Stories From the Brooklyn Scout Camps
1936: The Angel Skunks
Bernie Lerner
As at all Brooklyn Camps in the 30’s,
meal-times at Accaponac rocked with songs, cheers and a variety of
organized noise. Part of everyone’s repertoire was the responsive
table-to-table Greek Chorus chants, made during rare lulls in the
decibel level. A favorite one was the “bean chant”, which was a
take-off on one of the scenes in a then-current Hoot Gibson western:
Table 1: WHAT IS THE LAW?
Table 2: DO NOT SPILL BEANS ON MESS-HALL FLOOR!
Table 3: THE LAW IS NO MORE!
Tables 1 & 2: WE SPILL BEANS ON MESS-HALL
FLOOR!
During the week, a lot more than beans were spilled
on the mess-hall floor. Early on in the Brooklyn Camps, this had given
rise to the Swiss Navy, which was the necessary weekly swab-down of the
mess-hall floor. This was a rotating patrol duty, with each
patrol assigned to the Navy just once a summer. The supposed chore,
done before and after Taps, had evolved into water and soap-fights and
a sing-while-you work tradition.
The night that our patrol had Swiss Navy, Whitey
Rossman was the chief mate. During the depression years, when
money was tight to non-existent, the camp staffs consisted only of the
campmaster, his assistant, and maybe an SPL. However, all of the
camps had senior campers, like Whitey, who served as unofficial
staff. These 16 and 17-year olds were unpaid, but probably got
rebates on their summer rent. Whitey, so-named because of his
light blond hair, was easy-going but a quiet perfectionist. He
merited universal respect because of his knowledge of campcraft; he was
the one the camp depended on to teach the overnighters the difference
between edible wintergreen and inedible poison ivy.
With his non-staff status, we could get
away with a number of things with Whitey that were normally frowned
on. One of these was the singing of forbidden songs, like Avanti
Popolo. It was rumored that this was either the Italian Communist
anthem or Mussolini’s Fascist Party marching song, either of which
might have been the reason that we were not allowed to sing it. So
along with the slosh of water and mops, the mess-hall echoed that night
with the chorus, “Avanti, popolo, a la stazione, revoluzione,
revoluzione…”. All we knew was that it was Italian and very
singable.. We also knew a few I.R.A songs, given to us by our
friends at the other end of Rock Lake, but these were mostly sad songs
with refrains like, “they’re hanging Danny Boy in the morning!”.
Swiss Navy was done by lantern light, in
halves: the tables and benches were first piled up in half of the hall
and the evacuated half was washed and mopped, following which the drill
was repeated, with the tables and benches moved back to the clean
side. The large cracks in the floor-boards made the mess-hall
floor highly porous, which was a great help in squeegeeing the floor
dry on Swiss Navy night, but which also resulted in lost pennies and
nickels during the week.
We had almost finished Swiss Navy, and were about to
put the second half of the tables and benches back in place, when a
dusty puff of wind blew through the open sides of the mess-hall,
accompanied by the mutter of approaching thunder. Now the only
two occasions that we wore bathing suits at camp were on Sundays, which
was visitors’ day, and, out of respect for our cooks’ sensibilities,
for Swiss Navy. Our suits were now thoroughly wet, along with of
the rest of us, and with the first roll of thunder, Whitey immediately
called a halt and dismissed the patrol, leaving just the two of us to
finish up. It took thirty more minutes for Whitey and me to get
the rest of the tables and benches back in place, and by that time, the
storm was in full bloom, with heavy rain squalls, wind and flashes of
lightning. We prudently decided to leave the lanterns for
retrieval in the morning, and set out on the trail to camp.
The frequent flicker of lightning provided more
illumination than our flashlights. We were half-way down the
trail to our tent, with rain obscuring everything but the trail
dead-ahead, when a long string of lightning flashes picked up some live
black-and-white movements on the right side of the trail. We
stopped and stood stock-still, shining our flashlights on the
apparitions. These turned out be a wet mother skunk and her two
white-striped soft-ball sized offspring, who very slowly approached and
sauntered across the trail directly in front of us, glistening in the
rain. In addition to her normal aroma, the mother skunk had an
air of pride, and they all nonchalantly passed within arm’s length,
without a sideward glance, totally ignoring us. We had the
impression that mom was simply taking the opportunity to show off her
new retinue and had them out on parade for anyone who happened to be in
sight. If we hadn’t been getting miserably drenched by the delay,
the stage-mother attitude would have been funny. We patiently waited in
the rain until we were sure that they were out of squirting range, and
then started again down the trail home.
We had barely taken our first step when there was a
sudden bright flash and sharp crack of sound as a bolt of lightning hit
a huge oak tree some forty feet directly ahead of us on the
trail. The lightning bolt blew off bark on the side of the tree
facing us, showering us with bits and pieces. The flash and
overwhelming blast stunned us and, for what seemed a long minute, we
froze still in the pouring rain. As reality returned, with the
rain sheeting down, we realized that this was hardly the place or time
to wait for a possible repeat electrical performance, so we hurried on
to the sanctuary of tent and dry clothes.
The next morning, the storm had passed on, the sky a
cloudless blue. After breakfast, Whitey and I collected the
abandoned lanterns and walked down the path from the mess-hall to
inspect the tree of the night before. The doomed old oak had a
jagged gash about four inches wide, running its entire length, from top
to the massive trunk. Whitey and I looked at the tree and then at
each other. It was acutely clear that if we hadn’t been stopped
by the skunk passage the night before we would have been right under
the oak tree when the bolt hit.
Whitey again looked up at tree and back up the trail
at the skunk crossing, turned to me and said,
“Those weren’t skunks; they were angels!”
I looked back at the spot where we had met the skunk
family the night before. As I remembered them, they looked like
skunks and smelled like skunks. However, I wasn’t about to
totally disagree with Whitey, so I said,
“Yeah, Whitey, real Accaponac angel skunks.”
Maybe a new species.
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From the Brooklyn Scout Camps
Last Updated: October 15, 2005
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