Scouting, Volume 69, Number 1, January-February 1981 Page: 10
68, E1-E24, [16] p. : ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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BY BOB DEINDORFER
Whistling Past Summer Camp
Back in the tall grasses of long ago, way
back when staples like candy bars and
soft drinks sold for merely a nickel, a
youngster teetering on the rim of his teens
felt a quiver of excitement as the day he'd
been counting down finally approached.
He stuffed all the required trappings
into a canvas duffel, shorts and shirts,
swimming trunks and extra sneakers,
towels and sheets, sweater and light jacket
in case the midwestern summer turned
sour. After a little prodding, the boy
straightened his room, straightened it to
his own satisfaction, anyway. At the age
of 12, straightening a room can be a
casual exercise.
Up they drove in the family Reo Flying
Cloud, the road twining over flat country-
side, past fields spun with knee-high corn,
the miles drumming away. His parents
grew pensive, less talkative than usual,
brooding on an eventful first experience,
missing him already, while the boy sat in
the back seat dreaming his dreams.
"A week, think of it, you'll be away for
a whole week," his mother said softly.
The big red-haired father turned left
onto a gravel road outside of Rockford.
Up ahead an American flag hung from a
pole and the sound of laughter rose from
the boys kicking a football on a grassy
field. An older brother, tall, blond, skinny
as a rake, pelted over to greet them.
At first glance the Boy Scout camp
thrummed with promise. Cabins fitted
with double-decker bunks, a screened-in
mess hall, a crafts center, and an adminis-
tration building stood in a clearing not far
from a long swimming pool lighted in
sunshine. Beyond the pool a woodland
ran as far as the eye could see, thick and
mysterious, just waiting to be explored,
10
provided that older brother and a few
others came along, too, of course.
After a last wrenching hug the boy's
parents left him there, his mother blink-
ing some, his father thankful that he'd
somehow managed to scrape together the
$8 for a week at camp. After all, $8 wasn't
easy to come by in the hardscrabble
1930s. The old Reo drove hard toward
the front gate with both parents waving
out the windows.
The boy slipped comfortably into camp
routine without any real effort. In a pick-
up touch football game he caught the
longest pass of his young life, a daydream
experience he promptly filed away in his
memory. Frank Burgess taught him some
crafts and Indian lore, muscular Dave
Calvert helped him with his freestyle
swimming stroke and conjured up some
prickly ghost stories around the campfire
that night.
For two days the boy's schedule was so
crowded that he had little time to stew on
what he'd left 90 miles away. He swam,
hiked, played more touch football and
baseball, learned some semaphore sig-
nalling and flint-and-steel firemaking,
took a guided birdwatch walk, and
helped swing a log bridge over a small
stream. At night, after some horseplay
with his brother and the other older
Scouts, he was pleasantly warped with
fatigue.
For two days he fed on exactly what
everyone else had in the mess hall—cold
cereals and Kool-Aid, sandwiches, potato
chips, and Kool-Aid, a hamburger or hot
dog, fresh vegetable, thin mashed pota-
toes, ice cream, and Kool-Aid. In Scout
camp of those days the menu was seldom
more assorted than it ought to be.
Late Tuesday afternoon the boy
learned that everyone was going off into
the woods on a rope hike that night. At
first he liked the venturesome sound of it,
dim, dark, tantalizing. But then a memory
kicked and he started thinking of home.
The more he thought about home the
worse it got, until, sobbing some, with
a brother who loved him more than
he'd ever know trying to
comfort him, he picked
up the camp telephone and
made a collect call.
"Oh, Mom, it's so good
to hear you." His voice
broke, faded, picked up again.
"I have to come home. Please come
get me tomorrow, please. Mom."
Next afternoon the old Reo rolled into
camp, collected the homesick boy, his
duffel still stuffed with fresh clothes. As
the father wryly recalled later, his sunny
young disposition returned the moment
they drove out through the front gate,
when he promptly began recounting
breathless stories of all the fun he'd had
in camp, describing some of the new
Scouts he'd met, happily singing "Down
on the Bingo Farm" over and over again.
It wasn't long before he was back
among the sweet old sights and sounds of
North View Street in Aurora. He picked a
bottle of homemade root beer out of a
rack in the fruit cellar, yelled across the
back lawn for Chuck Krause, romped
with a beloved mongrel dog appropriate-
ly named Buck, because that was exactly
what he'd cost as a pup. Candy bars and
soft drinks weren't the only bargains to be
had back in the Great Depression.
As things turned out, that was perhaps
the only time Jack Denton ever felt an
aching flutter of homesickness. He's
beaten his way across the lovely face of
America many times, he's boxed the com-
pass with lingering trips to Italy, to Eng-
land. to Australia, to Japan, and beyond,
he's currently criss-crossing the continent
playing the FDR role in the national
company of the smash musical "Annie,"
an itinerant trouper roving an itinerant
time.
But every once in a while, mostly in the
dark of the night. Jack admits to a bitter-
sweet regret. Every once in a while he
wishes he could have stretched his first
week away from home in Scout camp to
the full seven days. ■
January/February 1981 Scouting
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Boy Scouts of America. Scouting, Volume 69, Number 1, January-February 1981, periodical, January 1981; Irving, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth353558/m1/10/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Boy Scouts of America National Scouting Museum.