John Billington is in the crowd somewhere

If you are able to go back far enough in your ancestry, you might find interesting – and indeed notorious – progenitors. It helps, as my cousin once said, if, “rather than spending our summers at the shore … we spent them in New England cemeteries.”

This week’s prompt credits John Billington with the dubious historical honor of being the defendant in the first jury trial held in the American colonies. It didn’t end well for him

This week’s prompt credits John Billington with the dubious historical honor of being the defendant in the first jury trial held in the American colonies. It didn’t end well for him. He was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death by hanging. Not just by hanging, but he was hanged, drawn and quartered as the Mayflower jury of his peers found appropriate.

It seems Mr. Billington had a nasty temper, and blew his neighbor away with a blunderbuss (think 17^th Century weapon akin to a sawed-off shotgun) over a land dispute that didn’t go well. He had two children before his execution – otherwise I would not be here retelling his demise four centuries later.

I first learned of this bit of history at a holiday dinner attended by my brothers and the aforementioned (second) cousin. My mother’s cousin (nicknamed Mickey) (we were schooled to identify her as a “second cousin, once removed), was then over 70 years old, and her mother, over 90, were also there. In addition to spending her productive efforts promoting world peace, Mickey had indeed spent a great deal of time researching the ancestors which we all shared. But in discussing whether she’d unearthed any famous people, she mentioned, among others, John Locke. But he couldn’t hold a candle to the interest generated by revelation of the Billington family secret. The cousin from our generation asked, “What about John Billington?”

Neither Mickey nor her mother (called Grandma by some, and “Aunt” by me and my brothers) had a lot to say. They seemed reluctant to say anything, as if embarrassed by the story. Yes, they must have been thinking, we are descended from the Mayflower, but do you really want to know more? Do tell, we urged, and the felonious branch of the family tree was disclosed. The cousins of my generation regaled us with what they knew of this piece of history. Of interest to me, learning about this for the first time, was the amusement with which our generation took this story, an amusement which was completely lacking in the generation one rung closer to this tragic affair.

Over the years, I’ve learned that Billington has become more than a dry historical footnote. There’s a house at Plimouth Plantation, the Massachusetts state park where actors in period costume portray characters from the 1620’s, and say such things as “Ah yes, the Island of California” when visitors, like us, state where we’re from. But when we asked a costumed character we later learned was playing Miles Standish, standing in front of what was identified as the Billington House, “Are you John Billington?”, his three word reply said it all: “No, thank God!”

This ole house is afraid of thunder
This ole house is afraid of storms
This ole house just groans and trembles
When the night wind flings its arms

Lightning (and thunder) figure in two of my earliest memories — one that formed the foundation of my respect for the tough nature of my grandmother; the other that spoke to the more powerful and elemental strength of lightning and the earliest scary memory of my life.

First, about my grandmother. She had to be tough to survive on the North Dakota prairie after being abandoned by her then husband with two small girls before my father was born. She did what she had to do, and took a job cooking for the crew of a cattle ranch. Her day began at three in the morning, making bread for the men to eat before they went out to work with the cattle. It ended late at night setting up for the next day. Sometimes there were only a few hands working with the ranch. But during the high seasons with birthing, branding, and moving the cattle toward the railroad, there could be several dozen men to attend to, all needing bread, food, and whatever else was called for.

There are two incidents attesting to her resilience, only one related to lightning. First, while chopping firewood for the cooking stove, a rattlesnake got in the way (or from the snake’s point of view, she got in the snake’s way) and it bit her. She wrapped up her hand and kept working. Wasn’t much else she could do. And second, years later, after she’d remarried and moved to Wyoming with my grandfather and gave birth to my father, she was baking again (a single loaf, no doubt). But during the baking process, she opened the oven door, only to find herself picked up, knocked unconscious, and groggy from a bolt of lightning that came down the flue to the stove and exited through the path created by the open door. Family lore is that — just like the snake bite — It was no big deal. She put the bread on the counter, took a brief rest and continued with her day.

My lightning experience is less dramatic, but influenced by hers. Years later, we lived in Rapid City where my father was an Air Force Lieutenant. A tremendous (for me at least) storm blew in where my twin brother and I were visiting in the house next door. My mother was back at our house taking care of our older brother. It was windy and noisy, and although we liked the people next door, we cried and begged to go home. Too dangerous and rainy, we were told. We were lucky to have stayed with the neighbor as a tremulous crack and flash of light lit up the house, leaving a tremendous crack in the driveway separating the two houses. Although scared, no one
was hurt. And we learned first hand to take thunder storms seriously.

And I never forgot the few lines from “This Ole House” from the early ‘50s.

• Until I was a teenager, I thought a “Sampler” was a box of chocolates. Then my grandmother died and many of her items found their way to us in California. Included in this trove was a sampler — a framed textile and another framed object which I will describe below.

A “sampler”, loosely defined, is a piece of cloth into which is stitched, by needlepoint, a picture or some writing, or both. They have been around a long time. Shakespeare mentions one, and some exist from ancient Egypt. Samplers were very popular in colonial America until the end of the 19th Century. Indeed, I’m sure there are those who are stitching them as I write. In New England, girls were expected to make them. The oldest girl created a family record, stitching in the names of her parents, their birthplace and birthdates, and place and date of their wedding. Also listed are her siblings and their  birthdates and  places of birth. There is often an inspirational or philosophical poem as well.

The other girls also made samplers, but rather than a family record, they show various scenes, and often, for some reason, copies of the alphabet. (See the cover photograph of a book I own as the featured image.) Since (I suppose) the names of long-dead relatives are of interest primarily to their descendants, whereas bucolic or other scenes have universal appeal, collectors are less interested in a “family record” sampler.

The sampler I have is of the family record type:

It lists the parents as Nathan Morse and Eunice Cleveland, both born in Medfield, Massachusetts in 1779 and 1783, followed by their eight children (born over a period of 15 years — five girls and three boys). It was “wrought” by daughter Eunice in Warwick, Massachusetts, and is accompanied by a poem reminding us of mortality and generations to come:

Our ancestors departed bloom

Bespeaks we’re hastening to the tomb

We’ll keep a record of our names

And meditate in worldly fame

But generations yet unborn

Our lives in virtue may adorn.

I am one of those in the fifth “generation yet unborn”.

There was a related bonus that arrived from my grandmother’s possessions — a framed handwritten list of all the names on the Sampler, with their ages at the time of its composition, and, remarkably, accompanied by a lock of hair from each family member. I’m descended from Sally Morse, the second-born daughter. Initially, I wondered, why is it that my family has the sampler “wrought” by Eunice Morse, instead of her descendants? The answer is written next to and under  her name: Died July 25, 1831 aged 20 years 2 months 8 days. I assume it is her sister Sally’s handwriting on this record.

What makes these special to me is more than something from  a family of ancestors I otherwise would know very little about. It allows me to get a glimpse — very small, of course — of something important to this family, their hopes, and no doubt, tragedy — and their desires, reflected in the verse, to pass it on to me and my generation.

All the males in my family changed their names. That is, everyone had a nickname and none of us liked the ones we were given. So:  My father, known as Buddy, until he went to college, became John, which matched his birth certificate.. In the next generation, Burr (short for Burgess, his middle name) became Joe which is of course the common nickname for Joseph, his first given name. Jay became John (I don’t know why Jay didn’t suit him). I moved from Teddy (hated being called a Teddy Bear) and became Ed (which you know as “Mr. Ed” on this site. Much better than Teddy, don’t you think – especially since it goes so well with my picture.) Willie (short for William, of course), became Bill. He simply announced one day he wanted all of us to call him Bill.  No one questioned his decision, and from that day on, he was Bill. Years later, he said he had no idea that Bill was a common nickname for William. There was simply another boy down the block named Bill, and Willie thought he was cool, so he would be Bill as well.

I’m not sure what my parents would do if they had it to do all over again. … and my mother said all she wanted was one girl.

The Gloves in the Title

Back in the 1980s I asked my father to write about his family. This is his first story. It was written on a cruise ship up the Inland Passage to Alaska, and the total of the stories he wrote was about 80 pages, single-spaced in longhand. I’ve written some about his mother, about whom he speaks, on this site. She’s the one who survived being struck by lightning and bitten by a rattlesnake.

How and why my [grand]mother was cooking on a ranch in Montana in the summer of 1918 is one of the stories I shall never know...

“Gloves”

How and why my mother was cooking on a ranch in Montana in the summer of 1918 is one of the stories I shall never know.  The two daughters, six and two, that she brought with her cannot remember, and she would never talk about it.  I do know that she had been deserted on the North Dakota prairie the previous spring and could not prove up the children on the homestead that she and her (absent) husband had settled.  In any event, by summer 1918 she was cook and caretaker of a subdivision of the Kuhr ranch which was known as the Edwards place in northwestern Montana, near Chinook She ordinarily cooked for about six or seven range-hands, but in the harvest seasons she was cooking for fifty.

On a Sunday in the spring after she arrived, she took my younger sister to a nearby meadow where they picked choke-cherries.  As they were filling their pails, a tall Indian came up behind them and demanded, “What are you doing on my land?”  My mother said she was sure that she and my sister were on land that belonged to the Kuhr Ranch.  She had, after all, seen the hands running cattle and sheep through that meadow dozens of times.

The Indian said, “This is not Kuhr’s land.  Kuhr leases it from the Belknap tribe, and I am Belknap Fox, Chief of the Belknaps.”

My mother introduced herself and protested that, had she known, she would certainly have asked permission to pick Belknap Fox’s choke cherries.  Fox took her hand and said that she had perpetual permission to pick choke cherries, buffalo berries, sarvis berries, gooseberries or any other wild fruits that grew on the Belknap reservation.  Then he turned to my sister and said, “Who is this.”

“This is my daughter, Jean.”  Belknap Fox put out his hand to the three-and-a-half year old girl.  Jean hid her face in my mother’s skirt and whimpered, “No, no, his hand’s dirty.”

Fox replied, “I am not dirty.  I am a different color from you.  I am Indian.”

After some urging from my mother – Fox knelt down so he could look directly at the little girl – Jean offered her hand and Fox told her she was a pretty girl and strode off over the hill.

On the next Sunday, after she had made chokecherry jelly, my mother and Jean walked the mile or so to the reservation settlement.  She found Belknap Fox’s cabin, knocked and was greeted by a large Indian woman.  She asked for Belknap Fox, who came to the door where my mother gave him six jars of jelly.  In the ensuing three years she always took him a gift whenever she picked wild fruit on the tribal lands.

My father sent for my mother to come to Wyoming to marry him after he had left the ranch to take a job in the oil fields in Wyoming.  Many of dad’s old associates from Montana came down from the Milk River country to attend the wedding.  Belknap Fox did not come, but he sent a beautiful pair of fringed buckskin gloves with beaded gauntlets that reach up to the elbow.   They were obviously made for a woman as I cannot get my hands in them.  They are a beautiful example of the beading art.  Fox sent them with Six Cylinder Jack McLeod, so-called to distinguish him from the dozens of other John and Jack McLeods in the Chinook area; he owned the first six-cylinder car ever to appear on that stretch of the Milk River.

I don’t know what possessed me to think that I could go toe to toe with a group of Czech taxi drivers speaking a language I barely knew, but in retrospect, I think I can claim at a minimum that I fought them to a draw. My family had the wonderful opportunity to visit both halves of the former Czechoslovakia when a family friend, Bob, returned home from a business trip to Russia which took him through Bratislava, the capital of post Soviet-era Slovakia. He related how he had found his way to services at an old and virtually deserted synagogue. All of the few attendees were easily over 70 years old, and had somehow survived the holocaust. A young rabbi led the services.  He had grown up in Milwaukee and, of course, spoke perfect English.

My second advantage , I am certain, was that they had concluded I had gone completely crazy ...

Bob’s son Max was in the process of preparing for his Bar Mitzvah, and his father thought he displayed little interest in the process. So the thought of Bob’s son becoming a Bar Mitzvah in the first service since the 1930’s or 40’s seemed particularly appealing; indeed, exciting. Perhaps it would be more meaningful to Max than one in California. The rabbi agreed, and about a dozen people in our congregation here thought it would be great to travel with Bob and his son to be part of the service.

My family flew first to Prague and after a few days, took the train to Bratislava. Others started out in Bratislava and planned some time in Prague afterwards. It was fun, fascinating, and meaningful. After the Bar Mitzvah, and dinner with the Rabbi, his wife their eight daughters and one son, we said our good-byes to Bratislava and all of us took a train back to Prague, where we arrived together at the station around 9 pm, looking for 3 cabs to accommodate us.

Taxi drivers in Prague have a well-earned reputation for taking unlimited and unfair advantage of foreign travelers, paying no heed to government efforts to reign them in and enforce a reasonable and predictable price structure.

Having taken the same route to the station from the hotel zone by cab a week earlier, I knew the fare should be about 125 Czech Koruna for each cab. Suspecting our vulnerability, the cabbies quoted us a price of 350 Koruna per cab. We, naturally, expressed our outrage. It was at this point that the cab drivers suddenly forgot any English they ever knew, feigning an inability to understand a single word we were saying.

In an early Retrospect story, I have discussed my attempt to learn Russian. After 15 semester hours of courses, the professors very kindly told me I shouldn’t take any more; I would never learn the language. They liked me, said they’d give me a B for my final semester, but only on condition I not take any more Russian. Suffice it to say, more than 30 years later, there wasn’t much Russian left from my studies. But I did know (or believed) that most Czechs spoke Russian, and certainly a lot more than I.

So, in a loud, angry manner, I started in on them, in no doubt hideous Russian, repeating in simple sentence fragments that we’d been here a week ago, and the fare was 100 Koruna. I had two advantages: I had 14 other riders who thought I knew what I was talking about, and quite reasonably weren’t going to budge until I was satisfied. The cab drivers figured that out. My second advantage, I am certain, was that they concluded I had gone completely crazy, thereby making me appear unmoved by the realities of being in a foreign city late at night with no serious bargaining power. And given my Russian, they knew we weren’t going to have a serious conversation in that language anyway. After about five minutes of this “Czech standoff,” one of the drivers said, in clear English, “Okay. 150.” The deal was struck and we all got to our hotel.

Example 1: High School, 1968. Trigonometry test. I walked by the desk of a girl I liked – not romantically, but a nice friend. I looked at her test sheet, and quietly said words to the effect: “problem 12 – divide by two.” She did, thereby earning 5 more points. My rationale: She obviously understood the problem and the math; why should she get penalized by a brain fart? And maybe she’ll be nice to me.

Example 2:  One of the sillier features of “advanced” high school mathematics textbooks and introductory college texts on the same subject is to put answers to the problem sets in the back of the book, but only give answers to the even or odd problems. For the same trigonometry class described above, we had the teacher’s edition on the bookshelf at home, no doubt given to my father by virtue of his employment on the math faculty at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. In that edition, the answers to all of the problems were in the back.

Did I use the teacher’s edition, complete with all the answers for my homework assignments?  You bet. I found it an efficient way to learn. You do the problem, and if the answers I got didn’t agree with the book, I reworked the problem, sometimes beating my brains out, until I got it right and understood how to get there.

So far, so good. Since I always did my homework, and showed my work, no problem, correct? Well . . . at the end of the semester, our homework scores were added to the score on the final exam in arriving at the grade for the course. I routinely figured out that I needed a 6 or so on the final (out of 50) to score an A for the semester. So I had an advantage.  My rationale: I learned better, and wouldn’t need the homework scores anyway to raise my grade on the final. My clone brother, also in the class, had a different moral view, and he never looked at the teacher’s edition.  (This added to my sometime nickname of the evil twin). Years later, he asked me why I took the approach I did. I gave him the answer again – I figured this was a better way to learn – and  much to my surprise, he said, “Ok. Makes sense to me.”  So people’s views do change.

Example 3: College: 1971: Elementary Intensive Russian. Double credit. Hard. For absolute beginners. Except the best students in this class had at least a year of high school Russian, but didn’t think (I guess) that they were up to the intermediate level course. Or maybe they wanted an easy A for a six-hour course. So they breezed through and others of my ilk struggled – I struggled, and after a single semester of intermediate Russian the next year, the professor said, “Mr. Ed, we like you. You work hard. But you should not take any more Russian.”  Years later, after having read “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” I arrived at a way of feeling good about this: The CIA recruited from these classes, and my non-language Econ classes and other papers might have interested them in me.  But “ne govoru po-rooskii.”  Thank God, perhaps. I would have made a lousy CIA agent, had I survived at all.

Example 4, from family lore: One’s career as an officer after graduating from West Point, the Naval Academy, and I presume, the Air Force Academy, is enormously enhanced by high class standing, and severely limited by graduating in the lower half of the class. High class standing is notably reflected in choice of assignments and promotions. (There are exceptions; Dwight Eisenhower is probably the most stunning example of a Cadet at the bottom of  his class rising to the highest ranks.) At any rate, in WW II, the Army drafted my father, like most all college men, and shipped him to boot camp. Those who scored high on their written diagnostic tests were asked (or sent?) to officer training. Some of those spent a year or two in college, now on the Army’s nickel, and then were admitted to the military academy. Such happened to my father, who, as a result, never saw combat in WW II. But the point of this example is that he had already spent two years at the Colorado School of Mines, got drafted, had another year at Amherst College, and then went to West Point.

West Point’s math and engineering program was rigorous, and many still flunk out today because they cannot pass it. Electrical Engineering claims many victims. (The Naval Academy, I’m told, has a less rigorous course.)  My dad had already had these courses at the School of Mines and Amherst, so he breezed through the science and math, and got his first choice (as a high ranking graduating cadet) when he was finally commissioned as an officer. He saw no combat and served his time without incident, although he had a few close calls flying B-36’s. Did he cheat and receive a higher class rank as the result of taking hard courses twice? I don’t think so. But others in his West Point class who didn’t have the class standing to escape dangerous combat suffered severe casualties in Korea. Nevertheless, if this week’s prompt is broadened to encompass taking advantage of unfair advantages, and because West Point was basically his second (or third) bite at the academic apple, maybe he did have an unfair advantage, akin to cheating, which may have saved his life. It’s impossible to run down the what-if’s in this story, and and we never discussed the ethics of it. The only close reference was an off-the cuff comment he made, saying, “It’s easy, ICTB,” meaning, it’s easy, “if course taken before.”

The French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal is reputed to have written words to the effect that  “This letter would have been shorter if I’d had more time to write it.” Perhaps if he’d had a reliable watch, a relatively modern invention, what short time he had wouldn’t have gotten away from him.

For years, I preferred pocket watches. So elegant, intricate, and beautiful. And many with a history. I have two, but don’t know much about them; my grandfather owned them. Unfortunately, we never discussed them.

I love taking the back off and looking at the gears and jewels inside. It’s more than the gears and jewels, however. There’s often a story etched into the case — either on the outside, or inside of the watch..

The one pictured on the right shows the name George Denton, and a date, May 5, 1927. Perhaps Mr. Denton lost it on an ill-conceived wager, like the oak table in our kitchen that my grandfather was said to have won in a poker game. There are also several sets of initials and dates etched in extremely tiny letters (too small to be seen here) in the inside of the back. I’m told these represent the identities of jewelers who serviced the watch over the years.

There’s no name inside the watch on the left, but there’s a florid “JFL” (my grandfather’s initials) engraved on the back. I’d like to think my grandmother got it for her husband; again “time has passed” and those who knew at one time can no longer tell us.

About once a year I’ll wear one of these watches. But I’m too hard on them, so, rather than running the risk of breaking them, I wear a stainless-steel Casio – battery powered wrist watch which syncs with the atomic clock in Fort Collins, Colorado. I take some comfort in the analog dial (I can’t stand digital), but I still miss the gold elegance of the pocket watch.

The problem is not the assembly. It’s the document purporting to be assembly instructions that makes the process maddening. Originally written in an obscure language, it’s been clumsily translated into English, rendering it completely opaque. The consumer vents her frustration by throwing the directions away and pursuing an intuitive approach, based on a no-doubt misleading photo (if any) on the outside of the box.

Business has largely given up on attempting a verbal description of what to do, substituting pictures, drawings, or cartoons to guide the hapless consumer. Alas, this does not help the process. The artwork becomes an IQ test, viz. “What does this picture depict”? “Is this the view from left, right, or inside the product?” Or perhaps, “Is there any significance to the intersecting arrows on the page?” And “Why is one arrow red and the other blue”?

You get the idea.

Finally, my favorite end to the saga: Why do I have this leftover part which is neither described nor shown with the instructions — and for which I have no clue as to why it was in the box in the first place?

Scouting was a big part of my younger years. I enjoyed the camaraderie with other Scouts, had a great time camping, and learned a number of skills that I carry to this day. In various “leadership” roles, I learned much about achieving goals, cooperation, and communication. More importantly, I developed self-confidence, learned about perseverance, and practiced life skills not gained in a classroom.

Scouting was a big part of my younger years. I enjoyed the camaraderie with other Scouts, had a great time camping, and learned a number of skills that I carry to this day.

The foregoing seems like a glowing advertisement for the (Boy) Scouting experience, which I suppose it is. But in retrospect (on myretrospect.com, fittingly), I have decidedly mixed emotions – some about the experience, but decidedly more about the organization.

I did the full gamut of Boy Scouting, starting as a Cub Scout at age 8. Girls were Brownies at age 7, which rankled me. They got to be part of their club, wear the uniform, earn their badges, and we boys had to wait another year.

I was a regular Boy Scout starting at 11, and joined an Explorer Post at 14 or 15.

Ranks and badges were a big deal. Attaining the rank of Eagle Scout was the epitome of success, pushed by the organization, and praised by the entire community. I bought into it and got the badge in due course; ultimately it proved, to me, at least, more of an endurance exercise than anything else. After one became a “First Class Scout” the trek became a race to earn the 21 merit badges (you can see them on my sash). There were ten “required merit badges” and another eleven you could choose from dozens (now hundreds, I think) on all kinds of subjects. (I think there’s even  a Horsemanship merit badge which would have been no trouble to Mr. Ed, your author). To me, they were all interesting, and we got to build and do fun things, but most (but not all) weren’t particularly challenging. Making sure you were able to schedule your time to be able to attend the classes for the more arcane required badges was more difficult, really, than the work.

I really liked earning the lower ranks – Second and First Class Scout. They included a number of outdoor activities that were terrific – a five mile hike, starting and cooking a meal outdoors without using matches, learning and practicing basic first aid, learning how to measure the distance across a river without being able to measure it directly, are high in my memory. And we all had to learn Morse code – a rite of passage for all of us. We could substitute learning semaphore, which I learned in a day, but have long forgotten it; it took longer with Morse Code, but I still remember all of the letters and some of the punctuation. Attaining the First Class Rank instilled a level of confidence that I could do a lot of things on my own without, or with only a modicum of fear. And I carry with me a catalog of knots that I still use today.

Camping was great fun. Every year we’d go for a week or two in the Sierra Nevada, hiking for ten miles or more over the several days. This brought more camaraderie and bonding with other Scouts. And since I was Patrol Leader, being in a leadership position required organizing the trip, acquiring the food and equipment we needed, making decisions about the route, and making sure we didn’t get lost. It wasn’t all fun, of course. Thirst, lousy cooked food, mosquitoes and blisters happened. I felt lucky one year to find a box of Kotex pads left by previous campers (Girl Scouts, I presumed, but maybe not) which I converted to comfortable heel pads for blisters I developed on the second day of one trip. I earned a fair share of teasing for this. I simply thought it was being resourceful.

My most satisfying merit badge (the one on the sash with a crossed axe and pick axe combination in the second row) was Pioneering. I was part of a group of half a dozen or so scouts that met for two weekends at the house of one of our adult scout leaders. It was a real challenge. We had to learn how to lash together tree branches or other poles using nothing but rope – no nails or any other aids. I can’t remember the names of the particular “lashes” but I remember they were a complete mystery to me. How I got through the first weekend, I don’t recall, but I did make the trip out into the field the next weekend where we made a small bridge across a dry stream bed. Designing the structure (very much like an A-frame) was really satisfying, and I thought at the time we could have driven a Volkswagen over it. I’m very glad we didn’t try.

My most disturbing merit badge experience was Firemanship (top row middle on the sash). It was taught by the local Fire Chief with the basic idea to learn fire safety and a bit of the science and technique of fighting fires in the community. It was a four-week class of one night a week for about an hour or two. On the second week, we were presented with a test with no preparation (the first meeting was organizational). Everyone flunked, and the Fire Chief spent the next half hour excoriating us for what he considered evident stupidity in the face of our abysmal responses. I kept my mouth shut in the face of his bullying. Had I been a year or two older, I would have challenged him for his uncalled-for conduct. So that part of Boy Scouts taught me something about people, but I do not think it was what Lord Baden Powell (the founder of the organization in 1910) had in mind.

Perhaps the most exciting (in another way) for a 14-year old boy was the Lifesaving merit badge. It was very hard to get, only because the general way to get it was to take the Red Cross course which was only taught once a year at the high school pool. What was exciting to me was pulling and being pulled around the pool by my assigned partner, a girl a year older and far more attractive than I, wearing a not too suggestive swim suit for the duration of the course. I’m reminded now of the ending of Tom Lehrer’s song, “Be Prepared:”

If you’re looking for adventure of a new and different kind
And you come across a Girl Scout who is similarly inclined
Don’t be nervous, don’t be flustered, don’t be scared
Be prepared!

(And no, the Lifesaving merit badge is not the one with the heart at the top left of the sash.)

It never got anywhere near where Tom Lehrer suggested. I was infatuated, my swim partner had no interest in me, other than to learn the proper life saving techniques!

I fully expected to be an adult leader at some point in my life. But over the years, it became clear to me that Boy Scouting far too militaristic, right wing politically, homophobic, and an organization keen on hiding pedophiles they were aware of  in its leadership. My wife and I did take our son to an organizational meeting of interested boys and their parents. Our son recoiled at the militarism and thought one meeting was enough for him.

Years later, I ran into some earnest looking Boy Scouts selling something at a fundraiser in a super market parking lot. Rather than ignoring them, as was my usual wont, I approached them, told them I was an Eagle Scout, but couldn’t support them because of their anti-gay policies. One of Scouts looked straight at me and said he agreed completely with my sentiments. I still didn’t buy what they were selling, but left feeling hopeful.

Are we making progress? I hope so.