The Park

You know how summer mornings are damp and hot with the darkness still hanging around the woods. Inside his old log cabin my Granddad and I would finish an early breakfast and he'd give my hair a tussle, tell me to "Be back by dark", and head to the outhouse.

It was 1951. I was 6.

And that whole State Park he managed was my playground. The lake and the woods and the valleys and the hills and the squirrels and rabbits and raccoons and deer and turtles and birds and bugs of all kinds.

I could take off down the shore through the pines and around the marsh that seemed to go on forever. I've been back and it didn't, but it was scary fun in those early mornings. Deep throated bullfrogs, whippoorwills calling, and crickets chirping.

In some places you had to hold on to a limb or a root to keep from slipping in cause wet jeans were noisy and wouldn't dry till noon.

It was a luxury I didn't recapture till the Beartooth Wilderness some 40 years later.

Sure there were trails, but the few city folks who came for a picnic or to see the woods would walk a ways down a trail, pat themselves on the back for their bravery, and head back to their cars. You could watch them from up in the bushes, and the game was for them never to know you were there.

Forget what's crawling on your leg and toss a rock or break a little twig. Anything to startle the quiet. Incredible how people who thought nothing of the traffic and crime where they lived could be so nervous in the country.

It was a good game that may even have served a purpose.

At 5 I'd followed him all those summer days, and at 6 I could be on my own. At that age, when you're out by yourself and kill a copperhead that's 2 or 3 feet longer than you are tall with a pocket knife and a rock you begin to think you can handle most anything.

The confusing part is feeling bad about it later, and it becomes the first of many things you don't tell anyone about. You live with it.

Getting Ready to Go

• Order of the Arrow

Maybe because of The Park, Scouting became important to me. Didn't know it would be ... didn't know anything about Scouting. But at 7 or so, at a PTA meeting, my mother volunteered my father to establish the first Cub Scout Pack in our little town of 800. He did it with great willingness and humor and before long there was a very active group.

He set up the first Boy Scout Troop in our town as well, and then the first Explorer Post. Each one happened just as I reached the age they required.

Merit Badges, a God and Country award, and some great times camping and at summer camp all seemed to lead up to being elected by our Explorers to the Order of the Arrow.

The "Tap Out" for the OA is a solemn and impressive night time ceremony, and the final part is being blindfolded and taken to a spot way out in the woods and left by yourself with a match and a blanket and told to build a fire and at some point the next morning find your way back. Fun all around.

I built a fire, rolled up my blanket to keep out the critters, and found my way back to the building the leaders were staying in within a couple hours. Spooked them good with a notched roll of thread on one of the back windows.

Went back out into the woods and watched them try to find what'd caused the ruckus. When they finally came to my site I was curled up in the blanket and had let the fire go out. I could hear them coming through the woods ... trying not to use their flashlights to create the surprise ... for a hundred yards or so as a head or an arm would catch a limb. They were hiding their glee particularly well.

Next morning I asked the OA Leader for a minute, and followed him out onto the porch of the mess hall. I told him I'd tic tacked them last night, and that I meant no disrespect to the OA or to the ceremony. He thanked me for telling him, gave me a shot on the arm, and then started laughing. Asked me how I found my way back so easy in that big woods and I told him about the Park and that the tough part was finding my blanket again in the dark.

We saw each other at Scout/Explorer events for the next year or two, and he always had some special situation or demonstration he'd ask me to volunteer for.

Last thing he asked me to lead was the "Owa, Tagu, Siam" ceremony. It's chanted repeatedly late at night by a hundred or so very serious Scouts, with a bon fire raging and with proper bowing and reverence by all.

As each Scout finally, miraculously, spiritually, individually receives the true meaning of the ceremony, he walks down front to whisper it to an assistant and he can go back to his tent.

Then we were all back to High School or College, and moving on.

• Doc Counsilman

Not much happened in high school ... some baseball, dating, sock hops, "going steady", and a record setting score on the SATs that shocked everyone on the planet ... until late in my senior year when my best friend, who'd graduated the year before, died in a car wreck coming back from seeing his girlfriend the night before he was leaving for Air Force basic training.

I was accepted by Indiana University for a very good reason: in 1963 the rule was they had to accept in-State residents and at least give them a chance. I found three great things there:

1. two part time jobs ... 1 in a traditional men's clothing store where I learned about up-market apparel (went to the interview in jeans and a t-shirt, and in the 3 years I worked there the manager never explained why he hired me over all the Fraternity types applying), and the other as a night watchman at a four-apartment-building construction site walking around in the dark protecting tools and equipment carrying a shotgun they furnished;

2. a terrific young woman who was a Buyer at the best women's store in town, and who introduced me to her brother-in-law back from the Marine Corps ... more in a minute; and

3. Four Wall Handball.

Having decided baseball was not my future ... that curve ball thing was just not fair to a kid who'd grown up in a small town and had never seen one before ... a coach suggested I try Handball. He thought I'd love the "kill shot". Had something to do with the conversation I'd had with two opposing baseball players when they decided to take out their frustration in the parking lot after a game we'd won by a rather large margin.

Other players, some coaches, and some officials showed up when it was mostly all over to stop what I thought at the time was a proper discussion. I remember hearing things like "boys will be boys", because jocks back then had to do something particularly awful to actually get in trouble, and besides, only the one who started it needed a bit of medical attention. His...