Boy Scouts of America Turn 100

Boy Scouts of America Turn 100

It is interesting when you look back on your life and think about the things that you know and where you learned them. As I read the paper last week, I noticed that scouting was celebrating its centennial year. It made me think of a lot of little things that I take for granted that I learned in the few brief years that I was involved in Boy Scouts. I was certainly not a poster boy for the program or a career scout. In fact, most of my scouting years were my grade school years. But, what is interesting is the life-long skills that I still carry today that I learned during that brief period of my life.

The Boy Scout motto is “be prepared”. I truly believe that I could survive in the wilderness, if I had to, just because of the basic things that we learned as young scouts. For instance, how many people do you know who can really, and I mean really, sharpen a knife? I am not talking about these new fangled gadgets that you order off the internet with diamond surfaces. I am talking about taking a whet stone and a few drops of oil and putting a real edge on a knife. To this day, you hand me your knife, and if it is any good at all, I can hand it back to you with a razor edge. In fact, I still carry a scar on the index knuckle of my left hand where I learned knife safety the hard way. It took twenty-eight stitches to sew the tendon and the knuckle back together. Yep, I got er’ sharp.

Another small thing that I learned in Boy Scouts, from the camping trips that we took, was to bake in a reflector oven. I remember as a young ag teacher, taking my ag boys on a camping trip to the river. We built a reflector oven out of sucker rod, lined it with foil, built a brisk fire and cooked biscuits for breakfast. You would have thought I was a magician. Those boys could hardly believe it. I guess they planned on eating honey buns. Just because you are outside does not mean you have to eat junk. They were amazed. It was just one of those basic things that I had learned in scouting. I have since moved on to the Dutch oven, which I like better.

I sometimes wonder how many people out there know how to whip the end of a rope. Not everything is nylon rope where you can melt the end. And, whipping is preferable to black tape.

One of the interesting that I learned how to do came from my old Boy Scout book. I think I may have been in high school and had an occasion where I needed to tie my neck tie and no one was there to show me. I remembered that my Boy Scout book had a step-by-step diagram. So, I taught myself using that simple guide. And, speaking of knots, you can bet your life, I can still tie a square knot. There is no other knot that can join two pieces of rope more securely than a square knot and still be easy to untie. Simple things, yet useful.
But, isn’t that really what scouting is all about? Life skills, outdoor skills, and most important, values. We were taught proper flag etiquette, proper manners, and just plain old-fashioned, solid values like: do a good turn each day. In fact, the iconic symbol of the Boy Scout was a picture of the young scout helping the little old lady across the street.

It is an amazing program. I feel that in our modern society, when we probably need it most, it is underutilized and, quite frankly, it is not always held in a high enough esteem and that is a shame. If you were to do a survey of junior high and high school boys, you may find that the “cool kids” are not in the organization. But the “cool kids” are probably the ones who need it the worst.

In Boy Scouts, we were taught to honor God and country. We learned to survive outside and not fear the wilderness. I learned what poison ivy looked like and, therefore, could stay out of it. I could tell at a very young age whether a snake was poisonous or not. I learned basic first aid and a host of other skills that I still carry and use from time to time. I owe part of who I am to my brief years in that program. I learned a lot of other lessons from other individuals and organizations, but I still have to give scouting its due. So, happy centennial Boy Scouts of America. We need ya now more than ever.

If you would like to contact me while I am at the capitol, please do not hesitate to send an email to donarmes@house.gov or call me at 1-800-522-8502.

And here’s a little something to think about as you go down the road:

A Scout is never taken by surprise; he knows exactly what to do when anything unexpected happens. -Robert Baden-Powell