A Scoutmaster's Blog

This is hard to believe. The Melrose Scouting Productions channel on YouTube is 18 years old. I posted the first video on January 9, 2006. The channel now contains over 200 videos featuring Melrose Troop 68 Scouts throughout the decades.

I remember when I started the channel. There were not many Boy Scout troops posting videos online yet. Melrose Troop 68 was one of the early troops to have its own channel. While the very first video was not Scouting related, it was made by one of our Boy Scouts at the time. (It was actually a school class project.)

I did not have to go far to find videos to start posting. I had been filming troop courts of honor, events, and outings since 1989 for MelTV, the local television access station. Unfortunately, the city closed down the station in the early 2010s. There were several dozen videos, on VHS tape, that could now be posted online for people and former Scouts to continue to enjoy. And, of course, there would always be more videos to create. It gave me a place to share other Scouting related videos that I had collected over the decades.

One of the most fun things I did with the channel was to bring Buttons the Boy Scout to life. Buttons was a puppet I owned that became the comic mascot of the channel. It may have been fun but it was also a lot of work bringing Buttons to life. I have not made a new video featuring Buttons since 2010, but he did have his own following of online fans during those four years.

At the time I write this article, there are 213 regular videos posted to the channel. Many of them features songs and skits from campfire programs and the troop’s Laughs For Lunch Shows. During the last few months I have began playing with YouTube Shorts. While most of these Shorts don’t receive many hits, a few have received over 2000 views. One Short even reached 8000 views!

While I have not been very good about posting videos to the channel during the last few years (only 13 videos posted in 2023), my goal is to post videos more regularly during 2024. Why not? After all, we now carry video camera in our pockets everywhere we go. It is not like I have to grab the massive old VHS camcorder anymore.

If you have not seen the channel yet, check it out at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClUOxM42AYjgLwGyoqgpx1w

The Boy Scouts of Melrose area Troop 68 enjoy attending the campfire programs at the beginning of the week and at the end of the week while at summer camp. In fact, they have taking many of these skits and added them to their own troop activities. One of the earliest ones they learned, and continue to use to this day, is the I Want To Marry The Princess skit they saw performed at Crow Wing Scout Camp in the early 1980s.

I recently discovered a video of a couple of our Boy Scouts performing this skit during a court of honor held in December 1989. Considering this was recorded on VHS tape I was pleasantly surprised at how good it still looks. The Scouts did an excellent job performing this skit. Even an error does not slow them down, adding even more humor to the skit.

This is a fairly easy skit to learn but does take a few particles to perform it well. Does your troop ever perform this skit at a campfire program or court of honor? How well do they do it?

This video can be watched on the Melrose Scouting Productions channel on YouTube at this link: https://youtu.be/mnzP1Q7nYzg

The sport of disc golf has been a part of the Scouting program at many Boy Scout camps for decades. Many Scout camps have disc golf courses. I was introduced to the sport back in 1981 at Crow Wing Scout Camp. They did not have baskets to throw discs into at the time so we had to hits the posts to finish each hole. It was very challenging but also very fun, and it was a great troop activity.

During the last couple decades disc golf became more popular with the Scouts of Melrose area Troop 68. We would schedule a time to play when we were at a camp that had a course. For several years we held a disc golf marathon day in which we would play at two of three different courses in central Minnesota. We would keep scores and award prizes to the Scouts who had the best scores.

As new Scouts joined our troop and played disc golf for the first time, I would encourage them to learn how to throw and work on their skills, not try to be the best and take the top place. That takes practice and lots of playing. Even though we handed out prizes during our outings I always stressed we were doing this for the fun of being together and beings outdoors. Of course, talking a little smack during the game was allowed as long as it did not get mean spirited, and the Scouts understood this.

Being a player of disc golf myself I have a nice disc collection I take with me on the course. I may not know what each disc one is for but it makes me feel like I know something. I have also collected several Scouting themed discs that have become part of my Scouting collection and are not used on the course. Some of these discs were bought at camp while other were bought through the Scout Shop. In this video I display the discs I have purchased and added to my collection.

This video can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAfhA9L0CO8

Thank you for watching. I hope you enjoy it.

In July 2021 I began making a series of videos in which I display parts of the Scouting themed collection I have accumulated over the last 40 years. I did not have a good place to upload them to so I decided to add those first videos to the Melrose Scouting Productions channel. After a couple months of thinking about this, along with creating a few more videos, I decided to create a new channel to be the home for these videos.

Welcome to “My Scouting Collection”, which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Yq0KsCmgREJqCfS6pKv5Q

As I write this post I have several videos for this new channel. While I do not have time to post a new video every week I do hope to get one or two posted each month. The video subjects will include handbooks and other books, uniform parts, patches, jamboree items, Snoopy ornaments, and much more. I hope you enjoy the new videos.

The Melrose Scouting Productions channel will continue to be used for videos of Troop 68 activities and meetings, skills and songs, and other general Scouting related videos.

I said I was going to do it. I did it. I started adding new videos to the Melrose Scouting Productions channel on YouTube once again. After a few years of the channel having a new video posted only a few times a year I decided it should be active once again. A dozen videos have been added this year with several more already lined up to be posted over the next couple of months. The videos feature several aspects of Scouting including some from the history of Melrose Boy Scout Troop 68 and the Scouts performing some skits and songs. Here are a few of the latest videos:

A scavenger hunt for the Boy Scouts at the Melrose Area Museum.

Boy Scouts practicing the six man lift during a visit to the Melrose Firehall:

The Boy Scout performing a skit which combines first aid with a story about an invisible bench:

The Melrose Scouting Productions channel can be found on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClUOxM42AYjgLwGyoqgpx1w/ If you like what you see you are invited to subscribe to the channel and LIKE a few of the videos.

The Boy Scouts of Melrose Troop 68 had a lot of fun on the climbing wall at St. Cloud State University in early 2014. I had my camera along, like I usually do, so I was taking a lot of photos of the Scouts as they tried their skills on the various climbs. A few times I switched the camera to video mood to record some of the climbs.

A few days later I was playing around with iMovie. I had never used their “create a movie trailer” function so I decided to give it a try using the footage I recorded from the climbing trip. I discovered it was fairly easy to use and made a trailer of the day.

It trailer has been sitting on my computer for the last few years. Last week I decided to share it on the Melrose Scouting Productions channel on Youtube. I invite you to take a look at at it. Hit the like button on the channel and subscribe to it.

It can be found at https://youtu.be/u6Tqn-j3CMU or viewed below.

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.

The city of Melrose once had a cable access television station. It started up in 1986 and lasted for nearly twenty five years. It closed when the city decided to keep the cable franchise fees for the general fund instead of giving them to the station for operating funds.

I saw the potential of promoting our Boy Scout Troop on this television channel almost immediately, and decided to make good use of it. I would videotape our courts of honor to air on the station. I would take a VHS video camera with me on outings to create programs to inform people what the Boy Scouts have been doing. We even created some original programming using the Scouts as actors. I joined the station’s board of directors and created Scouting related programming for over twenty years.

One of the earliest Scouting related programs was an interview with five of the adult leaders of the Melrose Scouting program. It was titled The Leaders of Scouting. It was filmed in 1988. The guests included cubmasters, assistant scoutmasters, and committee members. I was a producer for the show and thought it turned out pretty good.

After Mel TV closed its doors the city donated all the programming to the Melrose Area Historical Museum. I am now a board member of that organization. The board’s chairman and I were talking one day and thought it would be a good idea to create a Youtube channel and post some of these old programs online for the community to watch once again. With the help of Shalon we have been digitizing some of the old VHS tapes and DVDs to post online.

Six programs have been posted online so far. I am happy to report that The Leaders Of Scouting was one of the videos uploaded to the channel. If you have 90 minutes some evening and are looking for something to watch I would like to suggest you watch this video. It is an interesting look at the Scouting program of Cub Scout Pack 68 and Boy Scout Troop 68 in the 1980’s.

The YouTube channel is called Mel TV3 Revived. The video can be found at https://youtu.be/cG7bjhYGqp4

Let us know what you think of the show. Do you think we should create a new show since we are now in the 2010s?