The names in a Philmont picture
Kevin Gray
A few weeks ago, I posted my Philmont Scout Ranch group picture taken in 1967. Almost 15, I found myself in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of northeastern New Mexico, along with ten other Boy Scouts, one leader – all of us from Virginia – and our guide, an Explorer Scout.
In the background of this still crisp black and white photograph is the Tooth of Time, the well-known landmark. Dressed in full uniforms, we all looked much different than our everyday appearance on the 64 trail miles we covered in ten days.
My reason for placing the picture on my site was to see if anyone could place names to faces. There’s no real way to identify each guy because four scouts from a Petersburg, Va., troop joined our Richmond group of six scouts for the trip.
Before long, Buz, a guy I knew in high school and once worked construction with, emailed the message, “I was there that summer. We took the train to Chicago, then to Colorado Springs, then a bus to Cimarron, New Mexico. I remember the train going through Pittsburgh at night, and it seemed like we spent half an hour going by one steel mill after another with sparks flying everywhere as they poured the steel. Times sure have changed.”
His comments about the “sparks flying” and changing times sure grabbed my attention. Buz, a professor of Computer Science at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, described the train route almost the way I would (and all those steel mills), except it was Denver not Colorado Springs. Was he on the same train with me? Most of the train cars were filled with Boy Scouts. He is still checking to see if he can find the dates of his trip. Maybe his group went through Colorado Springs, instead?
I still have a file filled with all my records, including itinerary, the Philmont application, post cards, 60-miler and Philmont arrowhead patches. I see from the itinerary that the Gray (no relation to me unfortunately) Line Sightseeing Company drove us south to Cimarron.
Bruce, the historian for the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries in Washington, D.C., described almost the same scenario as Buz, but he had gone the next summer. “I remember,” he wrote, “during the stop in Chicago looking through the periscope of the U-boat in the museum. I also recall the bus ride through Chicago. My parents were mad that the only thing I took pictures of were the bums in Skid Row under the L.”
Well, Bruce, I did take pictures of what your parents had wanted, and those pictures were never very exciting. But, then, a few years later on my high school graduation trip to New York City to see B.B. King, I took photos of the hustle and bustle of the busy streets, as well as the bums in the Bowery.
I finally filled in the rest of the Philmont picture identifications because another Bruce, currently a Richmond, Va., city council member, and actually in my old photograph, said, “That’s Al!” The last missing name had been on the tip of my tongue the whole time.
When out on a trail, ascending a mountain or attempting to traverse a stream on a log with a full pack on your back, you learn a lot about endurance, patience, timing, balance, for sure, and, to me, above all, an appreciation for the beauty and wonder of the land and the possibilities before me. We learned to do without many creature comforts, and our meals consisted of freeze-dried packaged food designed to be mixed with water from nearby streams. Absolutely delicious, but some of the boys thought differently.
I may still have my Philmont file, my slides, now the names in an old picture, and memories of a long train ride. It bothered me when I noted only the white guys were conductors and the African-Americans porters and cooks. My most important keepsake from the trip? Gotta be my boots! The leather remains soft and pliable, even after all these years, and a reminder of my youthful adventure during very different times.
Times when young people could go after an American dream of their own making, something that doesn’t seem so real in the present day. A day, when kids will go on graduating from high school, community colleges are filled to capacity, and college graduates have no jobs waiting to apply for in their fields.
Why? Because many politicians newly elected to work on doing something about jobs are doing anything but working on job creation.
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Posted by admin
on Mar 2 2011. Filed under Kevin Gray, Opinion.
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