Adults, can’t live with ’em, can’t live…
A ten-year-old grows in awareness, step by step.
It was near Lake Ann, just south of Bowden, Ohio. Now it’s been sixty years and I still carry that moment with me.
We’d just moved to Bowden from Columbia, Missouri. My dad just took a new job as manager of an Ace Hardware store that was opening up. He’d worked for Ace in Missouri, and I guess they really liked him.
My name is Marty.
In hind sight it’s a simple thing for me to conclude that moves, besides accommodating critical things of the adult world, will often trample all over the lives of the younger family members. I do understand the necessity of such moves. My dad accepting this promotion was taking our family up a notch in social standing. Eventually a new car, my mom’s shiny new kitchen, was to die for.
So sure, moving and resettling in a new, strange place had its indisputable up side. My sister Betty wasn’t too upset after her first few days in school. She’d just turned 15, and she was budding into the all American beauty. The school football captain introduced himself to her in the hallway, and that was all it took.
She loved it.
For reasons I still cannot explain with any certainty other than thinking it was a smart, proactive move (I’m sure the word proactive was not a part of my thought train), I joined the boy scouts at ten years old.
In the school, the local Boy Scout troop was holding a recruitment meeting and all boys around my age were told to attend the gathering in the gym. In those days, being told to attend a Boy Scout meeting in the school gym was perfectly normal. Today a kid told to do that would cause a scandal upon getting home and telling mommy they had ordered him to attend a Boy Scout gathering.
The Scout Master and his three assistants were ex-military. During the Second World War, they were there. They seemed like pretty good adults. They referred often to when they were in the Army and that push-ups were done like this or that. Again, all of this was perfectly normal.
One funny thing I remember from that first gathering was one assistant arguing with the scoutmaster.
‘Hey Fred, I don’t appreciate you giving me orders, pal, okay? I was a sergeant, so I out rank you even though you’re Scout Master. So don’t go giving me any orders.’
The slightly tougher around the edges man thought he’d said this so that none of us heard.
The adult world showed me its strange sides often enough. What to me and some of my fellow recruits was one of those odd adult things. I couldn’t help perceiving a feeling of ineptness on the part of these adults. It was like these guys weren’t quite ready for leading or teaching young boys my age. Hard to explain.
My family was probably too normal. Parents didn’t drink or smoke, didn’t cuss. If my mom and dad argued, it was about who got to sit next to who in the movie. In hindsight, there had to have been differences on a serious level. I’m thinking this would have been better conditioning for me and my sister. Boy, life later on sure didn’t turn out that way. Everywhere I turned as a kid, I’d run into families loaded full of issues. Mostly manageable stuff, but once or twice there was a dad who was violent or a mother who walked around screaming at my friend as she chugged from a bottle.
The funny thing was with all of this, it never entered me to judge a friend’s family. It wouldn’t have felt right. One of my mother’s often repeated lines was one I think she got from her Irish mother. ‘There for the grace of god go I…’ Over the years, this came to have greater meaning.
I guess it was that at ten I’d already noticed adults and how, as guides, they were questionable. Incompetent might have been a word I may have applied were my vocabulary that of a sixteen-year-old.
By the time the scout meet was over, I’d signed my name on a sheet of paper and was told to bring three dollars tomorrow to the admissions office, explaining it was for the Boy Scouts. At meetings’ end, the Scout master issued some orders to his assistants. The assistant who’d complained earlier said a couple of things under his breath at the Scout master.
The orders were to have us all ‘fall in’ and salute. We had to recite what was then an unintelligible Boy Scout oath. I noticed just the older boys, some of them wearing very cool Explorer uniforms, could go through the oath, word for word.
The next meeting, they had brand new uniforms for recruits to pick up. One kid stood back with a doubtful look on his face. He told me he’d have to get permission from his dad first. Most, though, quickly changed into the new military like greenish outfit. My pants were too long, but my mom quickly sewed them up. Pretty soon, two kids kidded about the leggings I wore over my shoes. Turns out it was just me!
‘So Marty, this might have been a good lesson for you.’ My Dad started in.
‘You got persuaded to buy something you probably don’t need, like the leggings. We don’t know what the scout leaders have arranged with the scout supply shop, do we? But be sure that everything a young scout signs for, like new scout supplies, the leaders might make some money. Do you see?
‘Hmm, not really Dad. He was sure nice about it, he…’
‘Oh sure Marty, in a way it’s nothing really too wrong, but it could’ve been handled a little different. That’s all. Hey, just let it go and who knows, someday you may be glad you got those leggings.’
My dad told me not to accept everything the Scout master said we needed. To look around and see what the others were wearing. I sensed again more things about the adult world. Swindled was what came to mind, but no doubt I used a different word.
A good lesson in not being gullible.
All was good, though. I liked Boy Scouts and before long I had my Tenderfoot badge. WW2 and the Korean War were still very much in the minds of people. Many boys, including me, pretended to play combat in the jungles of the South Pacific, or maybe the cold German mountains fighting the ‘Krauts’. Unfortunately, we all learned certain terms like ‘japs’ for the Japanese enemy, and of course, the Krauts. At some point much later did I learn Krauts came from an awful green salad food the Germans ate.
Of course, we had no way as kids to imagine what some of these men actually saw and went through.
We met once a week, which was later changed to once every two weeks.
They announced a huge event during a meeting. There was going to be what was called a camporee near Lake Ann and there were going to be over fifty other Scout troops. I’d never been to such an event. Preparations felt much like what I imagined going off to war felt like. The camping event was to last three days.
That was a long time away from home at that age.
After climbing out of our massive army trucks, which we thought were way beyond cool, we set up our camp. I was sharing a pup tent with another guy around my age, Robert. Robert was nice enough, but had I my choice, I would’ve shared a tent with Billy. The Scout Master, for whatever reason, just assigned us all our camp mates, end of story.
Almost as far as I could see, which was just up a grassy rise, the grounds were covered with tents, mostly two man tents but some bigger gathering ones where there were chairs and kitchen equipment. I was our first day and many of the parents were there leaving off their boy scout.
I told my parents they didn’t have to drive the twenty miles out to drop me off. Most important, though, was that I would not miss getting to ride in the Army trucks the National Guard provided for the event.
A gravel parking area was where we jumped off the truck. Off to one side was Lake Ann. Far out, I could see a boat pulling a skier. The sun reflected off the surface.
That morning was arrival time and everybody got set up. I and Robert put up our pup tent in no time. We even dug a rain trench around the base outside. I still hadn’t met Roberts’s dad. He told Robert he’d be driving out later to say goodbye.
In short time I was given another peak into the weird adult world. Years later, I’ve surmised what happened that noon as the result of insecurity, on the part of the adult, Roberts’s dad. It was as if the adult was lacking something. This was what stood out in my mind. At the time, I just felt he was stingy and I hope I thought of him as an asshole.
Robert and I were resting in the pup tent. A slight mid summers drizzle sent everyone off to their tents or the larger kitchen tents. Robert rummaged through his backpack and brought out two sandwiches. ‘Hey Marty, want a peanut butter and jelly or ham and cheese?’
‘Hey thanks Robert! Wow, I forgot to bring anything. Oh, my mom put these potato chips in my knapsack, want one.’ I flipped one over to him.
We were halfway through the sandwiches when Robert’s father appeared at our tents entry.
‘Hey Dad! Sure is good to see you. Did you just get here? Geez, Dad, Robert and I are finishing my sandwiches. I would’ve saved one for…’
‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute here Robert, wait a minute. Is that my sandwich your friend is eating?’ The rather slight man with shiny hair combed back blurted out. No hello, no how are you? Just basically fuck you and fuck this kid, too.
I thought I was going to be sick. Instantly aware I’d just eaten Roberts’s father’s sandwich.
‘Jesus, Robert, so what am I going to do? Nothing to eat? What do I do now? Hey kid, you gonna give me my sandwich back? Yeah right. Didn’t think so. Yeah, you just keep stuffing your face. So you just took the sandwich from my son…’
‘Hey dad, I didn’t, he…’
‘Quiet Robert, just quiet…’
There was an unmasked malevolence.
I put the sandwich down next to me on my sleeping bag. I stopped chewing and just stared at the spectacle before me. I fought the damn tears. This guy wouldn’t get the satisfaction. But I felt like a piece of shit. I’d eaten this guy’s sandwich, and he was much bigger than I was.
Yeah, of course, this factor was always sorted out. As a boy in my neighborhood, one thing one did was to check out if you could handle a newly arrived kid, the new competition. Simple fact of life.
If you felt that the new guy wasn’t much of a threat, you acted accordingly. But if the new guy looked like he could beat the crap out of you, then one acted in a way that wasn’t a threat. Sure, it’s like dogs meeting for the first time, just like that.
Some you probably could handle, some not.
I didn’t know if the adult was going to bitch slap me or what.
But Roberts’s father had stepped out of the wise father role to one of a thug in a movie. Get this, and I’ll never forget it. The adult even spoke like an old time Chicago gangster! Not kidding. My young mind just jumped to all kinds of conclusions.
Years went by and on the rare occasions that event rose to my awareness, I sorted it out. The ‘take the higher road’ part of me accepted that the skinny gangster type suffered in ways I didn’t know. His wife was probably two-timing him with someone who could satisfy her. How common is that? So he had deep issues.
Some might even defend the guy that he was hungry and some shit kid ate his sandwich. I’d gently suggest review the facts offered again…
But what stood out the clearest was that this guy was a class a asshole. I learned that day and many times after that; the world crawls with these assholes. Best thing to do is to avoid them, walk away. But sometimes you can’t. There are the times young or older when you have to stand firm.
I learned lots from lessons such as this one.
I didn’t tell this adult, poor Robert’s father, to go F himself. The man took Robert out for a long walk and by the time Robert and I saw each other at the dining tent, his dad was long gone.
We all have our significant encounters, good and bad. This one for me was one of those watershed times that shed a lot of light on the dark and chronically confused world of adults.
I still don’t trust them as far as I can throw them.
