More on Every Scout gets a Handbook (14 Mar 12)

I look at people’s walls as I walk by their offices.  I take note of people like myself — military people with a long history; Scouters, especially those who like me, have earned the Eagle Scout rank and are not ashamed to let God and country know about it.  People with families.

Bob came by my office asking for generic video of the base for a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) project.  We ended up talking Scouting because he saw my white Commissioner shirt along with some other artifacts here in the office.  He used to be the Executive of the District surrounding the air base.

“Is your office the one with the National Eagle Scout Association certificate hanging in there?  I’ve walked by but haven’t had the time to introduce myself to you.”

“Yeah,” Bob stated, “that and a lot of other Scouting things.”  Then he told me about something which brought a broad smile to my face, a whipping by my mom, and a great idea.

You see, my folks were not rich in any sense of the word except where it mattered.  They cared about their children.  Each one of us was nurtured in the best way they knew how to, wanting their children to be “better off than they were.” 

My dad was an enlisted man in the Army; my mom a budding hairdresser.  In the early days, my mom would set up her “shop” in a spare bedroom in our apartment in Germany.  Never mind that officially, it was not allowed.  But the base engineers turned a blind eye — especially when their wives were getting reduced cut and curls from my mom.

In my book “Patches and Pins” I discuss my first nights as a new Cub Scout.  My mom thought it would be a good motivator for me to get a copy of the Boy Scout Handbook, seeing how she was intent on me “staying in the Scouts” until I received their highest award –“whatever that is.  You’re not stopping Scouts until you get that highest award.” 

Her feelings changed after we returned to the States and found that most Black kids and their families turned away from Scouting — “too expensive, too rigid, too much patriotism, too white.”

I got the Boy Scout Handbook — circa 1965 — over the summer.  She bought it from the Thrift Shop at Robinson Barracks, Stuttgart.  I read the entire book that summer from front to back cover.  I dogeared parts of the book that scared me  — the color illustrations of various snakes, spiders and mice. I have never seen any of those things, and I sure was not going to remind myself that such animals exist now.

I have no idea why I chose to become a Conservation/Ecology Director at camp and at a high adventure base.

The book was my beaming light — my guidepost toward Eagle.  But there were so many other things I wanted to do also. I wanted to learn about the land.  Germans took very good care of their land, and are almost Nazi-like in their defense of the outdoors.  I wanted to do something like that wherever we would end up at in the States.  I wanted to save a life — in the grandest of models.  I have been reading Boys’ Life and stopping in the color illustrations/cartoons of “Scouts in Action”.  I dreamed some times of saving a child from a burning building. Of preventing someone from dying from poison by giving them syrup of Ipecac and charcoal bits.  I wanted to receive one of those medals too and perhaps have my story illustrated in those pages.  Every once in a while, they’ll showcase a Black kid — mostly Cub Scouts like me — saving someone’s life and getting a Merit Medal for it.

I wanted to become a member of the Order of the Arrow.  Never mind that I knew very little except for the paragraph in the book.  I thought the “medal” for it was simple and oh so cool.  I wanted to earn the God and Country religious medal.  And I wanted to earn a trail medal. 

More than anything, however, I wanted to become an Eagle Scout.  I read about Eagle Scouts — never met one until later that summer — but I knew that it was something quite special for the book in many parts explained that being an Eagle Scout is the highest thing that a boy can achieve on his own.  It took a special boy to become an Eagle Scout.  Illustrations would highlight that aspect and reinforce that goal in ones brain as well as heart.

So I found a pair of scissors.  Some Scotch brand tape. A piece of cardboard previously used to bind a packaged pair of my mom’s long stockings.  And my Boy Scout Handbook.  And I started cutting, carefully cutting out and pasting the various things I wanted to earn onto the cardstock.

The Eagle. Hornaday. Merit Medal (I never seen or read a Black kid’s account of earning the higher Honor Medals, so I bypassed it). The Order of the Arrow “medal”.  One of the trail medals.  The God and Country medal — with some parts of it not shown because some other religious medal was placed on top of it. 

I lined them up as straight as I could and then I pasted it with the tape to the backside of my door, high enough that my brother could not take it down.

Psychologists call such displays “visualizations.”  They say that one can place objects — a goal, a reminder, artifacts — in a certain place within a room and the individual can “see themselves” doing it, going there, achieving it.  And over time, because the “image of what you perceive as a goal” is stuck in your brain, you’ll overcome and achieve it.  Do it. 

A little bit of “personal brainwashing”, if you will.

Like I said, my mom whipped me for defacing a book she spent good long work on buying me.  I took the punishment — had no choice– but she hugged me afterward and told me that “you have to learn how to take care of things people give you, Micheal.  You can’t just show disrespect for things just because you wanted to do something else with them. That’s not how life works.  Treasure the things that people give you — for you know, they didn’t have to give it to you.”

(This is the reason, Your Honor, why my office today looks like a cross between Fred Sanford’s living room, a Supply Group backroom, and somebody’s work space,  There are boxes of things which over time, people have given me which I have kept simply because “you know, they didn’t have to give it to” me.  There’s entire television series devoted to people like me — “packrats.”)

Including a fresher, uncut version of that 1965 Boy Scout Handbook.  I bought it off of eBay for $5.  It gave me a lot of pleasure just flipping though those pages again. 

“You know Mike,” Bob brought me back to the present, “if the BSA just gave *every boy* a Handbook, everything else would fall right into place.  Boys around here couldn’t afford the uniform, don’t really care about the uniform.  But the book — that’s where the excitement lies. The dreams are in there, and so would everything else about being a Scout come from.”

Before I could share my daydream, he continued, “We tried to get the mucky-mucks up in Nashville to give us some money to do just that — or allow us to get someone to donate enough money so that every Scout wanting a book could get one. Free.”  He shook his head from left to right. “Didn’t happen.  So many great things can come from giving a new Scout his first book.

I silently agreed.  If Bob was not in a rush I would have embraced him.  Like spirits, we Eagle Scouts are. 

So, I’ve added another item to my “desire list” when I win the Powerball lottery.  Or after I make the first million dollars as a — whatever:  Enough money to give to the Transatlantic Council in Europe; the Lincoln Heritage and Bluegrass Councils in Kentucky; the Shawnee Trails and Buffalo Trace Councils. And the Northern Star Council in Minnesota — enough money so that for ten years, they may be able to give EVERY new Cub Scout, Boy Scout and Venturer — a FREE handbook.  They don’t have to jump through any hoops.  All they have to do is show their registration card at their local Scout Shop(tm) and request a handbook. 

Then, they took can take it back to their room, read it from cover to cover, and if they wanted to visualize them earning all of those things in the back 20 pages of the book, they too can cut those paper representatations — or just use their phone and take an image of each — and use it as a daily reminder of why they — and their parents — want them to acheive “the high awards — whatever they may be.”

Thanks Bob!!

(And to complete the record:  In 1974, I saved the life of the younger brother of a girl I was sweet on at that time.  I received a Certificate of Heroism for that deed, which the BSA felt that it deserved a medal.  The medal looks just like the Merit Medal except that it has red and white stripes instead of blue and gold.  I also received the Hornaday Medal and the God and Country religious emblem too.  In 1975, I became an Eagle Scout.  In 1976, I became a member of the Order of the Arrow; and in 1977, three weeks after I graduated from high school, I earned the last of eleven trail medals. Visualization — even though I had no idea what that word meant or what I was doing at the time — works.)