I grew up in a rural urban area barely in the city limits, that is one side of the road was were the houses were, and the other side was farm/ranch land. The neighborhood had 4 streets, then another mile until the real city started. At around 10 years of age we would saddle up the horses, ride down to the river and spend the weekend without adult supervision. We had all been taught by our dads on how to be safe on our own. We gathered fire wood, built fires, cooked for ourselves, went swimming in the river and many other things, but we took care of the horses first. We never burned down the trees or drowned in the river. We divided up the chores as well as chose one kid to be sort of a safety person. Remember just about all our dads graduated high school and went straight into WWII or Korea, so we learned that mindset. Pretty much all our camping gear came from the Army/Navy surplus store, which was owned by a guy called ''Fats''. He was rather portly and always sat in a chair, usually his leather recliner. We would go to see Fats and ask him if he had something particular, and he would furrow his brow, scratch his forehead then tell us where to look. We would find what we wanted then run back to Fats and ask him how much it cost. The small stuff was usually 10 to 25cents. On the bigger stuff he would ask us how much we had, and wouldn't you know it the price was always the same amount we had in our pockets.!! Fats had a couple 55 gallon drums and they were always full of the old steel beer cans. I never figured out where those cans came from until years later.
One camping trip, a kid was eaten by a bear. Ok, not really, it was just his hat. Ok, It wasn't eaten by a bear, it was lost in the river, but it was a really nice hat...
To us kids scouting was for city kids, possibly the ones without dads.
apnews.com
) Troop 14, the oldest troop with the same sponsor west of the Mississippi River is 110 years old and going strong.
