Ford,

Heck, you're MONTHS older than me, LoL - what are the odds? Where abouts - Dubuque area? Born in Davenport myself, but grew up on the other side of the river. This part of the country has changed less than most but it HAS changed - certainly not entirely for the better, as you wrote. Some good in there, too, but it's hard for me to remember that sometimes.

When I was a scout, we didn't have stoves (my family had a Coleman 2 burner since before I can remember, and I'm the eldest of my sibs). Everything was cooked in the patrol cooksets or our personal messkits over open fires. We got wet, we got cold (oh, man did we get cold!), we had to scrub the heck out of those cooksets, we had canvas "Baker tents", and man, did we have fun! Those tents and cooksets were the only equipment our troop owned. Somehow, we survived (shoot, it was so much fun I'm grinning at the memories as I write this).

I just spent over $2,000 in the last couple of weeks re-equipping our troop - the last shipment is due in tomorrow afternoon. If that sounds like a lot, it's not - we bought "best value" stuff, not "most expensive" and we're a modest-sized troop. (Oh, and I haggled discounts from every vendor or went elsewhere.) The boys earned the money fair and square and we're lightening up our tread a LOT - even our "front country" camping is getting a lot lighter.

We've fiddled around with it (going lighter) using every bit of stuff we can scrounge and borrow out of my storeroom and a couple of others and the boys love it. I guess that's the key thing - they are having a lot of fun and, darn it, they're learning good things along the way. It's not idyllic by a long shot, but it's the modern equivalent of what it was like for us, and that matters a lot to me. One thing I don't worry about is that our scouts can take care of business if push comes to shove. I hope we're doing good things that will stick with them - I believe we are, but don't take that for granted.

Well, I've wandered way off topic for this forum - Chris K. has been generous, but this ought to move to the Campfire forum.

And where is our intrepid Lousiana Scout who started this thread with a simple question? (A darned good question, I might add.) RC, I wish one of us could SHOW you the answer(s) instead of just writing. Hmmm - seems to me there's a couple of forum members here who are citizens of your fine state - I'm a bit too far up the river from you myself. BTW, I think your SPL did a good thing by having you set up the tents, and personally I'm envious that you got to canoe into the swamp and camp - I would have really enjoyed that. A troop that lets you do things like that is OK in my book, wet wood and hunger aside. How can we help you learn the skill you asked about? (...waiting for Cliff...)

Regards,

Tom