Is it just me, or has the national scout jamboree not been going well this year? Leaders electrocuted, scouts dropping like flies from the heat while waiting for President Bush. It’s not like the problems are the fault of poor planning. Don’t put up metal framed tents under power lines. And while I do feel sorry for all those scouts from cool climates who aren’t used to the heat and humidity — if you can’t stand the heat, don’t sit out in a shadeless field in the hottest part of the day for hours. Be prepared encompasses know your limitations.

This weekend was our cub scout pack campout. We were back at Castlewood State Park and had a great time. Castlewood is very popular with hikers and bikers (no, not the Hell’s Angels type but people who own $6,000 mountain bikes). We camp near the Meramec river and you feel like you’re in the wilderness despite being 10 minutes from home. I’m a little sore from our help on building a trail and a little tired after sleeping (or rather, mostly not sleeping) al fresco. 

Our pack has a great campout organizer, so as Cubmaster I mainly get to wander around and have fun. When our afternoon activities went faster than planned, especially the Raingutter Regatta, I made the decision to ignore the planned times and move the different dens to the different activities based on the times activities were actually taking. I’d rather get done sooner and let the kids play before the hike than to have the kids bored waiting for the next activity to start on time. I was informed that not all the parents were happy because they followed the clock instead of the boy and so missed out on seeing their son do some particular activity. 

Cub Scout events are loosely organized chaos, and flexibility is key. At the pack meeting that night, I had a nine page plan; due to circumstances the start time was changed; some elements of the plan were dropped or moved — sometimes I drop something just as it’s about to start based upon the mood of the pack (myself included). This is entirely normal, and for every meeting I have a page of jokes to cover dead time that may pop up. I never know in advance when I’ll use them, but it’s a rare meeting when I don’t use them all.

We had a ball doing skits around the campfire. We got started a little late and the Tigers were all asleep and didn’t get to do their skits. This year I got to be involved in three of the skits. My daughter and I did one together, and the two older Webelos dens asked me to be in one of theirs, Yaputcha, and Ugliest Man in the World — the cub master’s job is to be the butt of the jokes. I had another page of jokes to tell while the dens were coming forward and setting up and I used them all up. It was nice to just sit (boy were my dogs barking after being on my feet all day) around the fire afterward and chat with friends.

Next morning we had crispy cremes for breakfast, and frozen OJ. McDonalds (thanks!) donates the OJ, and even after asking them nicely for thawed OJ the day before, we still got frozen. Sometimes I have a hard time recognizing the ladies without their makeup; I’ve learned to wear a ball cap to both keep warm and hide my bed hair. And then we have the hardest but most important task: organizing the boys to police the campsite. Some of the boys fall right in; others require constant supervision to keep them on task. As Scouts, we do our best to leave no trace, even in an area that sees constant use like where we camped. Then we stress leaving it better than we found it, which means yes, you need to pick up the beer bottle caps.

We had 19 boys sign up last night (yeah!) and about 5-6 prospects at our School Night For Scouting. The prospects were all people who came late and so didn’t hear me run through my spiel on what we do and what’s expected of both the boys and the parents; I’m glad that after hearing me ramble on for 20 minutes (possibly more) nobody who did hear me backed out. I may not be a good public speaker, but at least I’m not repellant. I even managed to talk one lady who came in late while we were wrapping up the paperwork into joining. Her son wanted to, but she wasn’t sure. After a few minutes of me talking while she just kind of looked at her paper work, the pack’s committee chair asked if she was going to join tonight since he had to go turn all the forms and money in. At first she wasn’t, but after I went over our calendar and all the neat stuff we do, she was sold. It seemed like a lot of the 2nd graders were joining because their friends who were already scouts had a good time. I guess hard work and dogged determination do pay off. 

We had our pack’s Blue and Gold banquet this past Saturday night, and afterwards people kept telling me it was our best one yet. And not because of my silly jokes or anything else I did except for one simple thing: I didn’t say no to change (and I even insisted on some of it). In the past, we have held a raffle throughout the night so that every boy won a prize. That’s eighty something donated prizes, so most of them were pretty minor and it takes forever. Last year I asked our committee to end the raffle (something all the den leaders were in agreement with). Somehow it got put back in. This year, the lady in charge volunteered pretty much just so that she could end the raffle. But that wasn’t the end of her changes – we also flipped the order of the meeting. In the past, we had the pack meeting, then we ate, and then we had our entertainment. The whole thing took 3 hours. This year, we had the entertainment first — a juggling clown magician — then we ate, and then we had the pack meeting. We were done in two hours (and there was much rejoicing). I admit I was nervous at first about following a professional, but the reality was that the kids were happy after the pro, and even happier to have a full belly before putting up with me. 

I suppose the thing I’ve done best as Cub Master is to let go and let our volunteers do what they want to do. I’m a coordinator, not in control. It works wonders for getting parent participation and it works wonders for the overall program – the creativity and the dedication has been phenomenal. It also makes my job easy — most people like to implement their own ideas and work harder on them.

I enjoy cub scouts. The weekend before last was our pinewood derby, and both the kids and I had a blast. As cub master, I do my best impersonation of the guys who used to hype the sunday races — it seems like Don Garlitz was always racing his funny car — I put on my best announcer voice and draw out the boy’s names, highlight when brothers race, and just try to have fun with it all. I have found that by saying yes to pretty much any idea or offer of help, we have great parent participation and people just pitch in to get things done.

This weekend my son’s den went for a winter hike at Beaumont. So we hiked four miles in the snow, over hill and dale. Fortunately, the temperature was in the upper 30’s, the snow was powdery and not too slippery, and while we did get off the trail, we did find it again. When we realized we were off the trail, I told people, we weren’t lost because we were all together — you’re only lost if you get separated. But the lead dad, in his words, “smelled a trail” straight up a hill, so we climbed straight up the hillside and found the trail we had set out on. I count it a success: nobody was lost, and the boys’ main complaint was we wouldn’t let them fall behind or wander too far off the trail. Somehow, the boys don’t connect the two.