefing. Until next time …
Seeya.