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Being Prepared
- Syracuse University Press
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174 Being Prepared was a Boy Scout for just about two years and tried super hard to live up to our slogan: “Do a Good Turn Daily.” I tried hard. I really did. In my case it wasn’t that easy. Other Scouts could grab themselves a fast Good Turn just about any time they chose. They could volunteer to their mother or dad to go to the grocery store to buy a loaf of bread or a quart of milk or maybe a dozen eggs or some crap like that because mothers are always running out of food one way or another. It so happened that my old man owned a grocery store and brought home whatever it was that my mother ran out of. I did delivery orders for Pop, of course, but that was like a job and not in the category of a Good Turn. I was a money earner, like working in a bank or a gas station. I got tips from his customers except for one or two cheapies who were always out of change. We had a scoutmaster; his name was Harvey Golden and he was the son of Max Golden, the richest man in town. Mr. Harvey, which was the way he wanted to be addressed, asked us at every Scout meeting what Good Turn we had done today. Today, for Christ’s sake. Who the hell did he think we were, Dick Tracy? I would argue with Mr. Harvey, but it was like he was in another county. “Mr. Harvey,” I would say earnestly, “we go to school till 3:30. Then I go to Hebrew school until 6. After that I go home to eat supper, change into my scout uniform, shine my shoes, brush my teeth, and then show up for our Scout meeting at 7. Where would I find time to perform a Good Turn?” “That’s why you’re a Boy Scout, dummy. Scouts get things done even under adverse conditions,” he lectured me. “Take Charley Being Prepared | 175 Lindbergh, for example. Would he be able to fly the Spirit of St. Louis if he couldn’t find the time to fill his goddam gas tank?” Harvey was the kind of guy who loved to call celebrities by their first name or close to it. Even noncelebrities like me. The first time we met, he called me Billy Boy, which would be fine if I was a horse running in the Kentucky Derby. When I told him I wasn’t crazy about that moniker, he asked, “What about Mary Jane or Hortense? Or Marlene?” So I shut up and he called me Willie—which I liked. As long as I knew him, he referred to President Herbert Hoover as Herbie or Horton and to President Calvin Coolidge as Buster or Smiling Cal. We Scouts referred to Harvey as Mary and I don’t know why. Don’t get me wrong. Mr. Harvey was not a geek. He went to all our bar mitzvahs and gave each of us a tie with a naked woman on it. They say it cost him two or three bucks. But of course he was a rich man’s son and most of the time behaved like one. I remember the time he led us on a hike in the Poconos. He got one of those oversized trucks from his old man’s factory to transport us to a mountain named Big Pocono, which was about twenty miles from our town. We Scouts were members of the Hyena Patrol. There were eight of us plus Mr. Harvey. A patrol is usually named for an animal and has an official yell associated with it. Our yell was a combo of a scream and a hysterical laugh. Like a loony would sound in a horror movie. Our hiking plan was to get to the top of Big Pocono, which was 2,200 feet high, build a fire Indian style (no matches) and then cook a meal in the embers. Mr. Harvey led us on that hike until we were about halfway up the mountain. We followed a path onward and upward until the path disappeared . We had reached a dense forest and could no longer see the mountain top. We wandered through brush and bush and pines and oaks but we were traveling blind. We didn’t know where we were. After about a quarter of an hour, Harvey blurted out, “I think...