I was eleven years old, and we lived in coastal South Carolina. As far as I am concerned there is no place in the world like that part of America’s coast. And at that time, around 1958, the coastal area was still wild and rugged.
What better place for a Boy Scout Camp?
My troop, Troop#253, was from the Marine Corps Base at Parris Island, SC. Our Scout Masters were all drill instructors. And I promise you we were a wild bunch.
I joined the Boy Scout Troop on the base as soon as I turned 11 years old. It was terrific. We were an active troop. We had an old Quonset hut out on “Scout Island” where we met each week. The island was ours for camping and general exploring. We would camp out at least once a month using shelter-halves from the base. And we would sit around the campfire and hear stories about the Marines in World War II and Korea, and true ghost stories. One ghost story that hangs in my mind was “The Gray Mist” about the legend that was shown on the cover of the old Boy Scout Handbook.
Me and Paul, and Carl, and Bill, and Steve, and Pete and other boys whose names escape me now 60 years later, we camped and wandered through the swamps and marshes, keeping a wary eye out for quicksand and some the biggest rattlesnakes you ever saw. This is the truth. I saw a Marine who had killed a rattlesnake standing in the bed of a pick-up truck, holding the tail of the snake above his head using both hands. The snake’s body continued all the way down to the ground where about 10 inches of the snake and his head rested on the pavement. Iron Mike saw it too. The marshes and swamps were still wild and dangerous.
We camped out on Hunting Island State Park twice a year. In my minds eye it was a beautiful place; I hope it still is. It was just sand and sea and maritime forest, dark and foreboding. And the old light house to climb.
Each Summer the Troop would go to Camp Ho-non-wah for a week of camping and camp crafts and swimming and canoeing in the Land of the Rising Sun. For the Tenderfoots, like me, we were kept busy passing the requirements to become a Second Class Scout, including the 5-mile hike.
I had walked distances all my childhood. My brother and I walked a mile and more to our school in Newport, Rhode Island in the teeth of winter blizzards, and yes, up-hill both ways. Later in rural Craven County, North Carolina it was a mile to the school bus, and if my brother and I missed the bus, it was nearly three miles to school (slightly exaggerated). We didn’t miss it much going to school, but baseball or the swings would keep us late, and we would often have to walk home.
The 5-mile hike at Scout Camp was not a hike to get to someplace. It was a hike for a reason. It was a requirement to advance, and I had to have my card signed-off by my Scout Master who led the hike. We left the camp right after lunch. There were a bunch of us on the road that afternoon. The group included four Scouts from my Troop, and probably twenty other Scouts from the different Troops that were at camp that week.
It was July in coastal South Carolina, and it was humid, and it was hot. The road was packed clay, or maybe it was marl (rock rubble from phosphate mining), and it was certainly dusty. All of us carried a canteen, and we were glad that we had something to drink. By the time we reached the turn-around point, we were all nearly done-in.
Our turn-around point was a small country store with a porch and a bit of a porch roof. It was clapboard/lap siding and so weathered that you could not tell if it had ever been painted. But inside it was shaded and compared to outside, cool. And there was a soda bottle trough, one of those coin-operated Slider soda machines. The soda bottles were suspended by their necks on a track. When you found the one you wanted you would slide it up to the end of the track and put your nickel in to unlock the gate.
I did not get one. I looked into the icy cold water in the trough and thought of the soda I would buy after dinner from a similar machine back at camp. It would be a frosty root beer. Cold. And delicious.
My Scout Master blew his whistle, and we started our hike back. Those last miles were long and hot. But soon enough we were back at camp and had time to relax a bit.
I showed my card to my Scout Master, who signed it, and congratulated me.
Then I decided to not wait until after dinner. I bought that cold, cold root beer and enjoyed it sitting in the shade of one of the massive live oak trees, looking out over the broad, brown surface of Bohicket Creek.
I heard a bird in a nearby pine thicket. I looked and saw South Carolina’s amazing Painted Bunting.
It was a good day.