Friday’s column
April 25th, 2008, 7:51 am · Post a Comment · posted by brent
In Troop 311 you got a merit badge for flesh wounds
I was scanning the wires Wednesday and came across a mention of Camp Durant.
Camp Durant is the council camp of the Occoneechee Council of the Boy Scouts of America. It’s located near Carthage in Moore County.
The council is inviting Eagle Scouts to Durant this weekend for the first Eagle Summit, according to the News & Observer in Raleigh. The event will “promote leadership development for younger Eagle Scouts and to reconnect older Eagles with their Scouting roots.” A panel of Eagles will include a state Supreme Court justice, a congressman, and a physician,
I’m an Eagle Scout from the Occoneechee Council, but I don’t guess I’ll be able to get down there. I’d love to go back to Durant, though.
It’s a little strange to think of leadership training at Durant. Though I figured out later in life that I learned a lot at Durant, my strongest memory is of a comedy of errors.
My first trip involved a week of rain that had us wading through three feet of water to go back and forth from our campsite and put a river through the middle of my tent.
There always seemed to be something crazy going on at Durant, and it usually involved my troop, 311.
Our troop, made up of boys from all over Raleigh, was larger than a lot of troops at Durant. We were led by the late, great Ted Reed. Mr. Reed led this large troop almost by himself. I don’t remember him ever having an assistant Scoutmaster. He relied on the older boys, myself included when I turned 17, to help.
Mr. Reed also ran his own business and had three children at home. His life always seemed to be in a state of chaos, but he managed to make time for Scouting and he had as much patience working with young people as anyone I’ve ever seen.
We were always running late for a camping trip, or forgetting something that we needed. But we always had fun, and Ted Reed taught us a lot.
At Camp Durant, it seemed, we were always getting hurt.
A big part of being in 311 was playing tricks. My first year, the older boys talked me into using a convoluted device called a left-handed smoke shifter which didn’t so much shift smoke a certain way as it made the shifter look like a moron. But because I was subjected to that trick, I was in on the snipe hunt the other 12-year-olds were tricked into.
So one year, when we threatened to tie a Scout to his cot and put him in the latrine, he freaked out. He swung his pocket knife around to get us away and ended up cutting his own leg open instead.
Another year, as we chased each other through the woods, someone pitched a tent stake into the air and it hit another Scout in the head. Another trip to the hospital.
There were broken arms. One particularly hot summer we had a rash of Scouts passing out while standing at attention at the mess hall before dinner. The entire camp went into lockdown once when one of our guys forgot to take his tag off the board at the lake (this was how lifeguards kept track of how many boys were in the water) and they were in the middle of dragging the lake when we found him asleep in his tent.
It might sound like the Bad News Bears, but they are some of the best memories I have of being kid. In that Scout troop, a painfully shy boy found a place where he felt comfortable.
I learned how to use clear fingernail polish to get chiggers out and overcame fears about snakes, spiders and showering in front of other kids. I nearly drowned trying to pull a cinderblock off the bottom of a lake for Lifesaving merit badge.
Most of all I learned that Scouting is the best thing to get a young man involved in, injuries and all.
City editor Brent Lancaster can be reached at brent_lancaster at link.freedom.com or 506-3040. Read his blog at thetimesnews.com
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