mgood777

Kinda makes one wonder if the adult cooking crew is running the program and not the boys.

I've just about exceeded my rant quota on my first day of posting so I shouldn't even start on that subject or y'all will think all I do is gripe. But . . .

The adults ran our Lodge

Boy Scout Troops are supposed to be run by the Patrol Leaders Council. I've seen more adult-run Troops than youth-run Troops.

The Lodge is supposed to be run by the Executive Committee, all members of which are under 21. These are experienced Scouts who've held leadership positions in their troops and I'm sure many of them have fought the adult/youth battle for control. So they should come to Executive Committee meetings well prepared.

Unfortunately, whatever was proposed at the meeting, the adults would keep us talking about it until they thought they had enough votes to go their way. I would frequently remind my fellow committee members that WE ran the Lodge. But when just about every youth member has an adult advisor, and most of those advisors were the fathers of the members they were advising . . . I could tell the adults "no," but most of their sons could not.

I'll have to post about the Battle of the Lawn Mower  (one of the few that we won) But that deserves it's own thread rather than cluttering up this one.

Old thread, I know, but this is something that strikes a nerve with me.

When I was Senior Patrol Leader (30 years ago ) we had a Troop Committee Chairman who would sometimes bring his Cub Scout age son on Boy Scout campouts. He was a distraction. Dad would go drink coffee with the other adults while Junior ran loose. I spent 50% of my time babysitting. "Jeremy don't do that. . . Jeremy, be quite. . . Jeremy, if you hit him with that stick and he punches you, I'm gonna laugh. And I'll tell you dad to SHOVE IT if he says anything to me or to him!"

The problem was the parent. Not taking responsibility for his kid and expecting the Troop SPL and PLs to take care of him. This seriously took away from my time to run my Troop.

If the only way to get the troup out camping is to bring the young 'uns, or you just think it will be a good idea to show them what Boy Scouts do, fine. Make sure you understand that the non-Scout is YOUR responsibility. Do not expect the Troop to include him in everything they do. (An activity here and there may be ok, if the parent is nearby to corral him if he gets out of hand.) Do not expect youth leaders who are (or should be) working hard to run the troop to take on the additional responsibility of keeping your child from destroying the camp. I was ready to hurt the kid. I was ready to fight the dad. This was a district camporee and we took the competition seriously. I needed to be doing a dozen things, none of them included babysitting a nine year old.

My lodge started doing early ceremonies in the eighties, while I was still a youth member.

The youth membership, the Lodge Executive Committee, and the ceremonies team were against it.

The reasoning was that the new Ordeal members needed a good meal after working on little food all day. Brotherhood ceremony was after Ordeal ceremony. The dining hall crew (made up of adults) didn't want to be still cleaning up at 1:00 am. Several times we suggested having the Brotherhood ceremony before dinner, if that would help. But the men in the dining hall wanted to go to the Brotherhood ceremony, so they were against that.

I'm surprised that Philmont staff were wearing uniforms from their home units.  When I was a staffer at Maine National High Adventure Base in the 80's, we were provided staff uniforms that had gold epaulets, the US flag, the Staff patch and a name tag - and that was it.  No knots, no CSPs (of course not, since we worked for National), no OA Lodge flaps, no other patches of any kind.  Unit uniforms were not allowed - we were employees of National - not members of units, councils and lodges.  Our registration was as National Staff - not a "summer only" camp staff unit.

Interesting. When was this?

All PhilStaff wore uniforms from their home units if they had them. There were some who showed up without a uniform, and female staff members who had no uniform. Most of these people just wore the staff polo shirt with the uniform shorts. If they wore the "Class A" shirt, they bought one off the rack at the trading post, hung the Philmont Staff Arrowhead from the right pocket, pinned their name tag to it, put on red shoulder loops and called it a day. We had the option of wearing either the staff shirt or the Scout uniform shirt, whichever we wanted (or whichever was clean, lol).

When I showed up with my red and white shoulder loops I was harassed about them until I stopped wearing the uniform shirt. (I refused to wear the red shoulder loops.) The big shots on the staff wore gold loops. Some of us thought we should all be able to wear the gold since we were employees of the "National Council" as they called it. So we were told shoulder loops should match your badge of office, if any. Red was the default color if there was nothing on your uniform to indicate branch of Scouting. Someone came up with a badge of office that just said "Employee." We speculated that we could all put them on our uniforms and wear the gold loops. No one tested that theory though to my knowledge. There also was/is a "Ranger" badge of office. It's for the person who takes care of your council camp. But those of us who were Philmont Rangers thougth it would be appropriate. Again no one actually had any to see if it would fly. When I came back for a second year on staff, all my uniforms said District Committee, so I wore silver loops.

[EDIT: There was a summer staff of about 700 people plus a much smaller full-time staff. It may have been the full-timers who got the gold loops.]

Here are my Ranger Training Crew pics. In the '88 pic, you can see my striped shoulder loops. In the '90 pic I'm wearing the staff shirt.

Philmont Ranger 1988 & 1990

Were the Philmont Staff in the green Explorer/Venturing uniform shirts or the tan and green shirts?  I ask because Explorers/Venturers were able to wear the Eagle patch on the pocket until 21. 

Most wore the tan shirts. You'd occasionally see someone in the dark green shirt.

Here's an example. This was a pic from 1987 that I posted in another thread. I was a camper that year. Our Ranger, the guy directly behind the sign, is a 19 year old staff member. You can see the Eagle badge on his pocket in the photo.

Edited to add: Me and guys from my troop wearing our illegal red and white striped shoulder loops that we'd worn ever since the uniforms with epaulets came out I caught some flak for those when I wore them as a staff member the following year, so I just stopped wearing the "Class A" shirt and always wore the polo-type green staff shirt. Either one was approved for staff uniform wear with the green Scout shorts.

I never wore the Eagle badge on my pocket. My Eagle Board of Review was a week before I turned 18. The Court of Honor was several months after I was 18. I was an Assistant Scoutmaster and promptly put the red/white/blue knot on my uniform. (For the Court of Honor, I did wear a youth uniform that I had saved for that occasion which still had the Life Scout rank on the pocket and Senior Patrol Leader badge of office, pictured in my avatar. That uniform was retired when I took it off later that day.)

When I worked at Philmont, most of the staff were 18+. Most of the male staffers were Eagle Scouts. Many of them wore the Eagle badge on the pocket. This was simply because that was the uniform they wore as a youth when they earned their Eagle. Most of them had probably not been active in Scouting as adults except to serve on staff at Philmont and had not seen fit to change the patch. This is a National High Adventure Base and staff are expected to set a good example. They were pretty strict about some aspects of uniform wear, but I never heard of anyone making an issue over pocket badge vs. knot.

I never owned a hat from the Boy Scout National Supply until I went to Wood Badge where we had to wear them.

I always have baseball cap type hats from various camps or troops or events I've been part of. I wear them to keep the sun off my nose and out of my eyes If I'm going to be outdoors.

If we're getting really rough, backpacking or canoeing or other activities likely to mess up whatever you bring, I have a very old, disreputable looking troop cap left over from the eighties (formerly red, now faded pink). It has a lot of miles on it.

If I'm going to be mostly indoors, I don't even bring a hat.

When I was District Advancement Chairman, I went to a lot of Eagle Courts of Honor. I bought one of the poly/wool uniforms just for that and didn't put any knots on it. I wore my two medals, Eagle Scout and Scouters Training Award, pinned to the shirt. I'd occasionally break it out for a council annual banquet or something like that. For pretty much everything else, I wore other shirts with knots but no medals.

I like the idea of medals sized - uniformly - so that five will fit neatly above the pocket. But I don't have enough to worry about it.

Not telling anyone else what to do, but if I had multiple neck medals, I think I'd only wear the one I considered the highest honor, or the one that was relevant to whatever ceremony I was attending. I don't have any, so again, I don't have to worry about it.

Crew photo from that same trip. That's me on the bottom right.

But...never had that hair!

Yeah, I had the hair, lol. I thought I was the rock'n'roll Boy Scout.

This was taken in 1987 at Philmont. I wore this getup to the campfire one night. My Scoutmaster told me to dress just like that the next day. He wanted to get a picture of me but had the wrong filter on his camera or something or other. So all morning I was posing and trying to look cool, just waiting for him to take my pic. He ignored me and never went near his camera. When I was trying to get the fire going, down on my knees blowing in it, he says "Hey, Goodwin!" I looked up and he got me. I look angry, but that was smoke in my eyes, lol.

I found this hanging in my closet. It seems to have shrunk

I'm just getting back into it.

I grew up in a Boy Scout troop and think it's a fantastic program. Being a lifelong procrastinator, I got my Eagle a week or so before my eighteenth birthday. I was an 18 year old Assistant Scoutmaster, a 19 year old District Advancement Chairman, then a 21 year old District Commissioner. By the time I was 25 or so, I was working most weekends and lots of evenings and it was just not possible to do anything with Scouting. I gave it up. That was in the mid-nineties. So around twenty years later, here I am back.

Happy Easter

Mike