“I Want Some Of That Pot Roast!” (Part 1 of 6)

A month after Fat Man’s Misery it was time to go to our regular scout summer camp. I had looked forward to this all my life and now I finally got to go. Five years before, I had gone up with my family to help get set up for scout summer camp when Dad was the scout master. Among all the supplies of food, there were cases of soda pop and it was my job to put each can into a patch of snow that was still on the ground. Men from the ward were setting up the army tents that the boy scouts would be sleeping in. I wished I could be a boy scout and stay there with Dad. I also wished I could have a can of that pop, but sadly I had to get in the car with my sisters and Mom, and go back home.
Now, in 1974, it was my turn. In two months I would be thirteen and a few months after that I’d be an Eagle Scout. But this was my first scout summer camp and I was excited. I had gotten the purple mimeographed flier several weeks before advising me of it and telling me I had to come up with the $35.00 fee. My parents wrote out the check like it was nothing. But it sure meant a lot to me. The day finally arrived when we were to go. I had been packed for a week. The other boys joked that I usually packed everything but the kitchen sink. For this trip I wished I had even brought that a long. This was summer camp! And I wanted to be prepared. Every camp I went on I packed up a large back pack, not the school kind of back pack that later became popular but a real backpacking back pack with a frame. I never ever used it for backpacking, but I sure packed it full of everything a scout might need on a camp. Radio books, Boys Life magazines, and paper and pencils. You never wanted to be stranded somewhere without something to write down ideas.