Honorary Boy Scouts
My dad worked for the Boy Scouts of America when his kids were young. He hooked up with them in New Orleans and was immediately transferred to a little town in northeastern Louisiana called Bogalusa. We were there four years before they decided to transfer him to Texas. My brother had been in Cub Scouts in that pine-filled, paper-mill town in Louisiana, with my mom serving as Den Mother, but it was the extended road trip from Bogalusa to Galveston that made his sisters feel like honorary Boy Scouts, despite our genitalia.
We packed up the house at 1616 Bird Avenue and said good-bye to our acre lot towering with pine trees, fecund with pears and figs, wild strawberries, watermelon, tomatoes, okra, blackberries, honeysuckle and wild cherries that my uncles fermented into big green jugs of cherry bounce. The trouble was, Dad had to report for work, but we didn’t have a house to move into just yet. It didn’t matter, it was summer, and we were Boy Scouts.
The first stop on the long road trip was Hill Country outside of Austin. The Boy Scouts have since sold the land, but this was by far the best Boy Scout camp I’ve ever been to. Our first instruction was to watch out for scorpions, to put our shoes up high before we went to bed, and to check them for those tiny, sand-colored creatures before we put our feet back into them. We loved to see the long, brown jack rabbits racing ahead of us and marvelled at the strange brown grasshoppers whose music echoed all around us. It was hot, but there was cool water to swim in, a deep blue pool with huge goldfish and a small cliff that served as a diving board.
We had to leave after a few weeks, and the next stop was Camp Karankawa in Brazoria County, Texas, which would become our home base for the many camping trips we took as honorary Boy Scouts over the next few years. Karankawa was a lot greener and shadier than Hill Country. There was this tree that had grown sideways, and you could walk straight up it. The cabins had a party line, so you never knew who was answering the phone and where they were in the camp. I learned the difference between coral snakes and king snakes - black and yellow kill a fellow; red on black, venom lack. Plus, I always thought it was pretty cool that they would name a camp after a group of cannibals.
All this time we were camping out, my parents were wheeling and dealing, trying to find a house in Galveston County that would sleep a family of six on a Boy Scout regional exec’s salary. They eventually found a place in La Marque, Texas, and our road trip ended there. The house was smaller and the yard was tiny compared to the vastness of our land in Louisiana. And the one thing we had hoped for, that we’d lose the smell of the paper mill, was dashed when we smelled the putrid stench of petroleum production. But it was all a new adventure.
May 7th, 2009 at 7:38 am
This brought me back to my childhood in a little log house on the farm.
May 8th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Nature’s Lessons - Reply to “Honorary Boy Scouts”
Great Story! As you may recall, my adventure started earlier. I went with Dad ahead of the rest of the family to stake out the new territory. The first week I spent with a troop of boy scouts (none of whom I had met previously) at summer camp. While it was a wonderful learning experience, it was a somewhat lonely experience. I didn’t know anyone and have never had an easy time making new friends. However, I did get up close and personal with several of natures creatures there in the piney woods at camp Karankawa. One night in particular, while trying to make my way to Dad’s cabin from my campsite on the dark trail through the giant spider webs, (must have forgotten my flashlight like a good boy scout–always prepared) I came to the cement porch of the cabin. Suddenly I heard a rattling sound. I quickly opened the cabin door and jumped inside. Dad went out with a flashlight and looked around but found nothing. We imagined that it must have been a rattlesnake that was warming himself on the hot cement. We’ll never know for sure, but I got a good scare anyway. Then, to make matters worse, Dad told me how baby rattlers are much more deadly than grown ones, something about their venom being more potent, but that their mouths were so small that they couldn’t bite you unless you had your shoes off. (Same thing goes for coral snakes) Later in the week while running through a wooded trail (another thing I learned that isn’t too smart) I stopped suddenly when I saw a coiled up copperhead in the middle of the trail. This one I saw for sure! I stopped a few feet short of the snake and slowly backed up until I was clear and then I high-tailed it back the other way to camp. Other memorable encounters were the garbage thieving raccoons, the two headed hognose snake in a jar at the visitors station, and the first time seeing a live armadillo. I’d seen plenty Texas road bumps before but never a live one. Nature gave me a pretty good education that summer. There are plenty more stories to tell from the few weeks that I spent alone with Dad but I’ll save them for another time.
May 9th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Thanks for the story, Rob. I do recall the two-headed snake in the jar, kinda creepy. And I can remember walking through the trails out of that place with you leading the way, telling us all about your snake adventures and teaching us about the coral snakes.
May 10th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
I love these stories. Having recently returned to Texas after being away for 19 years, I am rediscovering all the wildlife that central Texas has to offer. (snakes, scorpions, Tarantulas, fire ants, possums) I arrived home late last night and was getting ready for bed. I was spooked by this loud metal thud on my back porch. I cautiously made it to my back kitchen window. I flipped the light on with hopes of scaring whatever it was invading my back patio. I through open the door and found myself staring in the eyes of a rather LARGE possum. He looked calm at me as if he were saying Hello. He turned and slowly made his way to the first tree. Up and away he went. At least it wasn’t a snake.
May 12th, 2009 at 5:51 am
From my diary during the 1940’s: Went to Merlene’s today. About 10 of us kids went to the woods. Killed 3 snakes.
Many years later another young kid of my acquaintance used to hunt snakes in his grandfather’s woods.
June 13th, 2010 at 10:08 am
[…] 70s in the small town of Bogalusa, Louisiana, and once in the early 80s near Galveston, Texas. My father worked for the Boy Scouts of America, so we were always getting into adventures like […]