Like most red-blooded American boys, Tim and I joined the Cub Scouts. This was very significant due to the fact that since the 1^st Grade, this was one of the VERY FEW times we were allowed in anything together in any organized event. We were in the 1^st grade together in the same classroom, but from the 2^nd grade through High School, we were NEVER in the same classroom again! ONE of us was bad enough let alone the TWO of us! Even in High School they wouldn’t let both of us in Vo Ag together.  I had to take Industrial Arts, which was a real “drag” since I wanted to be a farmer and Industrial Arts was a class that groomed people to work on some assembly line "sweat shop "their whole lives.  

 

When we first joined the Cub Scouts, our mother took Tim and I to Penney’s in Norwalk to buy our Cub Scout uniforms. The “uniforms” department was downstairs. We went down to find our pants and shirt sizes and got the yellow bandana we wore around our necks with a gold tie ring with the Cub Scouts logo on it and the various other swell accoutrements that went along with it. We really felt “neat” about our new Cub Scout uniforms and wanted to wear them EVERYWHERE. Our mother didn’t let us because she was probably concerned about having extra clothes washing to do and that she would no doubt have to replace our worn out uniforms before the next Cub Scout meeting. We looked forward to the 1-day a week we went to a meeting because then we could wear our uniforms to school, which made us feel special!  The meetings were held at Mrs. DeMuth’s house on Mason Road. To my best recollection, they were held on Wednesdays after school. There were only 4 of us in “Den 4”. (See pics below). It cost 10 cents for us to attend the weekly meetings at Mrs. DeMuth’s house. While there, we did crafts and made a lot of “neat” stuff. One time we made “card boxes” and decorated the out side of the wooden box tops with crushed colored eggshells, mine was a butterfly. I don’t recall why I chose a butterfly, but Mrs. Demuth may have had something to do with it. Another time we made took little aluminum plates that turned out to be an ashtray for the “grown ups” at home (or us when no one was home). We bent the circumference like the edges of a pie and used a punch to make indented dots on the bottom. On mine, I made the letter “T” in longhand. This, of course, was the monogram of our last name.

 

In later years, our meetings were moved to Irma Moon's house in Berlin Heights. This presented an ironic "good/bad" situation for our mother. The "good" was that since our meetings were now in town, we could walk to Irma's place after school and then our mother just had make just one trip to pick us up after the meeting. Usually though, we walked home after the meeting. The "bad" was that on the way to Irma's place after school; we would have to go past the "Locker Plant", which was our local grocery store. We would go into the store and spend our dime on candy or pop. Irma always let us come to the meetings even though we didn't have our dimes for the "dues". I imagine that after Tim and I finally got out of the Cub Scouts, that Irma probably presented a huge bill to our mother for back dues. Below is what the bill probably looked like.

 

When we first joined the Cub Scouts, we started out as a Bob Cat. This was the initiation before we became full-fledged Cub Scouts. We got a swell patch for our uniforms and a small gold button with the Bobcat logo on it. We wore the button around school and other places to feel “cool” and proud. At the very first, we had to wear our Bobcat button upside down. I guess this was part of the initiation process until we officially become full-fledged "Bobcats" and be able to walk on our feet again instead of our hands (so we could show off our pin so people could read it. I only remembered a small portion of the creed we used to recite for Bobcat and later Cub Scouts, so I cheated and got it off the Cub Scouts web page. It went thusly:

1.     "I .....(name).... promise to do my best
To do my duty to God and my country,
To help other people, and
To obey the Law of the Pack. "

2.     Say the LAW OF THE PACK.  Tell what it means.

"The Cub Scout follows Akela. (Some Indian word)
The Cub Scout helps the pack go.
The pack helps the Cub Scout Grow.
The Cub Scout gives goodwill."

As we progressed into the full Cub Scout level, we did all sorts of rituals, which were as secret as the Masons rituals I suppose. At least we only did this stuff at our meetings and never in public. I could mention some, but I'm afraid that some Cub Scouts would discover where I live and come and extract revenge. I can just see the headlines in the Sandusky Register:

 

"BERLIN HEIGHTS MAN FOUND MURDERED! HUNG UPSIDE DOWN AND MUTALATED BEYOND RECOGNITION. AUTHORITIES SUSPECT FOUL PLAY. There are no suspects at the present time. A blood spattered Cub Scout Handbook was found at the scene.

 

If I recall correctly, the next step was Webelos, which brought another, swell patch to wear on our uniforms. After all that, we FINALLY became full-fledged Cub Scouts! Then we could win either gold or silver arrows to wear on our uniforms. On the pic below, you can note the arrows on our uniforms. These were given out for accomplishing various tasks contained in the Cub Scout Handbook we all received. Upon completion of each task, one of our parents had to sign off on it. I remember one such task was to learn how to tie a tie. Our father tried to show us how to do it, but we repeatedly goofed it up resulting in our father getting very angry with us. Our father wasn’t known for his patience especially when it came to us kids.

 

I remember we were in Den 4, but I don’t recall what pack we were in. We wore a patches of 3 separate numbers on our left shoulder to signify what pack and a separate patch to indicate to the world what den we were in. I remember the pack number having 3 digits and was something like 365 or something. Maybe I’m getting the number mixed up with the days in a year.

 

Another swell thing we did was to participate in the “Pine Wood Derby”. We would buy a kit that had various pieces of wood and we had to do a lot of sanding to shape the car. The wooden wheels were attached with a little tack through the hole in the middle of it.

 

We never joined the Boy Scouts probably because the leaders didn’t want one and/or both of us to be involved. I guess we “slipped” in to the Cub Scouts before they really knew us! There probably were no instructions in the handbook of how to "drum" a kid out of Cub Scouts, so the leaders let us stay in. Apparently, though, they communicated with the Boy Scout leaders not to recruit us.

 

Well… These are just a few of the memories I have about our Cub Scout days. In order to get all the details correct, I could have gone on the Cub Scout Web Site, but I didn’t want this memorandum to be a definitive explanation of the inner workings of the Cub Scouts. I just wanted to relate some of the fragmentary memories I had with the experience and was reminded of it when I found the 2 pics below in some of the dusty boxes from my mother’s mementoes...