Archive for the ‘Nostalgia’ Category


Mel-TV was a cable access television channel of Melrose, Minnesota. It began broadcasting in 1986 and continued for about 25 years before the city council voted to close it down and use the cable franchise fees for the city’s general fund. A lot of people, including myself, were disappointed with the decision at the time. I thought it was a great asset to our community of 3000 people. When the station closed its doors the collection of VHS tapes and DVDs of local programming was given to the Melrose Area Museum.

I was a member of the Mel-TV board of directors for 20 years. I joined shortly after the station began and left the board a few years before it was closed. Almost immediately I saw the potential to use the station as a promotional tool for the local Scouting program. I began recording courts of honor to air on the station. I took the bulky VHS camera to troop outings and summer camp. It was a great tool to show the community what the Scouting program of Troop 68 offered to the local youth. Some Boy Scouts became active with the station, helping with filming and editing various programs, or creating their own shows.

I am now a member of the board of directors for the Melrose Area Museum. I have been helping with some of the displays, both rearranging them and creating some new ones. One of the projects I did was to finally get all the old Mel-TV tapes out of the cardboard boxes stored in various rooms and closets, and put them back on the shelving racks that were used at the television station. I also organized the tapes by number and/or subject matter. It came pretty natural for me to do this project since I had worked so closely with the television station but it did take quite a few evenings to complete this task.

I recently started entering the program information into a computer spreadsheet. There are nearly 1700 tapes in the collection. I am only a little over a third of the way complete with this project. One thing I noticed very quickly was the number of tapes that were about Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, and Girl Scouts. I would be willing to bet there will be over 100 programs about the Scouting program. That is a pretty high percentage when you think about it. Unfortunately, some of the early tapes were recycled so there is no longer a copy of some courts of honor or events but many of them still exist.

Another museum board member, who also happens to have a son in the troop, has begun transferring these old VHS tapes to a digital format. This is going to be a long process since each tape has to be played at normal speed to be recorded by the computer. I have made sure that some of the earliest Scouting programs were part of the first tapes to be transferred.

Some of the Mel-TV shows have been uploaded to YouTube so that the citizens of Melrose can watch the old programs once again. I plan to upload some the more interesting Scouting programs to the Melrose Scouting Productions channel.

Advancement and your Patrol

Many of you may remember a few weeks ago when I wrote about finding a 1955 training flip chart in my Scouting collection. It was called Advancement and Your Patrol. I stated that it might be fun to do a video using this old training device and many of you seemed interested in the project.

Well, I did get one of the Scouts of our troop to record audio for the project. We spent a couple hours going through it page by page, getting the Scout to read it just right. Then we did one quick run through of him reading it the way he wanted to read it.

I have not finished my “serious” version of the project, but the Scout’s version is now complete and ready to be watched. You can see it at https://youtu.be/VhzBBrNO31k

It turned out pretty well, I think. In fact, I do not know if I even want to make the “serious” version any more. Let me know what you think of it. And I would appreciate it if you left a comment and a like on the YouTube site.

Where has the time gone? I just realized that it has been over twelve years since I threw a troop tee shirt on a puppet I own and created Buttons, the radical Boy Scout. It honestly does not seem that long ago.

On April 17, 2006, I posted a video on YouTube featuring Buttons reciting the Scout Law. Little did I know at the time that he would actually get a small following on the Melrose Scouting Productions channel and my podcast. For the next few years I created more videos featuring the puppet. There were nineteen videos of Buttons by the time I ended creating them.

The videos began very simply with Buttons reciting the Scout Law, Oath, or Outdoor Code. They were getting more elaborate toward the end of the run. There was a video of him exercising. There were videos of Buttons interviewing people involved in Scouting. There were a few videos of him explaining when you know you have been in Scouting too long. There were even videos of Buttons and other puppets telling jokes.

I still Buttons out occasionally to take a few pictures of him in different situations. Last summer I had him on the local disc golf course since Buttons has always stated on the Around The Scouting Campfire podcast that he likes disc golf. I recently posted a few of those pictures in the disc golf subheading on Reddit and surprisingly got a mixed reaction from people. Some people thought it was good fun. Others thought he was wierd. A few did not like him at all.

A couple of the Boy Scouts of Troop 68 think I should create some new videos with Buttons this summer. They even offered to help make the short films. Maybe if we can come up with a few good ideas it just might happen.

Do you think we should create some new videos featuring Buttons, the radical Boy Scout? Leave a comment and let me know. In the meantime, have fun watching the very first video featuring the radical puppet.

I began collecting Scouting themed books soon after becoming a Scoutmaster in the early 1980s. I collect handbooks, leadership books, history books, and the fictional novels that were written in the 1910s and 1920s. After 35 years of collecting I would say I have a very nice collection.

The old Scouting themed fictional novels written a hundred years ago have a special place in the collection. I love finding those old books if they are in decent condition. It can be a challenge to find these old books that are still in one piece. I don’t think anyone really thought they were meant to last more then a generation or two so when I find one, at a reasonable price, I like to buy it.

I recently saw a post on a Facebook group called Scout Patch Collectors. It is a great group for trading and buying Scout patches. Once in awhile other Scouting memorabilia is posted. Last week I saw a post featuring three of the old Scout novels for sale. While they looked a little frayed around the edges I noticed they were three books I did not have in my collection.

The Boy Scouts at the Panama Canal, written by Lieut. Howard Payson, was published in 1913. The other two books were written by Herbert Carter. The Boy Scouts Afoot In France was published in 1917. The Boy Scouts On War Trails In Belgium was published in 1916.

After a few messages back and forth between the seller and myself I agreed to purchase the books for a price we both agreed upon. Since I was buying the books based on the one photograph posted I hoped they would not be in terrible shape.

The books arrived last Saturday. The covers are in decent shape, showing a bit of wear which is to be expected. The covers are coming loose but a little glue will take care of that. Two of the books have a loose page in the front of the book, but at least the page is still with the book. Otherwise, the books are in decent shape for being one hundred years old.

Two of the books have handwriting inside the front cover. I think one was a gift to a young man. The other book I believe has the owner’s name written on the first page. This does not bother me in the least. I think I adds a little character and history to the book.

I am going to have to rearrange my book cabinet to make room for these three new additions. While they may not be in great shape they do fill in three holes in my collection and I am glad to be able to add them.

Do you collect old Scout themed novels? Which ones do you own? Leave a comment below.

I bought my first digital camera in 2004. I was going to Philmont Scout Ranch with the troop and thought this would be a good trip to start using digital photography. I have been using a digital camera ever since that trip.

I soon began using the digital photos to make slideshows of the troop events and activities. It was fairly easy to create a slideshow using the programs of the Mac Pro computer I owned. The next step was to burn the slideshows to a DVD so I could watch them on the television.

As Christmas approached I decided to copy the pictures to a compact disc and print one for each of the Boy Scouts in the troop. The slideshow DVDs soon followed. The Boy Scouts and their families seem to enjoy watching the shows so I kept doing it each Christmas.

It is now the year 2018. I have finished this year’s annual DVDs. Once again there will be a DVD of the slideshows, but the yearly photo collection has grown too large to put on CDs anymore. I take thousands of photos each year so the collection is now burned as a data DVD. This year’s photo collection was over 3 GB, and that does not include the photos of the trip to the Summit high adventure base. The data DVD does include some short videos taken during some of the monthly events.

I hope the Boy Scouts and their families enjoy watching the slideshows and looking at the pictures. It does take several evenings to create the DVD package each year. But I think it is well worth it.

PS: after posting this article and viewing the picture I noticed a mistake on the DVDs. Do you see it?

When you are an adult leader, or a former Cub Scout or Boy Scout who is now grown up, it is fun to look back at the Scouting days of your youth. It is fun to reminisce about those Pinewood Derbies, camping trips, or award ceremonies. That is one reason I take so many pictures when I attend a troop or pack function. I know the boys and their parents will enjoy looking back at them several years from now.

Since the national office of the Boy Scouts of America does not seem to do much of anything to promote Scouting outside of their own organization (or if they do, I never seem to catch it) I always appreciate it when I see Scouting represented in a good light in the newspaper or in a magazine. Thanks to my parents I have been reading some issues of a magazine called Reminisce. It features stories written by the readers of those days gone by. Articles include stories from the 1920’s through the 1970’s. At my age, somewhere in my fifties, I find many of these articles fun to read and even historical.

A few times I have stumbled across pictures and stories in Reminisce that are Scouting related or feature pictures of Scouting events. I really enjoy reading these stories, and the pictures are a blast to look at. One issue a few months ago even featured Cub Scouts participating in a soapbox derby of the cover of the magazine. Another larger photo was included inside. I have spotted Scouting pictures in other issues. Oh, those long ago days…

Have you read any magazines lately that feature Scouting related stories, that are not Boys Life or Scouting magazine? What magazines were they? What was the story? Leave a comment and let us know about it.

This year marks the eleventh year that the Central Minnesota Council has created a special council shoulder patch, featuring a point of the Scout Oath, as an incentive for their annual Friends of Scouting campaign. Of course, that means the point used this year is Clean. A bar of soap with the words “Scout Clean” is the focal point of the patch.

I have collected these patches since they began, placing them in my three ring binders. A few of the Boy Scouts of Troop 68 wear one on their uniform. We are already wondering what next year’s “Reverent” patch is going to look like.

Does your council create special patches for their Friends of Scouting drives? What have they recently done as a theme for the patch? Leave your answer as a comment below.

When I became the assistant scoutmaster of a six month old Boy Scout troop in June 1980, I never in my wildest dreams think I would become a bit of a journalist. A month later I wrote my first Scouting-related article for the weekly local newspaper, with the help of one of the committee members. Little did I know I would continue doing this for nearly four decades.

Those early articles, known as The Scouts Review, were only a few paragraphs long, recounting what happened at the weekly troop meetings. We also did a longer article about the monthly outings, usually with a picture or two. The Melrose Beacon supported our efforts by printing anything we submitted to them. After several months we stopped writing about the weekly meetings and only wrote about the monthly outings, service projects, courts of honor, and other special events. Most of our Eagle Scouts and their projects were covered by the newspaper. Some of the summer camp or Philmont trek articles appeared in two parts spread over consecutive issues.

For some reason, even after I became the scoutmaster, the articles remained my project. No one offered to take over the duty, although once in a great while of of the committee members submitted an article about an event. During the 1980’s and 1990’s I was pretty good about getting something in the paper every month. By the time the 2000’s came around I was starting to grow tired of the responsibility. By the 2010’s I was not submitting articles on a regular basis, maybe once every two or three months.

The articles were a great way to keep the activities of the Boy Scout troop in the public eye. The Melrose Beacon was great in supporting both the troop and the Cub Scout Pack. I am sure many of the Scouts and their families clipped those articles for their scrapbooks. I tried to save every one of those articles. Sometimes other local papers printed pictures of the Scout events. I saved those clippings also.

I now have four three ring binders full of the last 37 years of Melrose Beacon Scout articles, along with some clippings from the Hometown News, the Sauk Centre Herald, and the St. Cloud Times. The fourth book is nearly full. It will soon be time to begin a fifth book.

These binders usually sit on a shelf in the closet of my office, but a couple of times a year they come out of the dark and are seen by the public as part of a Scouting display during our spring and fall meal fundraisers. I had to work on them today to get ready for the spring breakfast to be held on Sunday, April 8th. There was over two years worth of clippings to tape into those books but they are now complete and ready to be viewed. It sort of boggles the mind when I think of the Melrose Scouting history found in those four binders.

Does someone in your troop or pack write articles for your local newspaper? Does someone in your troop collect them, maybe the troop Historian? Where are they stored? How often do they get viewed?