My younger son's Boy Scout troop had a camp out this weekend, the last until next Fall, since their major, weeklong, summer camp is coming up in July and they won't have any meetings until school starts and everyone's back from vacation. The previous one had been cancelled for lack of interest – fortunately, as it turned out, since the weather that weekend was unseasonably cold and wet. I was going to go along on the earlier, cancelled one, so figured I'd better make this one. I wanted to make sure Eric finished all the requirements needed for advancement to First Class Scout, and this was the last chance for a while.

This weekend's camp out was pretty good, as those things go. Weather was nice, though a little chilly at night. I didn't get a lot of sleep, partly because of the cold, and partly because of the uncomfortable cot I slept on. I'm getting too old for this kind of thing, as the refrain goes. The adult leaders got those boys who needed advancement or merit badge items taken care of to clear them up between breakfast and lunch, then the two other men and I sat around and talked the rest of the day Saturday while the boys played "capture the flag" and other disorganized games.

They'd originally planed to go the Wilmot (Wisconsin) Speedway at the Bristol County Fairgrounds for the races, like we did last year, but the boys voted to stay in camp and play capture the flag some more. I was just as happy about this, since modified fuel racing is not really my cup of tea. I also didn't like having to dodge the mud balls thrown up by the tires from the track; they wet down the dirt to suppress the dust, but that has its own problems, among them the possibility of very dirty hair. We could hear the roar of the unmufflered engines pretty well, anyway, as the track is only about three miles away from the campground. I can't imagine what it must be like for people who live closer -- sure would hate to be trying to sell my house if it's anywhere in the area when the races are going on.

The campsite itself was secluded and, while the boys were out running around, quiet. The major disadvantage was that the latrine was about a quarter mile away. It was good exercise, I suppose, but I got a blister from the boots I was wearing. The campground is just over the border in Wisconsin, about 30 miles from my home in northern Illinois, and is an old sand/gravel pit from which much of the fill for the construction of I-94, about 40 years ago, was taken. The piles of sand, up to about 50' high, are now covered in grass, low shrubs and fairly large trees (30' to 40' tall), mostly poplar. Good war game grounds.

The introduction to the Boy Scout Handbook now contains a disclaimer that "the Boy Scouts is not in any way connected with the military and is not a military-type institution." This is probably a leftover from the anti-war movement of the '60s and '70s. Oddly, one of the troops camping out this weekend looked like some kind of militia group; they all wore camouflage pants and t-shirts and were "fighting" a pretty organized battle with Super Soaker squirt guns. One of the leaders (or a very big scout) was wearing a complete set of Air Force battle fatigues including helmet and combat boots. Even our group seemed to have an over-abundance of cammy shirts and pants. Beats me. Times change.

Our Senior Patrol Leader, who, if you've never been a Scout, is the top youth leader, just under the adult leadership, was wearing battle dress, too, but the military feel was a little offset by his red and white mohawk hair style. He just graduated from a local high school and red and white are the school colors. His mother painted the red stripes down the sides of the center white stripe on his roach in the shape of a "V," for Vikings, the school team. It's sure not my father's Boy Scouts.

We got back about noon on Sunday and I was able to take a shower to sluice off the layer of dirt, sweat and squashed mosquitoes. Tried to take a nap, but the neighbor kid kept calling to see if Eric would come over to play. About 6pm Eric and I went back to the church where his Scout troop is based so he could participate in a "Court of Honor" for one of the scouts, who was being made an Eagle Scout. Part of the ceremony was led by a previously inducted Eagle of the troup, who had a small goatee, spiked bleached-blonde hair and two gold earrings. In the same ear. Oh, well.

We met my wife for dinner at a local restaurant afterward, then I drove to Six Flags Great America and waited at the employee's gate to pick up my other boy after he got off work at 9pm. Got to bed about 10 then up at 5:30 for work. Not getting a whole lot accomplished today.

The gun

"When I was twelve," my dad said, "I did probably the most stupid thing of my life."

"Yeah?" We were sitting in my folks' house, the one I grew up in, he in his recliner, I in a chair at the dining table. I was recording his reminiscences, something my wife had suggested (and I'm forever grateful for the suggestion), for posterity. He wasn't nervous about it at all, as I had been afraid he would be, but just ignored the portable cassette recorder I had sitting on the table. "What happened?" I queried, though he really needed no prompting to continue. He really liked to talk, something my children have commented on in me – must be genetic. He was in his eighties but I don’t have that excuse.

"Well, y'see, my grandfather, he lived across the road from us and he had this old musket. I think he got it from his grandfather, old Solomon Adams. He came to Michigan from Schenectady New York, oh, about 1830 or so. Married a Pennsylvania Dutch girl. Solomon, that is.

"Anyways, Granddad had this musket. It was an old muzzle-loader and took black powder. He even had the mold for makin' the lead shot it used. Big old thing; must'a been four foot long and weighed a ton. We had guns on the farm, of course, did a little hunting, but they were all newer rifles that used cartridges. This thing was really impressive. Had a thick wooden stock with a brass plate on the butt and a hexagonal barrel.

"So, one day when I was about twelve, Granddad and Grandma had gone into town. Now, I knew about the gun and knew where he kept it, and I'd wanted to try it for a long time, but Granddad always said I was too little for it. I figured now that I was big enough, but didn't want to ask him, just in case. Figured I'd just take it out into the woods and try it out and nobody'd be the wiser." He paused to get a drink from the cup sitting on the stack of old newspapers and magazines piled next to his recliner.

"Did you have powder and shot for it?" I glanced at the recorder to make sure it was still running and took another cookie from the plate my mother had put on the table. Fig Newtons, I think – Ma didn’t bake much anymore, fortunately.

"Granddad had a small keg of powder out in a shed. Used to use it for blowin' out stumps, I guess, until you could get dynamite at the hardware store in town. That was a lot safer and more convenient, you see. I knew where it was, 'cause he'd warned us kids about it several times. Didn't have any shot, but I just wanted to fire it, not really shoot at anything. Just figured I'd pack in a little wadding and fire it blank."

"How'd you know how to load it?"

"Oh, Granddad sometimes fired it off on the Fourth of July or New Years Eve and let us watch. He kept it pretty clean and seemed to know what he was doin'. Maybe they used it for hunting when they first moved up to West Branch in the 1870s, I dunno. I'd watched him carefully the last time, this was about August, so he'd shot it on the Fourth, I guess. Anyway, I thought I knew what to do and how to do it. Pretty foolish, I guess.” He looked over at me. “You do some pretty stupid things when you’re young.”

“Yeah.” I hoped he was speaking of his own youth. I thought I’d covered my tracks pretty well. “Do you want a cookie?” I asked, holding out the plate.

“Naw. Hate Fig Newtons, but that’s the only kind your mother’ll buy anymore.” He took a stick of gum out of his shirt pocket and unwrapped it. “Want some gum?”

“Uh, no, thanks.” Dad had started chewing gum about ten years before, when he gave up snuff. I thought it was pretty remarkable that at his age he still had most of his own teeth. He swore that chewing tobacco was what killed the decay bacteria, but Ma had finally gotten tired of trying to get the dribble stains out of his shirts, so he switched to gum. “So, uh, you’d gotten the gun and you knew where the powder was kept…” I prompted.

“Oh, yeah. Well, I put a little powder in a paper and twisted it up, then got some pieces of rag, for wadding. I’d seen Granddad do this. He said they used to use a little piece of buckskin, but we didn’t have any of that. Rag worked ok, though. Then I went out into the woods behind the barn to look for a place to shoot. There was a clearing back a ways that I figured was far enough that nobody’d hear it.” He tucked the gum down inside his lower lip, where he used to keep the Copenhagen wad. Habits die hard, I guess.

“I poured in a little of the powder. Maybe a little too much, I don’t know. I had to guess, since I couldn’t ask anyone. Then a piece of rag and tamped it down with the ram rod. I’d watched Granddad do it. You have to sort of toss the rod down and then let go of it so your hand goes down past the muzzle before it hits the bottom, in case it sets off the powder. Granddad said he once saw someone lose most of the skin off his hand when he hung onto the rod and the gun fired it straight up into a tree.”

“Ouch,” I said.

“Yeah. Anyway, I got it loaded and put the rod back under the barrel. Then I propped it on a log while I primed the pan. I’d watch him do this, too and thought I had it about right. I tried to lift it up and aim it at a tree on the other side of the clearing, but, man, that thing was heavy! I couldn’t even get it up level, much less hold it there to fire it. And here’s where the stupid part comes in. I sat down against a log and put the butt into my stomach to hold it steady, then pulled the trigger.”

“Oof!” I said. “Not too bright, that’s for sure. Did it hurt much?”

“Oh, I thought I'd die. You got any cookies left?”

“Sure, here.”

“Thanks.”

I was, oh, probably about ten or eleven when " Mack" came to stay with us. He was the watchman at the gravel pit across the road from our farm and lived in the back of an old truck parked just inside the gate. I guess he was probably in his seventies at this time, though with his grizzled hair and white stubble he looked older. He always wore Levis, held up by a wide leather belt with a big buckle, and plaid flannel shirts. He was bow-legged and walked with a Walter Brennan limp. I remember admiring his embroidered cowboy boots a lot.

The gravel pit was not a large one, maybe a dozen acres of sand and gravel piles among various sized holes, the largest one about 2-3 acres in size and actually deep enough to contain fresh water. The rest of the pits were smaller and had only a couple feet of stagnant rainwater in the bottom, but provided us with hours of summer fun chasing frogs and throwing the plentiful large rocks in to watch the splashes. In the winter we kids would spend entire days sledding down the steep sides of the piles or skating on the frozen ponds, though this was after Mack moved across the road to our place so the pit was unguarded. Fortunately, none of us was ever hurt there. I can't imagine letting my kids hang around a place like that, but it's a set of treasured childhood memories for me.

Sometime in the mid-Fifties, "Old Betham," the owner of the gravel pit, which was never much of an operation, decided he could no longer afford a watchman and Mack was let go. The old man had no place to go. I don't know what his background was or what family he might have had. He always told us he was from Oklahoma and had been a cowboy; his full "name" was "Cowboy Mack " and the few visitors he had always called him that, the "Mack" coming from McGowan, his last name. My father, a gregarious sort, often stopped over to talk to Mack, or Mack hobbled across the road to visit us, so it was natural that Dad should invite him to stay at our place. Natural for my dad, at any rate.

Betham agreed to let Mack have the truck and would even help us get it off the property. I vaguely remember them towing it across the road on its flat tires behind an old yellow bulldozer. We parked it behind the log cabin my folks had built on the property to live in when they bought it in the late '30s. There, Mack had easy access to the old outhouse and we could wire up the truck for electric lights. He got water in a bucket from the outside spigot on our stone well pit. Mack didn't really have any formal arrangement with us, though he helped out around the farm, fixing fences or hoeing the garden, as he could, and got a few vegetables or some of Ma's home-canned produce to eke out his social security check. He asked us kids to call him "Gramp" and gave us each a quarter a week to do so.

Mack's truck was a 1930's vintage moving van with a 12' by 8' box fixed up as a "bed-sitting" room. It was a cozy place, with four or five wooden steps up to the back door, a small cast-iron stove for heat and cooking, refrigerator, bed and dresser, small table and a pair of chairs. He had decorated it with left-over wallpaper donated by my mother and pictures cut from old Look or Life magazines. It was insulated with layers of newspaper stuffed behind the plywood inner lining. Many of these newspapers were still there when my brother and I finally tore the truck apart 40 years later as we cleaned up the farm after my father's death and Ma's move to the nursing home. Interesting reading it was, too, and the demolition took quite a bit longer than it should have.

Mack eventually moved from the truck into somewhat larger quarters when we fixed up an old outbuilding nearby and now had two rooms, the narrow kitchen being separate, with a kerosene stove and heater. He was also able to have a sofa and my brother, sister, or I would sometimes spend the night on it, having dinner and playing cards or checkers with "Gramp" on winter evenings. Another thing I can't imagine allowing my kids to do these days, but I guess times were more innocent then.

I'm not sure when Mack left us, or under what circumstances. I remember hearing sometime later, I think when I was in college, then he had died, alone, in a hotel room somewhere.

How many lives do we touch, either directly or indirectly? Mack was probably born in the late 1870s, about the same time as the grandfathers I never knew. His influence on my life, though not overt or obvious, is nonetheless real. The way I raise my children, and perhaps, eventually, interact with my grandchildren, is and will be affected by having known him. My children have a fair chance of living into the 2070s or beyond, their lives also influenced, through me, by an old cowboy born 200 years earlier.