Stewed Prunes and Open wide "The Flood Gates"

Star-date: July 9th 1969  (continued)...







I had no idea what was going to happen since the Scout Masters had put my name on the "No BM" side of the secret ledger at the private interrogations last night. I crawled out of my sleeping bag the next morning and didn't have a care in the world. We were on the way to the Boy Scout National Jamboree and the United States was about to send men to the moon...for the very first time in the History of the world... and the sun was shining - "I was a Happy Boy and things were going my way!"

I'm a Happy Boy   
Our Senior Patrol Leader, Ray, suspiciously sneered at us as he stood stirring whatever-it-was - steaming in the great big pot over the low flame on the camp stove.  PRUNES!  500 gallons of prunes - so I exaggerate - sue me! But someone in our troop must have bought out the entire prune section of the local Wyoming (not-so-super) Super Market!
 

We were called to attention by a poor rendition of revelry that snorted and wheezed and sputtered out of the end of Alan's dented old bugle. We were separated into two lines. The short line had the kids who were smart enough to lie and say they had taken a "BM" (obviously these were the kids from outside Venice where they used proper language for what we called "Dropping a Buick" "Laying a Brick" "Taking a Dump"). The rest of us stupid kids were herded into the long line right behind 500-million-gallon bucket of stewed prunes. With an ominous premonition I wasn't too sure that things were going "my way" anymore and was suddenly nervous about the immediate future of this Boy Scout summer extravaganza.

There is still a remote possibility that letting Boy Scouts out of Venice could have decent ending... hubba- hubba-hubba-hubba-hubba... but the feeling I was having right now is that this adventure might not have such a good middle.

The four other guys got hot oatmeal - while Ray ecstatically scooped ladles of mushy warm prunes into the tin bowls of our boy-scout mess-kits. I've seen this stuff before. This was "old lady food" and I know what it can do to you. I ate two bites of the laxative-fruit-cocktail, not because I particularly wanted to, but because I was plugged up by oatmeal and gloop-pasta-paste and needed to. However, I wasn't about to over do it. As they watch us, I put one bite in my mouth and flung two bites over my head into the shrubs behind us whenever they looked away. I was beating the system - I was "beating the man"  Hehehe. I  wonder if this is what my older brothers felt like when they burned their draft cards... Markie D was an anarchist.  

Here is the long and the short of it: Remember David Cockerell the 15-year-old human garbage disposal who almost drowned yesterday trying to liberate his bowels? Well, believe it or not - this knucklehead volunteered to eat the remaining 4 gallons of the left-over prunes.  NOT GOOD! Worst was...that some ADULT ALLOWED HIM to scrape out the pot and eat the entire remains of this evil elixir! This guy was either hungry or desperate or both! We packed-up all of our stuff, jammed our personal belonging into our backpacks, threw it into the back of the scout truck and headed down the highway.

As the stiff-shocked, moving-truck rattled down the highway towards the west entrance of Yellowstone National Park - rebellious bellies began to gurgle and rumble and made noises louder than the exhaust of the carbon-monoxide belching truck we traveled in.     SHAKE RATTLE AND ROLL baby!

A rocket ship was about to be sent to the moon and yet the height of our technology, was a whinny little doorbell buzzer someone had brilliantly installed in the back of the moving van, as an emergency communication with those in the front cab.

A couple guys pee'd out of the back, trying to relieve themselves as usual, but two hours later the prunes began to do what prunes do - DRAINO!

I'll tell you right now, "We were no longer The NO POOP TROOP"

Steve had to go. He said that if they didn't stop the truck he would probably explode in some kind of violent eruption akin to what happened at Mount Vesuvius. Alan, the bugler, laid on the buzzer until the scout masters pulled the truck over and even before it came to a complete stop, 3 or 4 guys jumped out of the back and headed into the pine forest.

        The Flood Gates were open wide!

We managed to get inside Yellowstone until the next diarrhea panic attack!

The other "normal" scouts had a bathroom in the back of their luxurious travel-coaches, but for us - it was press the buzzer, jump over the barn-doors and squat behind some shrub and wipe off with nearby branches or pine cones - (something we'd all regret later). I don't think Ronny, Cockerel or Chronister even washed their grubby little hands and it looked like they rubbed their filthy mitts on their uniforms.   "Gross! It was disgusting!" They looked grody and they smelled even worse!"

"Hey, Kissel..what has six wheels and flies?" I asked.
"I don't know. What? An airplane?" he replied
"No" I said "Our troop 32 scout bus."  We laughed, but it was true.


The back of the truck smelled like poop and was now swarming with flies. The good news was that by about our third stop inside the park, the cause of our stomachaches had been liquefied and partially eradicated. 

In the words of Iron Butterfly... IN A GADDA DA VIDA...   

     ...thankfully, it looked like the days of "Prairie Dogging" "Logs, Buicks and bricks were behind us"



With the stuff in our belles that felt like the hot geothermal brew of the Blue Sulfur Springs, poor-poor Cockerel was as eruptive and as reliable as Old Faithful.

We spent a night inside Yellowstone Park and on the 11th began to make our way to Idaho.  This is when the event that led to the embarrassment of the entire Boy Scouts of America - that had Lord Baden Powell rolling over in his grave...happened!

My stomach felt better and we were on the road again so "I was a happy boy." However, this inexplicable euphoric feeling might have had something to do with the fact that I chose to travel with my head hanging out of the back of the truck, inhaling the toxic fumes in order to keep from smelling, Ronny, Cockerel and Chronister...

Next, my premonition comes true: Our Scout Masters worst nightmare and the unfortunate serious of events in the not-so-good middle part of our summer adventure...

...MMA cage fighting and the Highway Patrol escort.  In the mean time we pretended to be hippies and got all psychedelic rocking out on air guitars to Iron Butterfly - We were from Venice and had a reputation to uphold.    

The Venice Invasion part II: The Scoop on the No Poop Troop!

(continued) Star-Date: July 8th 1969

All of us crazy Boy Scouts who had dizzy-heads and bloated-stomachs in the back of the converted Boy Scout Troop 32 "truck" (suffering brain and nervous system disorders from carbon-monoxide poisoning) were singing the words to new Fifth Dimension song at the top of our voices - mostly out of tune and completely out of rhythm. No matter how bad we sounded, no one either really seemed to care... or possessed the right mind to discern just how bad the cacophony really was. We were high on fumes and jacked up about the thought of the Apollo 9 moon launch...eight days from now.

When the moon is in the Seventh House

And Jupiter aligns with Mars

Then peace will guide the planets

And love will steer the stars

This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius

Age of Aquarius

Aquarius! Aquarius!

At the part of song where we bellowed the words "Aquarius," for some unknown reason Ricky ripped off his shirt as if mankind had reach the pinnacle of evolution that had inspired Cockerel to pull down his pants and "moon" the travel-coach full of the "regular" boy scouts who were passing us on the way to the National Jamboree.

 

(Here is a picture of the Boy Scout "truck" in our front yard - just behind the motley crew to the right)



"Those poor suckers" we thought about the other kids who had to travel in the confines of solemn order, stuck in a seat, on air-conditioned bus -heavily scrutinized by those in authority. Sure, we may have had headaches and stomachaches, "but, boy did we have it good!"

  We were from Venice and we were proud! 

To reiterate where we were last time, I mentioned the diabolical plan by our scoutmasters to solve the problem of mass constipation. The problem ingloriously came to light in the paste-pasta dinner-rebellion and subsequently by the fact that we had almost lost David Cockerel.

We were camped by a small lake just outside Rock Springs Wyoming on the extended detour we had planned on the way to Farragut State Park in Idaho.  Last night for dinner we had spaghetti again. AND AGAIN the noodles were not rinsed and the stuff was like gloppy paste which no one could swallow one more bite of it (except Cockerel).

Steve took his plate and pushed it down on top of Ronny's plate, sticking the two plates together. In solidarity, Philip and Chronister and James and Ricky and I all followed suit and did the same thing. I'm pretty sure this had to be a Guinness World record, and if not, a Ripley's Believe It or Not  FOR REAL!  NO LIE!

TRUTH...We stuck seven plates of spaghetti together and turned the whole shooting-match upside down. Kissel, held it from the bottom plate, which was now on top and shook it up and down and ALL SEVEN PLATES STUCK TOGETHER!

To invent something with this much tensile-glue-strength required a million-dollar laboratory and advance degrees in chemistry... and THIS STUFF WAS IN OUR INTESTINES and it wasn't about to come outany time soon! We were plugged up and bloated and not one of us had taken a poop since we left Venice.  Anyway, we affectionately called Cockerel, who was 2-years-older than me and about 5 times my size, our "human garbage disposal." This dude scraped the remains of everyone's plates. It just seemed like he could never get enough food. The "glue-factor" didn't seem to deter his appetite at all! After we were done marveling at the sticking power of this gloppy-pasta, he stopped us in the middle of our rebellion from throwing the stuff away and ate about 15 pounds of the leftover goop that should have been incinerated.

The next day, the poor fella swam about 200 yards away from the dock, out into the middle of this murky lake, laden with fresh water algae - all by himself.  No one knew what he was doing out there.

I think he swam out all by himself, so he could try to liberate a "floating log fish"...i.e take a poop!

Cockerel just couldn't manage to deliver the package, short of a "Caesarean Section" and got so tired of pushing that he didn't have the strength to make it back and started freaking out. Unfortunately, I happened to be on the dock and since my Eagle Scout older brother was a water polo legend and swimmer at Saint Monica's High school he had taught me how to swim and some basic life guard skills. I didn't want to go, but no one else was close enough, besides Chronister, and he was completely hopeless. I pulled everything off, down to my skivvies and went out for the 15-year-old who was flailing and splashing and desperately crying out for help. He had gone down twice already and I knew I had to get there quick, thinking he would be a goner by his third time underwater.

I managed to grab him under one arm and around the neck and proceeded to drag him back, face-up, to the shore where the entire troop was now standing watching the spectacle. When I got within about 4 feet of the shoreline, a couple of the Senior Patrol Leaders grabbed Cockerel from me and dragged him up onto the beach.  Never mind the fact that his trunks were down around his ankles, he looked like one of those whales that was dying and had tried to beach itself.

             IT WAS NOT A PRETTY PICTURE BY ANY STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION.  

I had already touched his naked body and didn't want anything to do with him, but the older scouts didn't seem to know what to do - so I put my foot under his back and rolled him on his side - just in case he had any water in his lungs.  He coughed! Water came out! He lived! Yeah me...maybe I'd get some kind of merit badge for this?

Anyway, the Scout Masters interrogated him about violating the "buddy system" and wanted to know why he was in the middle of the lake with his shorts off all by himself.  This is when they found out that he was trying to take a poop, but couldn't squeeze it out.

Later that evening was the top-secret tribunal.

The two Scout Masters sat at a table with a sheet of paper and a pen while the the Senior Patrol Leaders had us sequestered in a single file line on the other side of the Scout truck.  After each interrogation, the Scout Masters shouted, "Next!" and a Senior Patrol Leaders walked around the truck and to the foldout card table that was like appearing before a judge at court.

They had a paper in front of them with a line drawn down the middle. On top of one column were the capital letters "BM" and on the other side was written "No BM" with names written on both sides. In hushed voices they quietly asked, if I had taken a BM. I didn't know if a BM was a good thing or a bad thing. It was all so serious. I didn't know whether it was admitting to stealing something like Building Materials or Bacon. My Aunt was a Catholic Nun that had something to do with BVM. That's all I know, and I wasn't about to admit to anything that I didn't do!  I didn't take a thing! I passed the secret test and they wrote my name down on the "No BM" side of the paper.  "NEXT!" They yelled as I was collared the higher ranking boy scout and shuffled into the group that had been through the line so far.



Kissel asked, "Well?"
"Well, what?" I replied.
"Well, what did you say?"
"I said no, of course... I didn't take anything.. besides I don't even know what a BM is.
"Neither, did I, but Chronister said it had to do something with taking a poop"
"Well, why didn't they just say so?"
"I think that's how they say it, if your from Mar Vista or if you're one of those kids on those real buses."
"OHHHHHHHHHHHH...." I said, struck with fresh revelation "Why can't they just be normal like us and say poop like everyone else in the world?" I asked rhetorically and got a lot of shoulder shrugs.



In the morning, the Scout Masters had a big surprise planned for Cockerel and for all of the kids whose names were listed on the " No BM" side of the paper.

Do I need to mention Venice was coming to a town near you? Do I need to mention anything about Mount Vesuvius? Do I even need to say that this is where things got even worse?  But let me tell you this...this is how we earned our police escort out of Yellowstone National Park.

"Harmony and understanding

Sympathy and trust abounding

No more falsehoods or derisions

Golden living dreams of visions...."

         "Uh.... Not so much!" 

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