For those who don’t follow the Cub Scouts religiously, scouts are arranged by age and geography into dens. Daniel’s den – number ten – consists of a dozen third graders from our subdivision. About once a month, all the dens in the area get together. This is called the pack (though “mob” might be a better description).
I started dropping hints about reading the book and how we’d have to start working on the report soon. No dice. The “hints” were raised to “suggestions” then – finally – “ultimatums”.
Friday night, we tried the car out on our “test track”. We rolled it back and forth on the kitchen floor. We have a grid pattern in the tile and could tell if the car tended towards the right or left. A careful whack on one wheel or another with a ball peen hammer slowly brought the car into alignment.
There was a new wooden car sitting in the middle that I didn’t recognize. “Where did you get that one?” I asked. No answer. “You only paid a penny, Dad,” he said finally. “You only get the tour if you pay fifty cents.”
Daniel’s den meetings are on Monday nights. Usually they get together, say the Pledge of Allegiance and work on a small project as a group. The last two meetings, they worked on building a birdhouse designed for wrens. I have to admit I was intrigued by this. Not so much by the birdhouse itself, but how the librarians would react when they saw a dozen Cub Scouts walking in with hammers.
It seems that Time has passed Daniel Boone by. There were several books about his life, but even the ones in the children’s section were weighty tomes that dated back fifty years or more. We finally found a juvenile biography written in the 1980′s. It had a lot of pictures.
We worked a bit on Daniel’s Cub Scout requirements to become a full-fledged Bear Saturday afternoon. It was cold and rainy, so we decided to do something indoors. He had to find out… Read More
I went to the library and checked out their single book on Lithuanian Cuisine. I was dismayed to find their diet apparently consisted of fish, potatoes and lard. It made sense that – traditionally – Lithuanians didn’t have much sugar in their diets. Lithuania has a climate similar to northern Wisconsin and they don’t grow too much sugar cane around Green Bay either.
I’m not an avid camper, but I do like to camp out with Meka and Daniel. We do it about once a year. A few weekends ago, we joined the Cub Scouts in… Read More
Recently I volunteered to help out with Daniel’s Cub Scout Pack. I don’t have enough time during the week to be a full fledged den leader, but I asked if there was anything… Read More
There’s a history of card playing in my family that goes back generations. We’re not talking Pinochle here. My grandma taught all of us poker at an early age. We started with Night… Read More
Daniel’s last pack meeting was on Saturday. This was the official graduation. Daniel finished the requirements to become a Bear Scout a couple of months ago; we had the Blue and Gold Dinner… Read More
