30 November 2020
In one of my previous posts, I mentioned the problems the Boy Scouts of America were having. Since that time, I’ve been thinking of my experiences with the scouts and in particular, my experiences at Camp Kickapoo in Clinton, Mississippi. I know, the name is silly sounding but in reality, the Kickapoo people really did exist. They spoke the Algonquin language.
Camp Kickapoo goes way back. There is a totem pole that stood in front of the trading post that dated to 1927. I remember exploring the back area of the camp and finding old, abandoned cabins with the early 1920’s carved into the wood of the cabins. The Andrew Jackson Council of the Boy Scouts of America eventually sold the land for development and moved the camp further south closer to Hazelhurst, Mississippi. It’s called the Hood Scout Reservation.
I spent several years there as a camp counselor and loved every minute of it. When I first started going as a scout, the camp was in operation for 8 weeks. Later, when I became a counselor, it shifted to 6 week of operation. Troops would come in on a Sunday and leave the following Saturday morning. We would typically have 8-10 troops per week. My first visit was as a second class scout trying to become a first class scout. I also attempted (and earned) my first merit badge there – Surveying.
There were only a few buildings at the camp. The dining hall was the largest but there was a trading post, a health lodge (with a hot water shower), a chief’s lodge (where the camp director stayed – also with hot water) and a quonset hut for storage. Everything else were cabins or tents. Kickapoo Lake was a several acre lake where rowing, swimming, lifesaving and canoeing merit badges were taught.
My favorite of all the building was the chief’s lodge – a real log cabin with a basement. Upstairs had a kitchen, bedroom and fireplace in the living room.
I think my first year as counselor must have been in either 1962 or 1963. The first few years on the staff you earned $5 credit at the trading post. That’s not $5 per week, but $5 for 8 weeks. Fortunately, my salary has increased over the years.
Camp staff, at first, lived in cabins near the Trading post. There were bunk beds with places for 10 staff members. All the campers lived in cabins also. Some time later, everything changed to tents. Staff lived in tents (on top of tent platforms) for six weeks.
Conditions were primitive. There were only group cold showers. Staff had electricity but not the campers. The bathroom was a two seat latrine in the staff area. The campers had to make do with a one seat latrine. You washed your face and brushed your teeth at a water trough near the cabins.
The work was pretty much dawn to dusk. As a camp staff member you had to be up at 6 am. I usually made it out of my bunk by 5:30 and went to the dining hall for some of Chester’s coffee. Chester was a very tall, very black, very imposing man who was once a chef for a general’s staff in the army. His real job was as a principle at the all black junior high school in Brandon, Mississippi. He was probably the most erudite person I’ve ever met. He taught literature to his students at the junior high.
He always brought with him some of his students at the junior high to provide them with a job in the summer. He turned out three meals a day for approximately 150-200 kids and adults for six weeks. Some mornings I would make it in before Chester and he taught me how to make the coffee in the largest coffee urn I’ve ever seen. The secret ingredient was egg shells in the grounds to absorb the oil in the coffee beans and a sprinkle of salt to enhance the flavor.
Chester was an outstanding cook and his meals were not to be missed. One or two staff had to sit at a troop table to engage the scouts and scoutmaster in conversation. Usually by the time the communal food bowls got to me, there was very little left. You could go for refills but only so many. I started to lose weight because the food never got down to me at the end of the table.
My solution was to engage the scouts with some biology. I told every thing I knew that would gross the kids out to get them to lose their appetites. I finally got my fill and even started to gain some weight after that.
I’m pretty sure the Andrew Jackson Council would pay any price to ensure Chester would return to the camp summer after summer. He was probably the highest paid staffer in the camp and deserved every penny.
At 8 am we hoisted the colors in front of the dining hall. Breakfast was from 6:30 to 7:30 am and at 9 am classes would start for second class and first class instruction and merit badges. Lunch was from noon until 1 pm then more classes until around 3 pm. Free time was 4 pm until 6 pm where scouts could go swimming, canoeing, rowing, skeet shooting, etc. The evening meal was at 6 and the opening campfire was at 8 pm until daylight savings time came into existence and we had to postpone the campfire until 9 in order to have the campfire in the dark. There was another closing campfire on Friday night. In between we didn’t do campfires at the circle but simply did skits, sing-alongs, and any other thing we could do to entertain the scouts.
The reason was the lighting of the campfire needed dark was we had someone dress up in a chief’s headdress and breechclout and intone “To the god of the east, to the god of the south, to the god of the west, to the god of the north, let the campfire be lit.”
Early during my staff days, that meant two equally costumed staff members would come out with kerosene torches and light the campfire. Later, someone got the bright idea to run a steel cable from the back of the fire to a tree near the lake. Once the intonation was complete, someone in the tree would ignite a burlap wrapped tube soaked in kerosene and turn it loose and it would appear to the scouts that a ball of flame came from the sky to light the campfire.
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At five pm every afternoon, we held retreat in front of the dining hall. On Sunday afternoon, the camp staff showed the scouts how to lower the colors while someone bugled taps. The troops would form a massive square-bottomed U with the upper ends of the U at the porch of the dining hall.
After the first afternoon retreat, the troops would take turns lowering the flag and folding it properly. Whoever on the staff got up earliest would usually raise the flag in the morning.
Early on in my staff career at the camp, we realized that kids simply ran wild at night. It got to where we were making nightly trips to Jackson to the emergency room for some scout who was running up and down the hills of the camp and tripped on a root and broke a leg or arm. Someone would come to the staff quarters and get us up around 1 am and off we’d go. We not only lost that night of sleep but had to teach classes all the next day and not get into bed until after 10 pm taps.
One of two times of that was enough. Someone hit on a wonderful idea. Adjacent to the camp was an old cow pasture that had plenty of old weather bleached cow skulls. We picked up about 5 of those and scattered them along the most traveled trails of the camp about scout-head high. We took a few nights to walk the trails ourselves to find foxfire – a fungus that bioluminesces. We’d stuff the foxfire into the eye sockets of the cow skulls and on the first night’s campfire, we told ghost story after ghost story.
It didn’t take long after that first night of ghost stories that when the first scout started running up and down the trails that they encountered this skull-like feature with green-glowing eye sockets. Off in the night we’d hear this blood curdling scream and then total silence. Word got around quickly there were ghosts in the woods at night. It put and end to the emergency room visits and we finally got to sleep through the night.
One fun night was when Shawn Loper and Sooky Sullivan would perform Little Nemo. Shawn was the face, chest and legs (using his arms stuck in a pair of boots) and Sooky was the arms of Little Nemo. Shawn would have this roving commentary about how it was time to eat, time to shave, time to cross his legs, etc. It was hilarious and was probably the biggest hit of the week.
Friday nights were reserved for the Order of the Arrow (OAA) ceremony. Scouts chosen by their scoutmasters were “tapped.” Staff would dress in Indian costume and perform the “tap” dance where we would dance through the rows and tiers of scouts around the campfire. Someone would stand behind the chosen scout or scouts (usually one or two per troop) and hold a handkerchief over their head (unbeknownst to them) and one of the Indians would come up and rap on their right shoulder three times with a long dowel (to represent an arrow) and break it over their shoulder. It would really startle the selected candidate.
It eventually got out of hand and some of the staff decided to really rap the kid and the dowel would break and go flying off into the crowd. Later, it ended up with a hand slap to the shoulders to prevent injuries.
One year, our Program Director, Casey Murphree, decided we needed to celebrate the 4th of July. There was an island in Kickapoo Lake in front of the council ring where we did campfires. It was overgrown. He decided we needed to clear it off and build a fort (Fort McHenry). On the fourth, we used rowboats to suggest the British fleet and used Roman candles to shoot at the fort. Not only that, Casey purchased fireworks and had the entire campfire of scouts and scoutmasters to walk down to the edge of the lake to see them explode over “Fort McHenry.” It was a great success. That was also parents’ night and they loved it.
Word got around to the next week’s troops and the scoutmasters all chipped in for another attack on the fort and purchased new fireworks. One of the provisional scoutmasters (some troops didn’t attend camp but would send one or two kids from their troop to a provisional troop) wanted to shoot one of the buzz bombs off.
As the crowd of scouts, scoutmasters and parents started moving en masse from the council ring to the lake, the provisional scoutmaster lit the buzz bomb. At the last second, when he lit the match, the light of the match showed me he had the buzz bomb upside down. I tried to stop him but he lit it before I could get to him. Instead of going straight up in the air, it moved horizontally directly towards the oncoming crowd. I’ve never seen 300 people stop in mid step before but that’s what they did when that buzz bomb headed straight towards them. At the very last second, it righted itself and went straight up over the crowds’ heads and burst. Disaster averted.
There are so many exploits I could relate and maybe will in future posts. I really grew as a person and learned to work and live with others in confining situations. Many of the friendships lasted well into my college years and beyond. One of my best friends in life I met while teaching the Nature merit badge.
My song recommendation is the first one on the video: “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” by Allan Sherman. It was a big hit in the 60’s and I’ve loved that song ever since.
Stay tuned and stay safe!
