Still have one of my proudest carving items from camp. That's a ball and socket carved into wood. That is, there is a ball carved inside the top of the cross around which the cross can swivel freely. Sorry for the lack of focus. I think my old Z760 is losing it's mojo and I don't feel like pulling out the 40D.

Edit: OK, twist my arm
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The details of my life are quite inconsequential... very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds- pretty standard really. At the age of twelve I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum... it's breathtaking- I highly suggest you try it.
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I was up for King Peewee my first year. That was a good loss.
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I got one while driving back to college once. It turns out I don't drive so well while climaxing. That car was bucking up the hill and I finally had to pull over and regroup.
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We had King Peewee 3 years running. Kid couldn't have been 55 pounds.
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I'm guessing your troop master was your dad?

My name is unique as it is so short. When my big bro selected Distant Circling Hawk, there was some fanfare about it being just 3 words, which was rare at the time. It's a great name.
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No.

I don't want to get into specific names, but the name of one of the camps is Lone Star, after King Lone Star H.Roe Bartle. 'Little' is appended for sons of inductees and 'Little Least' for grandsons.
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:lightbulb:

That's really cool. My son didn't do Boy Scouts. So the lineage is broken.
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We also had three other Chieftains [beside Little Lone Star] who were troop leaders.

Needless to say Mic-O-Say, and camp in general, was important to our troop. Downside was there was plenty of monitoring that we respected Mic-O-Say grounds and rules.

Really a great experience overall. Campouts EVERY month, without fail. Half of the winter campouts would be outside winter camping [fun, but freaking cold]. The other half would be some kind of indoor camp away. Twice we went to the SAC base in Nebraska for a weekend. We probably averaged 100-125 scouts and 20 or so leaders throughout my time there.

re: respecting the rules, during my Brave induction, during the silent work period, I was raking a trail when I came across a 6 foot brown snake. Again, stupid me, I stood there trying to figure out how to indicate alarm without breaking oath [recall, this is the period where you can't even use hand signals, let alone talk]. Luckily it slithered away after a moment.

But I had a good 3-4 seconds [seemed like eternity] staring at a brown snake longer than I was tall with no defense but my rake.

Another year, one of the Chieftains beheaded a 4 foot copperhead that wandered into camp and tanned a headband out of the skin for ceremonies.
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On a warm Saturday morning in June the summer I graduated High School, my dad asked me to come down to the barns and help pull a calf from a heifer. Our barn lot consisted of a metal building with a horse shoe shaped opening between 2 other barns. In the middle of the opening a wooden post was in the ground that we used to tie cows to so we could medicate them, or pull calves using either a chain or a calf jack.

That morning, Dad, Mom and I tied the heifer to the pole with a rope dallied(wrapped over itself). We successfully delivered the calf and stepped back. Dad began to undo the rope to allow the cow to lick, bond and nurse it's new calf. As the cow gets a few feet of rope, the look in her eye changes. She takes an aggressive posture and lunges onto the calf, stamping it wildly. At the time, money was tight for us and every calf mattered. Dad began to pull the rope to get the cow from the calf, but the cow pulling against the knot stopped it. Before I could blink, I see my mom rush to the calf, grab it's back leg and begin to pull it away. As she does, the cow lunges at her, her boot slips in the slippery matting of crushed hay and mud. Standing 10' away, I see her try to get up as the cow kicks her with it's front feet. I see another blow hit her in the leg, hear and see it snap and turn leg backwards above the knee and as I'm rushing the cow see it kick her in the head and see blood spatter.

Time stopped. I could hear nothing, and in my mind I can only think that she's been killed. I see dad fighting the rope as there isn't enough to get the cow off of mom and with the pressure he cannot get it cut free. I grab the cow by the head as he cuts the rope. I think I was going to try to throw it off of her, fight it, bite it, whatever I could do to get the beast off of her. The rope lets loose as I grab the cow by the head and I feel myself in the air. She runs towards the steel barn, lowers her head and does her best to drive my body through it. I find myself on the ground with an angry cow in my face furiously stomping at my head and torso. I can tell I'm being kicked but I can't feel it, I can't hear it, I just get occasional glimpses of my mother on the ground.

Dad charges the melee, and the cow jumps back, raises her head and strolls out into the lot.

I'm flat on my back in the mud. The world is cloudy and I can only hear 2 sounds. My heart beat pounding in my ears, and my mom saying my name. I can't draw in any breath as it's been stomped completely out of me. I roll over and get to my feet and go to her. My dad is stooped over her wiping blood from her eyes and I can see her mangled leg as her body is pressed a few inches into the earth. She isn't answering questions about her injuries, she's only concerned with me. I look down and see my shirt is ripped and a 12-14" cut across my torso and welts of hoof prints on my chest and gut.

The ambulance comes, she and dad go. I local sheriff stay to help me put gates back up, and call for someone to come watch my sister and then driving me to the hospital. In the waiting room after a couple of hours(doctor wouldn't come from golf course for an hour)....I hear a ruckus. Momowanian is mad and won't go to the larger hospital until she knows of my exam and status.

She ends up with stitches, some surgeries and 10 days in the hospital. I spend a night and check myself out the next morning, with a dressed torso wound, mush lump on my aching head and some hoof print bruises on my front and somehow on my back.

I learned 2 very valuable lessons that day.
1. Momowanian is tougher than boiled owl shit. She never made a peep as she lay there so broken, other than to show concern for me. Very, very humbling experience.
2. I learned to stop being a teenage asshole. Any disrespect I'd ever had for my parents stopped in that 30 seconds.

My folks changed that day. They relaxed and in truth acted more like happy people after that. I think we all understood how close that came to a less happy ending.
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Mine have already been written and posted in detail in other threads somewhere on this MB. Didn't feel like typin' it again.
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The day me and my band played our first gig, a shitty rundown bar in Daytona, felt like I had finally had some purpose in my life something that had been lacking since my teenage years.
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like the time you made love to Jameis Winston?
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Some what similar to Baby Lees' story.

Summer of '84, I was stationed at Fort Sam outside San Anton, TX for Army Medic training. This was between my freshman/jr yr of college. I had taken Army Basic the summer before. Thus I arrived a college student amidst trainees just out of basic. Keep in mind that half the company were females. Females...just out of basic.

So, the first weekend of leave, I found out fast. I knew what I was going to do (not if). It was all a matter of with whom. I didn't do the asking. Goodness gracious.

As I was processing in, I noticed a tall (I am 5'8") dirty blonde helping with the paper work. She was, ummm, interesting. Not drop dead gorgeous, though quite attractive in her own way. An 8. I remember thinking that I would like to bang her. Most the time I think that, it doesn't happen. This wasn't "most of the time". Keep in mind,female<-basic.
Remember this is army medic training. So of course my line to her on the first week of leave, I happen to be visiting with her on the front steps of the mess hall was "How about we go study anatomy tonight at the ABC motel"? Of course, since my mastery of the English language, my wit and my natural good looks, I knew I was a shoe in. She didn't bat an eye.

The next day, I awoke thinking that maybe my nose was broken. It was sore. Then I remember that pelvic bones are very hard.

There were many others that would approach me and I got to choose. In the end I started feeling like a slut. They would start coming to my barracks and ask if I was there. I was scared that I would "catch" something, to which I did.

Mono sucks. I would be in class using my fingers to hold my eye lids open and my eye balls would still roll back. Superduper tried all the time. They put me in the hospital. I was suppose to stay there for a week in quarantine. If that happened, I would miss too many classes and I would have to be "recycled". If that occurred, a 2 week delay, I would miss getting back to college for the next semester. If I didn't complete the training, my timeline into ROTC would be screwed as well.

In the end it worked out. After 2 days, they let me go as long as I promised not to kiss/share utensils/no bodily fluid exchange with anyone.

This all paved the way for my college degree/Army career and ultimately my current job.

Bottom line: that summer was a wet dream come true:-)
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