Valley Forge: 1950

From nearly every town in every U.S. state and from 20 foreign nations, 46,634 Boy Scouts swarmed into Pennsylvania's Valley Forge last week. They were more or less controlled by hundreds of harried Scoutmasters with benign faces and bony knees. The occasion: the second National Boy Scout Jamboree (the first: 1937), probably the biggest gathering of boys in one spot in the history of the Western Hemisphere.

In the green, wooded valley, many speakers spoke many ringing words, but to these the Scouts paid little heed. They stood lackadaisically in formation, answered commands with a muffled "Get a load of Big Shot" or "Boy, are you a brain." It was more fun pitching tents, roasting 25 miles of frankfurters, getting sunburned, sending home 3,000 wires a day and--most of all--poking fun at and bartering with each other.

Magic & Mandolins. Country boys stared at the sleazy magic of television; city Scouts complained to 34 aid stations of bumps, sprains and poison ivy. To Louisiana Scouts, the British served tea. Other Southerners saw a kilted Scot amiably explaining cricket to a khaki-clad young Negro. Austrians made music with mandolins; bagpipes whined shrilly from a pup tent.

"Utah, Utah," cawed a Brooklyn voice. "What part of Connecticut is Utah?" "Who won the war, who won the war," chanted a troop from Massachusetts, and Georgians replied: "The South did--and do you all want to fight it over?" "Ah, go wire ya mudder."

Always, hotly competitive bartering went on, for such esoteric regionalia as jars of muddy water in which the U.S.S. Missouri had floundered off Virginia, Oklahoma snakewhips and Ford emblems missing from state police cars. The best traders, reported one, were from Texas; the worst, from Illinois ("you can palm off anything on those jerks"). Four Nebraska kids convinced some city slickers that sandburs were really porcupine eggs, and sold them for 25-c- and up.

Flashes & Drawls. "When you listen to one of the New England boys with his drawl, bargain with a Texan with his drawl," said the head of Boston's Scouts, "you know that . . . these boys are getting a picture of the nation they couldn't get any other way."

After sundown one evening, ten acres of adolescent humanity squatted in the outdoor arena where Washington's troops marched and shivered 173 years ago. There the Scouts heard Harry S. Truman, honorary president of the B.S.A. Korea-weary, Harry Truman scarcely had a chance to sip a glass of water during the speech, so quiet was his young audience. The President contrasted Nazi and Communist youth movements to the Scouts, stopped when flashes from freedom-loving Scouts' cameras popped too often. "Please stop those flashlights until I get through reading," he said. "They blind me and I can't see."

Most of the kids, taking advantage of special rail rates, arrived at the jamboree by roundabout routes, or planned to go home a different way, giving them a chance to visit Washington, Philadelphia, Chicago and New York, to clamber up the Statue of Liberty, run a finger down the celebrated crack in the Liberty Bell, or stare giddily out of the little windows atop the Washington Monument. Scouts from around Flint, Mich, toured in 55 chauffeured Buicks provided by the factory. Another gang of Midwestern Scouts checked into a Manhattan hotel, and astonished chambermaids by making their own beds. It was their day's good deed, even though chambermaids had to rip the beds apart to put on clean sheets for the next guests.

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