The Boy Scouts of Troop 68 had an opportunity to do two service projects in one day for the Melrose Riverfest celebration. The event was held last Saturday, August 20th.
The first project took place before the parade which was scheduled to begin at 7:30 pm. The Boy Scouts were set to distribute two thousand 3″ x 5″ plastic USA flags along the parade route. The funds to purchase the flags were provided the the local VFW and American Legion clubs.
This was the third year the troop did this project. Two years ago were started with 1000 flags that only covered about half of the parade route. Last year we ordered 1500 flags that covered about two thirds of the route. This year we ordered two thousand flags and had a couple hundred of them left over. Even though we began handing out the flags at the beginning of the route 30 minutes before the parade began, the parade was only three blocks behind us when we reached the end. The flags were very popular.
At midnight, the Boy Scouts met in downtown Melrose for the second of the projects. The Scouts, and their fathers, assisted the Melrose Chamber of Commerce with taking down a few refreshment tents, and packing up dozens of tables and hundreds of folding chairs. We finished this project at 1:45 in the morning.
Unfortunately, only two of the nine members of the troop were able to help with the day’s projects. Fortunately, the boy’s fathers were able to assist us so had doubled our manpower.
The troop’s next service project will be held tonight, August 22nd. We have a three mile stretch of highway south of town which we have adopted to clean the ditches of trash. Hopefully, we will have more troop members show up then we did on Saturday or it is going to to take awhile to clean those ditches.
