A Scoutmaster's Blog

The Sauk River runs through the city of Melrose, the home of Boy Scout Troop 68. This river nearly cuts the city in half. It is not very large. In fact, A teenager could through a football across most portions of the river. Below the dam in Melrose, in the city park, a person can walk across the river and not even get your chest wet.

The Sauk is an “old” river, with a lot of twists and turns as it flows from Sauk Centre to the Mississippi River in St. Cloud. It is actually a nice river for canoeing. It is quite scenic, and at times you will not see any signs of civilization. But it also has its challanges. There are curves of strong currents, downed trees, and the occassional wire fence stretched acrossed its width.

Yes, you read that correctly. The Sauk River meanders through a lot of farmland and pasture. There are parts of the river in which a farmer owns pasture land on both sides of the river so he stretches a single wire across the river to keep the cattle from “escaping” the pasture. There are many wire fences along the bank of the river. Many of them are electified with enough current to keep the cattle from walking through it.

In 1994, the troop was canoeing down the river for a weekend outing. We had permission from one of the farmers to camp overnight in his pasture. Between the river and the pasture was an electric and barbwire fence. The Scouts were very careful as they moved the gear from the canoes to the campsite. No one wanted to receive an electric shock.

After supper, some of the guys became bored. A couple of them walked up to the fence and decided to see how strong the current was by giving it a quick touch. More boys joined the crowd. They noticed that some guys received a larger shock then other guys due to the soles of the shoes.

They began experimenting. Two guys grabbed hands. One would touch the fence to see if the second would receive a shock. A third joined the line. It did not take long before all the guys had formed one line to see who would get a jolt, and how far the current would travel. After a short period the boys grew tired of this and began looking for other things to do.

The following morning was cool. A heavy dew covered the ground. An 18 year old alumni of the troop who had joined us for the weekend walked out of the tent in his barefeet. He walked across the dew covered campsite and, for some unknown reason, grabbed the electric fence. His yelp was loud enough to alert the whole camp that the current was still flowing through the wire.

As we loaded the gear into the canoes the Scouts were very careful handing the packs and bundles over the fence. No one wanted to experience the same shock that the eighteen year old had received that morning.

View some pictures of the trip at http://melrosetroop68.org/Web%20site%20yearly%20highlights/yh94.html

It is time for the fourth episode of Around The Scouting Campfire, a podcast about Boy Scouting with a bit of fun thrown in for good measure. Scoutmaster Steve and Buttons, the radical Boy Scout, have put together a full show for you.

Show #4 begins with Steve and Buttons talking about the troop’s latest fundraiser, a pancake and sausage breakfast. Steve then tells a story about a campfire skit that did not go as well as the patrol was hoping it would. Next, the Buckskin staff of Many Point Scout Camp sings the Many Point Ballad. During Buttons’ Corner, the radical Scout reads a couple letters he has received before trying to learn the Cub Scout Promise from Michael, the Bear Scout. As the show comes to an end we hear the Scout Leader’s Minute, How To Catch A Monkey.

Steve and Buttons would like to thank everyone who have sent emails about how they have enjoyed the shows. Please leave a comment at the iTunes store or at PTC Media forums.
You can contact Buttons at buttonst68@yahoo.com. You may contact Scoutmaster Steve at stevejb68@yahoo.com. We appreciate your emails and letters.

RSS Feed – http://feeds2.feedburner.com/MelroseScoutingAudioPodcast
Download episode – http://www.melrosetroop68.org/podcastaudio/MSAPE4.mp3

This podcast is found on iTunes at
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=307979159
and has joined the family of Scouting themed podcasts at PTC Media at
http://www.ptcmedia.net/

Last year, during one of our Boy Scout troop meetings, the whole troop ended up in the emergency room of our local hospital. Oh, don’t worry. There were no serious injuries. Our theme for the month was first aid so our committee chairperson set up a tour of the hospital’s emergency room and facilities.

Melrose is a community of 3300 people, but we have a very well staffed hospital. Our emergency room is not as big and chaotic as the one in the television show, or as a big city hospital would be. Our E.R. only has three beds but is fully equipped to handle most emergencies, from heart attacks to car crashes. Luckily for the troop, it was not being used while we were there for our visit.

The nurse was a great tour guide. She was very patient with the Scouts and answered all their questions very professionally. I think there were a couple of times a few of the boys were being grossed out, but you know teenage boys. They like being grossed out.

The nurse began our tour in the entry/garage for the ambulance. Almost immediately, the boys started asking questions. “Has anyone ever died in here?” The nurse told us that sometimes people die on the way to the hospital while being transported by the ambulance, and sometimes they may die in the hospital.

The emergency room was out next stop. The nurse explained the uses for the many pieces of equipment found in the room. The boys were very interested in the “shockers” that are used on some heart attack patients. They were surprised to see the drills and other equipment used to puncture hip and shoulder bones. The various kinds of I.V.’s and fluids also caught their interest.

The nurse lead the troop to the surgery room. Due to the sterile environment needed in there we did not actually get to enter the room, but we were able to look through the door windows into the staff prep room. Once again, the nurse gave a nice but brief summary of the things that happen in the area.

The tour lasted a bit over thirty minutes which was just enough time to give everyone a basic understanding of the E.R. and still have enough time to return to our meeting location (the school gym) and play a game, have a quick patrol meeting, and have our closing.

The troop thanks the staff of the Melrose Centracare Hospital for allowing us to tour their facility.

Eymard Orth, assistant scoutmaster of Boy Scout Troop 68 in Melrose Minnesota, was recently recognized by the Minnesota House for his twenty years of service to the troop. The local newspaper, the Melrose Beacon Beacon, reports:

“State Rep. Paul Anderson (left), R-Starbuck, presents Eymard Orth, Melrose, with a certificate of recognition for Orth’s 20 years of service to Melrose Boy Scout Troop 68. Orth is assistant scoutmaster of Troop 68 and received the recognition during the recent Stearns County Republican Convention in Melrose.“

Congratulations Eymard!

(Note: The picture is from the Melrose Beacon. The article can be seen HERE.)

I received an email from Todd at http://latterdayscout.blogspot.com asking for a few more details about our troop’s breakfast fundraisers. His troop has been thinking about conducting a breakfast of their own and are looking for some tips and advice. Okay, here are a few more details.

We serve a full meal which includes pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage (smoked and unsmoked), frosted bread, coffee, milk, and a few condiments. It is an “all you can eat” meal so people know they will get their money’s worth. This “all you can eat” policy has seldom been abused by customers. We also allow people to do take-outs.

Tickets prices are very reasonable. Prices for adults are $6.00 in advance, $6.50 at the door. Children’s tickets (age 5 to 11) are $3.00 when purchased in advance, $3.50 at the door. Children four years old or younger eat for free.

The number of people we serve varies from year to year and season to season (spring or fall). Melrose is a rural community in central Minnesota with a population of 3300 people. We served 372 meals at Sunday’s breakfast which was up about 30 people from last fall, and up about 100 people from last spring. We have served up to 450 people in previous years.

As I stated in the previous post, preselling tickets is a key to having a successful fundraiser. This not only helps to spread the word about the breakfast but you will find people who can not come to the breakfast but will buy a ticket or two as a donation to support the troop. Those sales are one hundred percent profit.

Make sure you advertise the fundraiser. I make up posters to hang around town on my home computer and printer. For more hints about how to advertise for nearly no cost to the troop read my post from a year ago by clicking HERE.

I hope this information is helpful to your troop Todd. If any of you have any more questions please write me.

Another Boy Scout Troop 68 spring breakfast fundraiser has come and gone. The troop has held a spring and a fall breakfast for over 20 years. The two breakfasts are the main source of income for our operating funds and individual Scout credit accounts.

The key to having a successful breakfast fundraiser is to presell tickets. We begin this process about three or four weeks before the event. We will take a troop meeting night and send the boys out to cover as much of the town as possible in 90 minutes. We have the city mapped out into ten sections. Parents will choose a section, then drive out with two or three boys. We hope to sell enough tickets during that first night to pay for the breakfast expenses. This was easy to accomplish when we had a troop of over thirty members, but with a current membership of only nine Scouts we did not even sell enough to cover half of the expenses. Thus, it becomes very important for the Scouts and parents to make the effort to sell tickets during the next few weeks.

Of course, we also sell tickets at the door the morning of the breakfast. We charge fifty cents more for a ticket sold at the door then we do for a presold ticket.

It looks like we did better at this spring’s breakfast then usual. After adding up our income and estimating our expenses it looks like we will have made a profit of over $1600.00. Most of the success is due to the preselling of tickets. In fact, we had one young Scout who sold over $600 of tickets himself, setting a new troop record.

A breakfast fundraiser is easy to do with a troop of thirty Boy Scouts. Troop 68 currently has only eight active Scouts. I am amazed that we can pull off a successful breakfast with only eight families. It is a great demonstration of the support and dedication of the parents to keep the troop alive. Unfortunately, if the troop gets any smaller we may have to drop this fundraiser because we will not have enough people to work for it.

On a final note, this is the first time ever that I had to stand at the grille and make pancakes. (Since I became the scoutmaster my job has been to collect the money from the Scouts, supervising them as they do they duties, and pouring coffee as people sat down to eat.) By the end of the breakfast I was getting decent at making Mickey Mouse pancakes.

It appears that there will be a new movie making its way around the country this year. It is about spending a week at a Boy Scout summer camp and is called, oddly enough, Scout Camp. From the preview it looks to have some humor and some serious moments. I have read it a Scout forum that the movie is written by guys who were Scouts themselves growing up, and it does not follow the guide to safe scouting very well. Oh the horrors!

I am hoping this film comes to central Minnesota. I would like to see it and perhaps bring the troop along. After all, there are very few movies made about Boy Scouting. I love one line from the preview, “I’m fine. I am the scoutmaster.”

Here is the preview of the movie:

Just before going to bed tonight, I decided to check a few sites online, including the “Kids and Family” section for podcasts on the iTunes Music Store. I like checking it once in awhile to see how the three podcasts I am involved with are doing. (For those of you new to the podcast scene, I currently create two podcasts of my own: the Melrose Scouting Productions video podcasts and the newer Around The Scouting Campfire audio podcast. I also co-host The Leader’s Campfire podcast with Cubmaster Chris.)

The Melrose Scouting Productions Podcast has been featured on the “Kids and Family” video home page for a couple months now which, to tell the truth, thrills me. I think it is awesome that my little videos have been found noteworthy enough to be featured by the folks at the iTunes store. I am sure being a featured podcast helps to bring new people to the podcast.

Of course, there are many more audio podcasts out there in cyberland than there are video podcasts, so imagine my surprise tonight when I discovered that my new audio podcast, Around The Scouting Campfire, has made it to the front page of the “Kids and Family” audio home page! With all the competition out there, I never thought I would ever see my podcast about Scouting listed there, especially since the podcast is less than a month old . Granted, it is on the top of the page under “New and Notable”, but it is listed there for all to see.

I would like to thank the people at iTunes for recognizing my little podcasts, and to all of you who have listened to them and downloaded them. I am sure it would not have made it there with out your support.

Boy, I tell you, living with Buttons, the radical Boy Scout, just got a lot harder.