2. The Tall, the Short, the Skinny, the Fat, the Good and the Bad


Another story from the list
Boulder Beach--this may not be one of your favorite stories, but it is one of mine. As a twelve-year-old I was introduced into the official Boy Scouts of America. We had a scoutmaster that took us on a number of outings and was, I would say, faithful to his calling.
He got us all together and we ended up at Boulder Beach on Lake Mead. It took several cars to get us all down there, about five miles. We set up our camps and then got ready to go swimming. Our scoutmaster made an attempt to keep the younger scouts safe from the bullying of the older scouts. To accomplish this, we had set up our camp a little way away from the older scouts. The sixteen-year-old scouts made their camp on the side closest to the water and the fourteen-year-old scouts set up on the high side from the water. Separating the two older groups was a ravine that the water had cut through part of the whole camp.
Bert Whitney and two older brothers Howard and Calvin
We had a great swim and then cooked our meal. We were having a great time, then the older scouts made the youngest scouts wash all the dishes, including the Dutch oven and then do all of the policing of the camp. So, you see that there was a little bullying and taking advantage of the younger scouts because they, that is we, were much smaller at twelve than they were at fourteen to eighteen. We had little choice except to do all of the cleaning. At this time, we had no protection by the adults.
Later, we sat by the fire and the three adults there told ghost stories while we roasted marshmallows and got ourselves pretty dirty. It really didn’t matter because we would go swimming in the morning and clean it all off before we packed everything up and headed back to our homes where we would take advantage of our mothers. Who, we thought, were there to take our clothes and straighten everything up.
That evening after the camp was quiet and most everyone had all gone to sleep, some of us slipped out of tents, grabbed a couple of eggs each, and went up the little ravine separating the two groups of older scouts, and chucked eggs at both groups. We then hurried back to our area and watched the two older groups throw everything and anything that they could find. They were under the impression that the older groups had thrown eggs at each other. Both groups were sure that the other group of older young men had attacked them. We sat there watching the whole mess, not laughing out loud. The older boys still scared us, but it was well worth it to have a chance to throw eggs at them.
As we sat there in our camp and watched them fight, it was difficult not to laugh out loud. We could hear our scoutmaster chuckling at the scene. There he was just a few feet from our camp. He had seen the whole thing. He never said a thing to the older scouts until the next morning. And then he asked them what they were going to eat for breakfast since they didn’t have any food left that they hadn’t thrown at each other.
We still had all but a very few eggs that had started the whole fight plus bacon and candy. I don’t recommend candy for breakfast, but it did taste pretty good. After our group was through eating breakfast, the older scouts were able to eat the rest of our food. The scoutmaster never said a word, and the other scouts didn’t notice that the younger ones were keep in a close eye on the scoutmaster to see if he would say something, and we might need to take off running.

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