Venice Invades the Boy Scout Universe!

I don't know what was worst...the Dahlins headed out of Venice to the zoo (post 5/3/2103) or Troop 32 headed to Farragut State park in Idaho to meet up with 35,000 other Boy Scouts.

In the words of the robot on Lost in Space "Danger Will Robinson"

Stardate: July 6th 1969

Captains Log: We had our heavy-duty, 1959 Chevy moving-truck converted into a "scout bus" by cutting the back doors in half,  installing some porthole windows and hard wooden benches along the sides. This left the center floor section open for transporting all the tents and backpacks and camping gear and for staging cage fighting. Miraculously, no one had fallen out of the back doors on any of the trips to Camp Slauson or Josepho so far, but we came close a couple times.

This half-open, barn-door (at the rear of the truck) arrangement had its advantages and disadvantages.

ADVANTAGE 1) On one trip, Charlie climbed out of the back of the truck onto the tongue of the trailer and slid himself onto the fender of the little cargo trailer, we were pulling in order to appropriate something we "desperately" needed inside the truck that was a matter of life and death.  Like a spider monkey, Charlie, climbed up on top of the little white trailer and slowly scooted himself very carefully towards the rear. I voted against the rope. I kind-of-felt like Charlie would have been better off without a bowline tied around his waist. I figured that if he fell off without the rope then at least he might have a chance of survival, but with the rope - it would be like being dragged behind a horse at 57 miles per hour on hot rough asphalt (not a good ending - if you know what I mean)!  Believe it or not, Charlie actually made it inside the trailer grabbed the bag of marshmallows and made his way back into the back of the "Scout Bus" without the scout masters being none-the-wiser.

ADVANTAGE 2) Another thing this particular arrangement afforded us on long trips, was that we could stand on the bench seat and hang our talliwackers out the back, when some small-bladder'd tenderfoot had to take a pee-pee between potty-stops!

ADVANTAGE 3) This gaping hole in the back end also allowed us to "full-moon" passerby's, especially if there were pretty girls and grandmothers in the cars trapped behind our slow-moving, smog-belching, billboard of a truck  - representing the Boys Scouts of America (Hey, I was twelve and at least we thought it was pretty cool - though, I'm pretty sure our scout masters might have felt differently - had they known).

DISADVANTAGE 1) Potential for falling out of the back - especially when leaning out to take a leak or when "giving the moon" to an old Mormon grandmother from Utah.

DISADVANTAGE 2)  Was the fact that carbon monoxide FUMES blew into the large open back. Carbon monoxide poisoning includes light-headedness, confusion, headaches, vertigo and can lead to the toxicity of the central nervous system. This might EXPLAIN WHY we sent a Boy Scout crawling out on top of a trailer on the freeway, pee'd on the cars behind us, indiscriminately exposed our bare butts to grandmas and fought with one another all the way to Idaho.  And... it might also explain why we always looked like dazed, refugee-rats whenever the truck finally rolled into a rest stop.




The other normal Boy Scout troops did not travel like us... they had air-conditioned travel-coaches with a restroom on board and drove through McDonald's on their way across country.












Although the carbon-monoxide poisoning could be blamed for a lot of things, in our case, however, I don't think the toxic fumes we were breathing could be blamed for mass constipation. I think that was due instead, both to the menu, and to the fact that the Scout Master's son never rinsed the pasta which ended up sticking to the insides of our intestines like the heavy paste on paper mache!

It's not like something we compared notes on.  "Hey, Kissel..have you taken a poop yet?"  That would have been ridiculous.

But, after 4 or 5 hot, sweaty days of traveling and camping the two scout master finally put two and two together when everyone began to moan and groan about stomachaches which they figured was more than just the ordinary toxic confusion, vomiting associated with minor carbon monoxide poisoning that was driving us all mad.

AND SO... the night after the infamous spaghetti incident, on the very same day I rescued David Cockerel from drowning in a small muddy lake outside Rock Springs in Wyoming...is when the proverbial "poop would have hit the fan" except for there was no poop and the scout masters came up with a diabolical plan.

I'll have to leave you hanging on this one... and come back and share how this interrogation tribunal got us a Highway Patrol escort... (well, kind of anyway)... to the embarrassment of the Entire Boy Scout Universe and to which (I'm sure) Lord Baden Powell was rolling over in his grave.  

AS I leave you until next time-  there are many of you right now saying, "Oh, this guy is just making up stories for sensationalism!"

I guarantee that every single bit of this is the "Straight Up TRUTH!

And I would ask, or dare anyone who is reading this - especially if you were a member of the illustrious Troop 32 from Venice California to weigh-in and corroborate these stories for the rest of the disbelieving world - at least for those in the 78 countries who read this BLOG!

Until next time...  Du är älskad!