Something for the Boys

After being a schoolteacher and a coach, Rice E. Cochran thought he knew and liked boys. When a local minister asked him to take over the church Boy Scout troop, he was happy to agree. Now, 20 years later, he has published the results of that decision in a new book called Be Prepared!* (Sloane, $3.50). Though he writes under a pseudonym (he is now an NBC scriptwriter) and keeps his town anonymous, Cochran manages to paint a lively, hair-raising picture of what it is like to be one of the most bothered and bewildered of U.S. educators--a scoutmaster.

On his very first night, he learned one thing: Boy Scouts seldom look like the idealized picture of Boy Scouts. "I had imagined that they would have eager, alert, likable faces--even noble or cute ones, similar to those I had seen in newspaper photos of Boy Scouts handing placards to the mayor or demonstrating bandages in City Park. Such types appeared to be in very short supply in this troop." Giggling and jiggling among themselves, they scarcely listened to his inaugural address ("Look at Big Shot," whispered one). Nor did they take his attempts at umpiring any more seriously ("That's a rob! Ya blind?"). On at least one night, the troop seemed unanimous in its estimate of the scoutmaster ("He's strictly a stupe").

Grease & Gravy. When he later became "Pear Bottom" and "Jelly Belly," he concluded that he must, in self-defense, "begin eating smaller meals and doing calisthenics in my bedroom." When he failed to watch his own grooming, he was quickly pulled up short: "Once I incautiously pointed out a grease spot on a boy's shirt. He thereupon called attention to an extremely small gravy mark on my own . . . From then on I never dared appear at a troop meeting without first giving my shoes such a gloss that they could have stood sentry-go at Buckingham Palace ... I went further. I began slathering myself with after-shave lotion, gargling with mouthwash, and even polishing my belt buckle before troop meetings."

Troop meetings were only the beginning. There was also hiking, and "the man in charge of a group of boy hikers has somewhat the same problems that faced Moses in managing the Exodus . . . There is a similar effort involved in keeping up morale and discipline. There is the same need to dispel almost universal fear of death from thirst or privation. There are those brave, tragic figures who collapse by the side of the road and gasp, 'Go on without me. I can't make it.' " Once home, however, the boys soon forget their difficulties. "Gee, it was great!" they tell their parents. "We waded for miles in the brook and hit Mr. Cochran right in the face with a tomato and put rocks in his pack till he could hardly walk . . . Boy, we had a keen time."

Over the years Rice Cochran became used to having rocks in his pack. He was badgered by nervous mothers, harassed by peremptory fathers ("Pay attention to me, young man. My boy must be senior patrol leader of your troop! That's my last word"). He was the victim of strange rumors ("The scoutmaster handled our financial campaign very well. He got a new Buick out of it"), was accused of being a Communist (he had taught the boys to sing a college song, Sons of the Stanford Red).

On Mercy Bent. But there were satisfactions. Boy Scouts not only pledge themselves to perform a good deed daily but actually live up to their oath. If an old lady gets sick, they will appear at her door week after week as volunteer shoppers and errand boys ("The staying power of boys on mercy bent sometimes surprises me"). If a child is ill, they will drop in to play checkers or to deliver homemade jigsaw puzzles.

"The news of an afflicted boy," says Cochran, "seems to rouse other boys . . . This first became apparent to me . . . when I met a Scout named Alan Wylie . . . Alan Wylie . . . was blind . . . Yet he was determined to become an Eagle, and the rest of his troop was determined that he should. They took him everywhere. He was a nuisance on hikes, but the troop slowed d.own to his pace, and detoured around the invitingly rugged areas which might have been troublesome for him . . .

"They brought him back to camp four summers in a row--carefully salted and sugared his food at mess table, described to him what went on at campfire, patiently taught him (by touch) to row a boat and chop a log." Eventually, Alan Wylie passed all his tests. "The last time I saw [him] was the night a representative of the National Council presented him with the Scout Life Guard emblem. The boy's . . . face was transfigured, and the rest of us felt somehow transfigured, too."

*The Boy Scout motto, adopted by Founder Lord Baden-Powell, whose South African Constabulary first used it "partly because ... it spoke of their readiness to take on any kind of duty . . . and also because it brought in my initials."

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