From: "settummanque, the blackeagle" (Mike Walton)
Via: Steve Tobin / Scouts-L Youth Programs Discussion List
Date: 3 Mar 1994

Yeah, it's long but I thought with the past month's Cub Scout theme "Cub Scout Traditions", I would share the story that I've told groups of Cub Scouts last month during their Blue and Gold banquets. So...

(extracted from "Patches and Pins (or the quest for Silver Animals and other assorted crap)", written by Mike L. Walton © 1988 )

A small, metal pin about the size and diameter of a penny sits on my desk back home. I chose to keep that pin-not the original one, but a "copy"-to constantly remind me of my obligation to "do your best" in every task that I did. On the pin, bronze in color, appears a wicked- looking bobcat. No one ever told me why the bobcat was chosen as a beginning badge, other than it had something to do with Rudyard Kipling's story of wolves and their families.

It also serves as another one of those things sociologists and psychologists and communicatogists and all of those other "-logists" call a "rite of passage". Simply put, it's an initiation tool. Now I've been initiated several times since then in other ways other than the presentation of a pin.

The most important of all of those initiations, however, was my birth. An initiation into the Earth.

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When I was six years old, my family - my mother, myself and my younger brother Shell - lived with my mom's sister and her family in Chicago's South side. My mother was scared (she told me much later); her husband went as many other military men and women did, to fight the latest of America's wars, this one in Vietnam. She moved us all to Chicago because each night, there was nothing but bad news on the TV news and she wanted to be close to family in case...in case. I looked at all of this as an adventure! I walked to my first grade class two blocks from their home. And snow or rain, sunny or cloudy, came home in time to watch the afternoon cartoons and the Bozo show.

On one afternoon in the spring, I was playing on the landing of the apartment, when I looked over the edge and saw a woman with several kids walking through the alleyway. I've seen people walk through the alleys-bums looking for something to sell in the garbage cans, teens running from other teens, and the occasional man walking a dog. But this was different.

The woman, a tall white woman, was wearing a blue hat and a golden yellow blouse along with a dark blue skirt. With her, her hand holding one child's hand, were four or five black and white boys, each wearing a blue uniform with blue pants and gold piping throughout. Even the hat they wore was blue, with some kind of symbol on the front and gold piping throughout.

I ran down the stairs, almost tripping at one point, to see these people up close before they made the corner and go past my "boundaries". I yelled at them "Hey wait!" and the woman turned, smiled and waited for me to catch up with them.

"Who are you guys?" I asked, looking at the uniforms that the boys wore. I thought that maybe they were playing Army. They had numbers on both sleeves and all kinds of patches and pins on their shirts.

The woman explained that they were Cub Scouts (I read that from one of the shirts: Cub Scouts B.S.A) and this was her Den and they were taking a nature hike.

Then she asked me "Would _you_ like to come along with us?" I nodded, then I said, I have to ask my mom if I can. Can you wait?" She said "Hurry!" and before I could hear anything else I was back to the apartment, and halfway up the stairs to the house.

Inside, I got my mom to come to the back door and look out at the assembled group. "Mom, can I go with them? They're doing a nature something!" She looked outside and saw the group and asked "Whom are they, Michael?" (I hated when she called me that!), and I responded "They're Cub Scouts, BSA", remembering the label on one of those shirts.

"I don't know those people and I don't know about this Club Scouts. No," she said, shaking her head. Instantly, all of the energy I ever had went away with every word she spoke. I walked back to the landing, and yelled "My Mom won't let me. Thank you for asking me."

The lady waved and yelled "Maybe next time!" and her and her Den all yelled and waved "Bye!" as they made their way around the corner and eventually out of my sight. As I sat there on the landing, I was full of anger. "Why wouldn't she let me go with them?", "It's bad enough I can't do anything except go to school and come home!" I didn't like, let alone love, my mother at that point.

But then, I heard the starting of the Dick Tracy show, and the disappointment went away. I went back to the television set in the living area, and sat there watching the show.

Since that day, I pestered and bothered my mother so much that she said one afternoon, "When your father comes back and where ever we go to next, if they have Club Scouts, you can join then. I promise."

Instantly, I loved my mother again. I think that she felt worse in telling me no than I was in not being able to go with that Den. I hugged her as I turned to watch Dick Tracy talk into his watch radio.

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The first week we lived in Germany was truly wonderful. For the first time, I smelled the sweet yucko odor of fertilized land. Where we lived we were surrounded by farms on two sides, and a small German village on the other two. Every day to me was a new adventure, someplace new to ride my bicycle to, someone new to meet and wave at. I saw a "honey wagon", drank "spruldle wasser" (which tasted a lot like Sprite or 7Up), and enjoyed German candies and "gummy baren" (fruit candies shaped like small bears..I used to stand them up and eat them one at a time). The school was located in another larger military village called Pattonville, and classroom instruction including singing the school's song each morning and learning German from a "real German woman" each afternoon.

I still saw those blue uniforms and those blue and gold hats and daydreamed about how much fun it would be to have one. One day, while using the bathroom, I tried on one of those hats. One of the boys left it behind and I placed the too-small-sized hat on my head and looked at myself in the mirror. I said "Keen!" to myself (Keen was one of those words that I learned later, that only the Beaver and Eddie Haskell said and that the "current word" was "cool, man".)

One afternoon, I returned home on our school bus and after going through the open door to our stairwell, saw a paper sticking out of the mailbox. It was in every box. I got ours, opened it to read it and it said more than volumes:

The building was right across the street from our building! I RAN up the four flight of stairs, banged on the door, and after my mother opened the door, ran to the kitchen holding the notice in one hand and my satchel in the other, yelling "Mom! Mom! Look! I can join Cub Scouts!"

Then, realizing that it was my Mom that opened the door, slowly placed my hands back down and walked back to the door. "Sorry" I said, "Here." She read the notice, and wiping her hands on her apron, said "I guess we're going to this meeting to see about this".

She could not have made me more happier, even if she gave me the entire Matchbox car collection and storage boxes for all of them! When my father got home, she told him about the meeting, and together we all walked over across the street and up into the attic of the building to the "Club Scout" meeting.

There, they filled out the application and got the cover, which had instructions on what I needed to do to earn the Bobcat badge. Beside the illustration of the boy holding his hand in the Cub Scout sign, were the words I needed to learn in order to know the Cub Scout Promise, the Law of the Pack and the Cub Scout Motto. There were also a new set of words: Akela, which means "good leader" and WEBELOS, which meant "We'll BE Loyal Scouts". I had to learn all of this and return to the attic in the following week so that I can be "signed off" on those requirements and join the Pack.

I took that piece of paper home and memorized every word, every statement, and even tried to stand like the little white boy in the illustration. Each night, I would lay in the bottom of the bunk bed my brother and I shared, raised my feet against the top part of the rafters that held Shell's mattress in place, and closed my eyes as I repeated the words of the Cub Scout Promise.

"Get you sticky feet off of the bed! You're making lumps!", Shell would say. At three years old, Shell couldn't say "stinking", so it came out "sticky". And that started my modification of the Cub Scout Promise.

Each successive night, I would raise my "sticky feet" (instead of raising my hand and arm in the Cub Scout sign...I knew that whenever I stated the Promise or the Laws I had to use that sign), and repeat the Promise and the Law of the Pack before I went to bed. In the morning, I would raise and after my short prayer, I would do the same thing before getting dressed.

One week later, I went to the Cubmaster before their meeting, and gave him the piece of paper which served as my temporary membership.

"Okay Mike, are you ready?" I said that I was.

"All right give me the Cub Scout Sign", and instantly I tried to imitate that kid on the page. I knew this sign because it looked like the "peace sign" that kids were giving each other at school.

"Okay.... great...give me the Cub Scout Promise." The Cubmaster looked at me as I started. In my practice, I created a sing-song of the Promise: "I, Mike Walton, promise...to do my best to do my duty.... to God and my country. To be square (that's what the Promise used to say back then...in 1973, the words were changed to "to help other people") and to obey the law of the sticky feet!"

The cubmaster looked at me and said "WHAT!?!" I looked back at him, slowly putting my hands down, and repeated the same words.

"Are you getting the Promise and something else mixed up?", he asked me.

"No. I know that Akela is a good leader and I know that "We'll BE Loyal Scouts" is WEBELOS. " I used my fingers to help me remember them by.

"Can you give me the Laws of the Pack, then?", the Cubmaster smiled. By this time, I _knew_ that I would get my Bobcat badge that evening. So, with the same enthusiasm that I used to say the Promise, I once again raised my hand into the "peace sign", and spoke the words of the Law of the Pack: "The Cub Scout follows Akela!" and in my mind, I added a "boom"; "The Cub Scout helps the Pack go", and once again in my mind, I added "boom boom". "The Pack helps the Cub Scout grow", ("boom boom boom") "The Cub Scout gives good will". I grinned as I sang them out.

"So what *is* this "sticky feet", then?", the Cubmaster asked me. Not knowing what it was until then what I was saying wrong, I slowly dropped my hands and fully embarrassed, told him how I studied for this "test".

He laughed and said, "Well as long as you remember that it's the Law of the Pack and not the "sticky feet", that's fine with me." He signed the form and had me to sign the Pack's Bobcat book.

At the age of eight, after much discussion, many nights of wondering and wishing and praying, and after seeing what I wanted 2 years before, I became initiated again. A new set of learning behaviors begins. A new set of rules start. Rules I will commit to memory soon after receiving this button. Rules that took me through life in ways my parents didn't even imagine. Rules which meshed with my family's beliefs. Rules that match word-for-word my Savior's ideas.

That evening, in front of God and everyone in the Ludwigsburg-Aldingen Cub Scouting community, I was turned upside down by my father and my mother pinned the bronze Bobcat badge upon my shirt. Then, turning me right side up, my father placed me back on the floor and the Cubmaster presented me with the temporary slip of paper that would be in my Scouting archives until I left for college. Then, he stated that "You all have to do a good turn for someone else. Once you did that, you can turn your Bobcat badges right side up!"

I had been initiated into the Scouting movement. The first of many such initiations-but the most important, at least for a long while.

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Settummanque!