And a long run nears the end
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Signal from the scout master: he wants to see us in his tent
Their decision to admit girls earlier this year foretold it, but this has been long time coming, and though the huge civil judgments against the organization haven’t helped, the number of boys who want to learn outdoor skills has been dropping for decades. In the mid-60s, Riverside’s Troop II had a membership of 120, with so many others wanting to get in that a new Troop, 34, was created, while in Old Greenwich, Troop 3 another 100 boys or so participated. By the time my son John joined 1992, Troop 34 had been reabsorbed into Troop 2 and total membership was less than a dozen. It was a hard task for the three of us fathers guiding the troop to assemble even six boys for weekend excursions like, say, a canoe trip through the New Jersey Pine Barrens: too many conflicts with scheduled sports team practices and games,
So I’d lay the blame on travel teams and video games more than renegade scout masters. Regardless, sad to see an institution that since 1910 has provided such a great outdoor program fade away. Worse still, this classic will soon be relegated to the dustbin of history:
