Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

When I was a teenager, I camped out in a tornado. Not on purpose. I was working on the Wilderness Survival merit badge, and I had to make a shelter and camp overnight in it. The tornado would have to hit the camp about that time. I got the badge, though.

I was thinking about the experience recently, when an article from early April of 1940 brought it all rushing back to me. The front-page article read,”Scouts Have Exciting Time On Overnight Hike.”

It took place in early April of 1940, with Boy Scout Troop 4 in Lock Haven. Led by Senior Patrol Leader Gene Hammond, the scouts decided to take an overnight hike in the area of Beech Creek. (“Senior Patrol Leader” basically means the most experienced and trusted kid, which from an adult point of view is a lot like having a favorite disease.) The plan was to hike to a cabin, sleep overnight, and hike back in the morning.

So, you know how they say “No plan survives first contact with the enemy”?

The boys hiked out to the cabin, which they found locked. Meanwhile, the scoutmaster was driving out, as any half-bright scoutmaster will do. Upon finding the cabin locked, they backtracked to the cabin of local official Roy Bryerton, who had given them a key. The backup plan was to sleep overnight at Bryerton’s cabin.
It sounds like it would have worked, had Bryerton given them the correct key.

Figuring out that they weren’t getting into Bryerton’s cabin through the front door, the scouts broke a window to get in. (Exactly why they didn’t just break a window on the original cabin in the first place was never clarified, though I do admit it sounds like the kind of plan we often came up with in the Boy Scouts.) As the scouts started a fire to heat the cabin, what with cold air getting in through the window and all, the scoutmaster drove back into town to pick up another load of kids who had not chosen to hike.

Then he found his car stalling because of the high water between Beech Creek and Lock Haven. As luck would have it, there was a rising flood happening at the time, too.

The scoutmaster realized that, what with the flood scare, his own parents might need to evacuate, so he drove back to Lock Haven, leaving eleven scouts behind at the cabin. The others ran back into town, frequently having to get out of the car and push it through the water. The word “fiasco” comes readily to mind.

The eleven scouts staying overnight discovered that they had a food shortage problem. This I not entirely surprising—Let me tell you this, Boy Scouts can eat. I remember burning through an entire food supply in minutes when I was that age. They had a loaf of bread, two boxes of brown sugar, and twenty-two cents, which lasted them the night.

In the morning, two of the boys decided to risk hiking into Beech Creek with the twenty-two cents for more food. They went into Beech Creek, at which point one of them caught a ride on a bread truck, went to Mill Hall, and hiked home to Lock Haven, abandoning his friends. The other one used twenty cents to buy potatoes, apples, onions, two more loaves of bread, and cabbage, which sounds like about a two-hour supply of food.

As he got back to camp, he met the scoutmasters, who had caught a ride on a boat and returned to the boys. They ate, packed up, and returned home at this point, miraculously with no injuries or fatalities.

The boys had quite an adventure, and it all reminded me a lot of the experience that led to my Wilderness Survival merit badge. I also earned the Journalism merit badge, though judging from this particular column, you could be forgiven for not knowing that.