{"id":2860,"date":"2012-02-01T14:17:30","date_gmt":"2012-02-01T19:17:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.melrosetroop68.org\/blog\/?p=2860"},"modified":"2012-02-01T14:17:30","modified_gmt":"2012-02-01T19:17:30","slug":"no-dirt-for-me-please","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.melrosetroop68.org\/blog\/?p=2860","title":{"rendered":"No Dirt For Me Please!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Cooking on a Boy Scout camping trip<\/strong> can be an interesting experience, especially with young inexperienced campers. I have seen many burned pancakes, half raw hamburgers, and overturned pots during my days as a scoutmaster. When I am eating something crunchy that really should not be crunchy I am reminded of a camping trip from my days as a youth…<\/p>\n

My troop was attending a district camporee one weekend when I was in my early teens. We were sitting around the campfire ring about to eat our meal. Our scoutmaster, Dr. Scanlan, was sitting next to me. There was a small amount of dirt on my food. I do not remember how it got there, if the patrol cook had done something during preparing the meal, or if I had kicked some dirt onto the plate somehow. I do remember I was not interested in eating this food with its “natural” seasoning. I was a very picky eater and this was not helping the situation.<\/p>\n

I made a fuss and commented that I was not going to eat this stuff. My scoutmaster heard me and replied that a little dirt would not kill me. Then he added something that I will never forget. He said, “A person will eat an average of seven pounds of dirt during his lifetime.”<\/p>\n

I am not ashamed to say that I was surprised and shocked by the statement. I did not know if he was telling the truth, or if he had just made it up. He was a doctor, after all. He would know about these things. \u00a0I do recall my reply to him. I looked at him, and at my food, and said, “I don’t want to add to that seven pounds.”<\/p>\n

I do not remember if I ate the food that day or not. I probably did because I was hungry. I have since come to the conclusion though that if you are a scoutmaster you will eat a lot more than seven pounds of dirt in your lifetime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cooking on a Boy Scout camping trip can be an interesting experience, especially with young inexperienced campers. I have seen many burned pancakes, half raw hamburgers, and overturned pots during my days as a scoutmaster. When I am eating something crunchy that really should not be crunchy I am reminded of a camping trip from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,80,25],"tags":[414,210,154],"class_list":["post-2860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-camping","category-nostalgia","category-story","tag-camping","tag-cooking","tag-history"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.melrosetroop68.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.melrosetroop68.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.melrosetroop68.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.melrosetroop68.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.melrosetroop68.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2860"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.melrosetroop68.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2865,"href":"https:\/\/www.melrosetroop68.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2860\/revisions\/2865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.melrosetroop68.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.melrosetroop68.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.melrosetroop68.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}