A Scoutmaster's Blog

Like I stated in the previous post, I collect Scouting memorabilia. A large portion of the collection is books: handbooks, merit badge books, Fieldbooks, training books, and fictional novels. Most of the fictional novels are from the 1910’s through the 1920’s.

Last year I found a set of four books in a comic book shop in Alexandria. I almost looked past them. After all, you do not expect to see Scouting books in a comic book store, but the edge design of the books happen to catch my eye since they are similar to other fictional Scouting themed novels from the early 1900’s. The dust jacket on the one book gave a clue that this could be a Scouting series. I was right. This Dan Carter, Cub Scout series, written by Mildred Wirt, was printed from 1949-1953.

I looked them over, thought about the price marked on the books, and decided they would make a nice addition to my collection, especially since the one book still had the dust jacket, which I have since discovered makes a book more collectable to some collectors.

Later, I took a look in the iTunes store to see if these books were available as digital versions. They were! A six book mega-pack was available for a very reasonable price. Yes, you read that correctly. There are six books in the series which means I am missing two of them. Oh well, I have the digital versions so I may read all six books, when I find the time to do so. I have too many books sitting on my bookshelves waiting to be read, and more on my iPad.

Do you collect old Scouting themed books? Which ones do you have?

The president of the Melrose Area History Museum and I met at the museum this morning to set up my shelf display and Scouting coffee mugs. We both thought this would be a quick process but the cabinet had other ideas. In order to place the shelves in the cabinet we needed to remove a partition. The partition decided it did not want to be removed. The above photo from 2012 shows the two dividers that were painted tight into the shelf grooves. We spent over 15 minutes trying to get the left one to come out. Once we finally removed it we decided to take out the second one also. It was also stubborn but it did not take as long to remove.

Then came the fun part of reorganizing the display with the new shelves and the coffee mugs. I discovered a batch of membership and award cards that I thought should be set up for everyone to see and was able to use the new shelf rack to do that. We also put a piece of rigid insulation into the Girl Scout uniform so more of the shirt could be seen. The newly arranged display may look a bit more cluttered than the old arrangement but a lot more items can now be seen. To tell the truth, I think i like the new arrangement better. What do you think?

The pictures below show the new arrangement. I am already starting to form some ideas for other changes to this cabinet and two other cabinets that Roger said we could use for Scouting displays.

I know many of you collect patches, be they council strips, Order of the Arrow lodge flaps, or activity patches. One of the several patch collection I have is of the 2001 National Jamboree. I collect from that event because I attended it with nine Boy Scouts from my troop. I still add patches to this collection when I can pick them up at a reasonable price. Here is a photo of the patches I collected from eBay auctions in the last three weeks.

I recently completed my first Scouting patch blanket. I have received several positive comments about it already. One Scouter even wrote to say he may start his own after seeing the pictures of mine. I say, go for it. It is a great way to display the patches collected through the years. Much better than a notebook anyway. Unfortunately, my first blanket only displays patches collected to 1996. I have a lot more patches so it is time to think about creating a second blanket.

Today I began laying out the patches for that second blanket. The 4 foot by 4 foot piece of paneling I used to staple the patches to only went up to 2004, so I had to start looking around the house for last nine years worth of patches. You see, I did not have one nice place that I would put them after each outing. This could be interesting.

I began looking in the closet cabinet in my basement family room. I keep a lot of Scouting stuff in there. I did find quite a few in the various small totes but I knew there was more of them. I checked my briefcase, the bedroom, the office, and the kitchen. (I did actually find a couple in the kitchen.) I soon had enough patches to make a couple more rows.

I found a few Many Point Scout Camp patches but they did not have years shown on the design. Time to do a online search on the Many Point virtual patch collection. I discovered the years of all the patches on the site except for one. For some reason the site only shows patches to 2010. I hope that one patch is for 2012 because that is were I plan to place it.

No one will be playing table tennis at my house for awhile. As you can see in the picture, the second blanket is laying on half the table. The patches are laid out on the other half. Last time it took me nearly a year to create a patch blanket. The goal this time is to finish the new blanket by Christmas. This year. Or at least by the end of 2013.

I do have a question for those of you who have created your own patch blankets. Have you put your Scouting knots on your blanket?

I have noticed that when Scouts and adult leaders have written about what they collected at this year’s National Jamboree it always seems to be about the patches. I will admit that patches are cool, and that I collect them myself, but there are plenty of other things to collect at the B.S.A.’s big event. One of those things is pins.

When I attended the 2001 National Jamboree at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia, I was ready to collect patches. I was not prepared to collect pins. I do not know if many council troops brought pins along to trade this year but our troop in 2001 did have a pin to trade. Unfortunately, our pins were pretty tiny. I had several of them though and I was determined to get rid of them for other pins, or something else that might catch my eyes. Like more patches!

As you may notice from my collection, I did not do very well with the pin collection. I did collect various other pins though, including the collection of Garfield the Cub Scout pins and a few of the official 2001 Jamboree pins. Yep, I guess you could say I was not into collecting the pins very much. I think I still have two or three of my council’s pins. Why are the the pins on a National Guard hat? Because the Guard was giving the hats away for free and it made for a great item to keep all the pins collected in one spot.

Did you collect pins at this year’s Jamboree? How many did you come home with? Which ones are the ones you prize the most? Do you have pictures of them posted online somewhere? Let us know.

Doesn’t it seem like every time you go to summer camp you end up bringing things home with you that were not in your pack when you arrived at camp? The camp trading post can be a dangerous place. Money can quickly disappear from your pockets. Strange items vanish from the shelves and somehow reappear in your tent when it comes time to pack up to return home. It can be very strange.

In my younger days I would usually come home from camp with a new tee shirt or two, or maybe a bolo tie, or a coffee mug, or some other items I just felt I had to have. Many years it was three, four, or five items. These items accumulated after a couple decades. I finally had to find the willpower to stop buying stuff while at camp. Unfortunately, it was sometimes hard to find Will Power.

This year I attended camp for only one day. I only made two quick trips to the trading post. As I walked around the store I heard the souvenirs call out to me… “Pick me!” said the tee shirts. “Buy me”, yelled the tall glass mugs. “Take me home with you”, whispered the colorful magnets. “I will keep you warm on those cool nights”, tempted the sweatshirts and jackets.

I did not leave empty handed. I bought four small items to take home. Two were Order of the Arrow lodge patches to add to my collection. One was the 2012 Many Point Scout Camp patch. (I did attend camp after all, even if it was just for a day.) The fourth item was a small furry raccoon wearing a tee shirt that said “I Love Many Point”. (If it would have been written out.) It was just too cute to pass up. It thought it would look great on the shelf with the other Scouting related critters I have collected over the years.

Did you buy any souvenirs at camp this year? What snuck into your pack for the journey home?

If you have been following me on this blog, you know I like to collect Scouting patches. On this Memorabilia Monday I would like to present my collection of Order of the Arrow lodge patches. Of course, I am not going to show the whole collection. I will highlight just a few of them.

I began collecting OA patches shortly after going through my Ordeal in the mid 1980’s. I belong to the Naguonabe Lodge of the Central Minnesota Council. Collecting patches is somewhat of a challenge for me because my lodge frowns upon trading our lodge patches. Of course, this makes them highly tradable since there are very few Scouts within the lodge that will trade them, including me. Luckily, the lodge does design special “tradable” lodge patches for special activities like National Jamborees and Conclaves.

My collection includes regular Order of the Arrow lodge patches from across the country and special National Jamboree patches from the 2001 National Jamboree. (I was the scoutmaster of one of the two council troops that attended that year.) The collection has been growing slowly. Usually, I only get to add a few patches a year. But grow it does. Someday, maybe I will have a large collection to fill a couple three ring binders. Time will tell.

100 Days of Scouting: Day 28 .

I have been doing a lot of thinking about patch blankets since the last blog post. In fact, I took out my two Scouting blankets over the weekend to see if they would work. I received both blankets as gifts, one from my sister for Christmas, the other from a couple of Eagle Scouts at their court of honor.

As I looked at them I thought that if I did start sewing patches on them I would not want to cover up the center logo or the writing on the edge of the design. However, I could put quite a few patches between the logo and border. That could look pretty cool.

The next thought was that I would not want to turn both of them into a patch blanket. The one with the white frills on the edge would have to stay as a throw blanket. So, I would need another one or two if I was to put all my patches onto blankets. I began looking online and found several Scouting themed patterns that could be used as a blanket. However, I did not find the fleece pattern for these blankets any longer. I could just use a red or green surplus army blanket. But this would look much cooler.

The next thought was how would I display it when it was done. I thought a loop sewn into the top of the blanket would allow me to hang the blanket by sliding a closet rod or dowel into it, like I saw in a picture recently. Or maybe just a few small loops instead of one full length one.

My last thought was why am I making this such a tough decision? I still do not know what I should do.