I was a Cub Scout

I was a Cub Scout.

Before I was a Boy Scout I became a Cub Scout.  All my neighborhood friends would gather one afternoon a week at my friend’s house where his mother was our den mother.  Jerry Smith had to be the luckiest guy in the neighborhood to have a mother brave enough to let a bunch of rambunctious eight year-old boys gather in the family basement to play - uh, rather - work with paint and Plaster-of-Paris.  And what was really neat was that Jerry had a pinball machine in the basement!

All the neighborhood gang was involved in Cub Scouts.  Besides Jerry Smith (the luckiest Cub Scout in the world), Richard Miller, Billy Paris, Steve Watkins, and others all came dressed in full Scout uniform every week.  We did all sorts of neat things, including a visit to the local independent television station, WTTV-TV Chanel 4.  We even bobbed for apples and sold ribbons for fund-raisers.

In those days it was acceptable to wear a Scout uniform to school. Not only was it acceptable but it was desirable – even honorable to wear a Scout uniform to school.  We stood and said the Pledge of Allegiance those days and while our classmates stood with hand over heart, we Cub Scouts, defenders of freedom and virtue, rendered a smart two-finger salute on those days we were in uniform.  It was our patriotic duty to salute the Stars and Stripes.

I loved my uniform, not so much because it showed all my rank advancements and gold and silver arrowheads.  I loved it I think for the same reasons other boys loved their uniforms.  Our dads and uncles had worn slightly bigger uniforms not much more than a decade before.  For a Cub Scout the uniform was not just a Scout uniform, it was the uniform of our country for eight year-old boys.  Back in the 50s it was O.K. to love your flag and your country.  People didn’t get upset when you mentioned the name of deity.  It was O.K. to love both God and Country.

I fell in love with Stephanie Williams when I was a Cub Scout.  It happened at a monthly Cub Scout Pack Meeting.  Pack meetings are meetings of several Cub Scout dens.  I don’t remember much about those pack meetings except that they were held in the E.U.B. Church in Smith Valley, Indiana.  The one meeting I do remember though was the night of the Halloween costume contest.

I had walked into the pack meeting and was immediately incensed that there were all these girls there.  How could they have all those girls there at a Cub Scout Pack Meeting, I wondered.  And to make matters worse, they were wearing costumes!  But, then I saw Stephanie.  I knew her from school.  We were in the same class.  She was tall and had long straight hair that she wore in a ponytail and she was beautiful.  She smiled at me.  That was all that it took.

Stephanie moved away not long after that.  I never knew where she moved to and never quite understood how she could leave without saying goodbye or letting me know where she went.  I digress.

The hardest part of Cub Scouts was memorizing our Scout Promise and the Law of the Pack.  It went something like this. “I, promise to do my best, to do my duty to God and my country; to help other people and to obey the law of the pack.”  I thought I was doing fairly well memorizing the Cub Scout Promise, but it was during the learning the promise that I came to understand that there was more to memorize, and that was the law of the pack.  “The Cub Scout follows Akela.  The Cub Scout helps the pack go.  The pack helps the Cub Scout grow.  The Cub Scout gives goodwill.”  I never really knew who Akela was, but whoever he was, he was not doing a very good job of helping me memorize the promise and the law of the pack.  Still, there was something that rang very true about that Cub Scout Law of the Pack.

The saddest day of Cub Scouts was when I left Cubs and became a Weblos Scout.  There would be no more visits to Mrs. Smith’s basement once a week for an hour of discovery and adventure.  In a year there would be no more blue uniform.  However, I would be able to wear a newly acquired patch from my Cub Scout uniform on my soon-to-be-worn Boy Scout uniform.  That Weblos patch would represent that transition from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts.

Weblos Scouting brought new adventures, such as the occasional field trip to Indianapolis for White Castle hamburgers.  At twelve cents a burger a guy could buy and eat a sack full of them, and at the ripe old age of ten you never had to worry about an upset tummy from too many “gut busters.

I remember when Scouting reached its fiftieth anniversary.  Now Scouting has been around for more than one-hundred years.  I am not sure that Cub Scouting is as big now as it was then.  That’s a shame. Perhaps Cub Scouting hasn’t kept pace with the ages.

Somewhere along the line a whole lot of people (not everybody) broke the promise to do their best and forgot their duty to God and country.  I saw a lot of people helping each other immediately after 9/11, but that was short-lived.  Nowadays if somebody is in distress people pull out their smartphone cameras to capture the tragedy rather than jump in and help.  Then it ends up on some social media outlet before it airs on the six o’clock news.  And whereas the pack used to help the Cub Scout grow, it seems that the only pack that is out there now is a more aggressive pack of wolves looking for its next meal.

Is it that Cub Scouting hasn’t kept pace with the ages or is it that the ages haven’t kept pace with what Cub Scouting was fifty years ago?

I was a Cub Scout at a time when it was O.K. to love your flag and your country.  People didn’t get upset when you mentioned the name of deity.  It was O.K. to love both God and Country.