I turned 12 in 1970. This would be for me the decade of adventure, in more ways than one!
When I turned 6, my parents enrolled me in Cub Scouts. I enjoyed the den meetings, there were my friends, and all sorts of crafty type things. It was a good time with Mom, who attended all the meetings with me, and was even the Den Mother for a while. But there were also campouts with Dad.
But by 1970, Cub Scouts were behind me, and I was in the Boy Scouts. The number of campouts increased. I especially enjoyed the ones where Dad joined us, but by now, Dad didn’t attend all of them. Our Scout Master had a friend who owned a plot of wilderness land down near the confluence of the Platte and Missouri rivers. We’d park on the side of the road, and then climb a fence, and hike in to the woods about a quarter mile. There was a stream that curved back and forth through the area, forming three or four good camp-sites, each separated by a bend of the stream. The area was heavily wooded. We’d go down several times a year, where we would hike, and play various games. We learned lots of “scout-craft” stuff… building fires, cooking, tracking. It was here, in my twelfth year that I learned more than our Scouting leaders would have wanted me to learn! I shall leave the details to your imagination!
My Scoutmaster was also our next door neighbor, Bud. Bud was great with the kids. We knew we could count on him. In addition to his emphasis on camping, he wanted to make sure we were fit, and so many of our outings involved “bike hikes”. We’d set out on our bicycles and ride up to 25 miles! Some of those hikes culminated in campouts.
In 1973, he took 6 of us on a special trip for 3 weeks. It began in Chichen Itza. We toured the Mayan ruins near there, then flew on to Guatemala City. In Guatemala, we toured in to the interior of the country, up in the mountains, to view the volcanos, and more ruins. I remember we rode on a local bus, complete with chickens and the like. We chatted in stilted english and spanish with the old men on the bus. We travelled in a mini-bus down to the coast to romp in the ocean. And we spent 2 full days fighting “the crud”. Six boys and an adult leader all cramped in 2 rooms in a run down hotel fighting food poisoning or something… with toilets that didn’t work! From Guatemala, we travelled to Mexico City, then Taxco, then Guadelajar, down to Acapulco, then back to Mexico City. Finally home, via New Orleans, and a drive from there up to Omaha.
In the 70’s my brothers moved away from home, one to California, one to Missouri and then from there on to California. I attended a Boarding School for three years. At the end of that time, before transferring to a public school in Omaha, one of our teachers “Pere B.” took a group of us from his French classes to France for 3 weeks. We made a brief sojourn in to Italy and another in to Switzerland. We saw the Loire Valley, and Normandy, the French Riviera. I turned 18 that summer, while in France. Father took us all out and partied. And I got drunk! But not for the first time. The first was on the flight from the US on an Air India 747.
My memories of High School aren’t all that significant. My boarding school career was not all that memorable. I enjoyed my time there, but it was also a living hell for me. Early on, by the end of my first month, I’d been labelled “Fag”, and that label stayed with me. Students took every opportunity to mock me, and to beat me. By the end of that first year, I was having horrible fights with my parents on Sunday… the day I’d have to return to school. Early in my second year, Mom & Dad started taking me to a child psychiatrist. I continued to see him until the middle of my third year. We decided during that last semester that it was time to take me out, to put me in to public school. In the words of my Dad, it was better “to be a small fish in a large lake than a small fish in a small pond”. By that he meant it would be easier for me to hide from tormenters in a school that was over 30 times larger than the small boarding school I was attending.
As an aside, in 2002, I was invited to attend the 25th Reunion of my class at that boarding school. The men with whom I’d attended school were mellowed with age, even kind in their interactions with me. But the baggage I carried with me was too heavy. I had to leave early, and have since discontinued any contact with the school.
If my years at the boarding school were largely uneventful, other than constant bullying, my year at public school was even less eventful. The bullying mostly died away. I learned to avoid the kids most likely to continue it. But two activities from that year were fun. The first was, for PE, I enrolled in swimming. I was too slow to ever compete, but I did develop a great fondness for the sport, I enjoyed swimming, because I could compete against myself. And of course, it didn’t hurt that I was surrounded by good looking boys in speedos! While in the pool or in the locker room, boys who would bully me out in the halls were actually sociable and friendly, making suggestions on how to improve. As a result of my swimming, after leaving High School, I worked for a few years with the Boy Scouts running various aquatic programs in summer camps.
The other program I got interested in was AFS, a program of exchange students. As a result, I spent the summer after my graduation in Kenya, East Africa, where I had a great number of adventures.
By the time the 70s ended, I’d travelled to 8 exotic foreign countries!
On The Road II 