Message #1393 - ** Scouter ECHO ** 
   Date: 08-04-92 09:34
   From: Randy Neufeld
     To: All
Subject:: The Staff - Part Ii
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from:  The Scout, September 15, 1917.
       "At the Sign of the Council Fire:  By John Hargrave

Staves! - Not Broomsticks

This is what the Chief Scout says in the August issue of the "Headquarters
Gazette:

"Let the Scout individualize his own staff, even decorate it in his own way
if
he likes, but let him keep to his staff."

I was talking to the Chief only the other day and he is very keen that the
picturesque part of Scouting should not be neglected.  In the Gazette and on
his "Scout Yarns" page he is urging us to make the staff not merely a
broomstick bu a part of the Scouts costume.  And now he says "Let 'em
decorate!"  Right!  Here goes!

First of all - penny tins of enamel, green red, white, blue yellow, etc., and
a small hog-hari brush.

Next thing is to mark out with a pencil on your staff wich parts you are
going
to whittle or carve out.  If it is a turned staff it will look better to turn
the various ridges on a lathe.  If it is a rough-barked ash staff (which is
what I always use) peel out the design with a pen-knife, and then paint in
your colours on the clean white wood.  On the other hand you may like to
acarve our your Patrol Totem and glue him or screw him on to the top of your
staff - or fretwork him out and stick him in a cleft in the top of your
staff.
If you do this, keep the Totem Sign quite small - otherwise he will get in
the
way when you are out Scouting.  Or you can have an eye-hole for taking a
birdseye view of the distance and a slot for carrying letters, or in which
you
can put a string like a clothes-prop.  This type is very useful when you wish
to use your staff as a tent-pole, or for hanging a billy over the fire.  In
fact, the slot and eye-hole can be used for a hundred differenct camp-jobs.

But the great thing is to make it yours.  It''s to be your staff and not like
anyone else's.  At school we used to have clubs for our "School Gang."  We
cut
these clubs from roots of trees and they were great big "Hefty" things - all
knobbly and spiked and terrible-looking.

I set the fashion in club designing.  I painted it and whittled out all kinds
of designs and it looked jolly primitive and "Scoutish" when finished.  After
that they all did it!  Eatch club was different, and each boy made his own
designs and did the whole thing himself - and if you lost your club or had it
"taken" you were reckoned as a "Mumblebump!"  I don't know exactly what a
"Mumblebump" is - but it means you're butter-fingered, and half asleep, and
blubber-handed and dream-struck, and flap-footed, and blob-eyed and lots
more!

It's what you'd call a Tenderfoot - but we called it by the name of
"Mumblebumposity," and it means generally a "wash-out" as far as Scouting is
concerned.

Well, anyway, a Scout without a staff is a "Mumblebump" and a Tenderfoot; 
and
a Scout who doesn't go right away this very second and begin to decorate his
staff is being left out of it - he'll be "dead in this act",
behind-the-times,
out-of-date, and generally out-of-the-running.

Now then!  Where's that staff?  What?  Haven't got one?  Go out - get one -
NOW!  Must have a staff - Scout without a staff not a real Scout - what? 
Come
along!  Double up!  Staves forward, please!  Got it?  Right!

Now then - decorate, carve, whittle and make that staff feel as if it belongs
to you and is part of you and that you'd be lost without it - and it without
you.

Put your Sign on it - brand your Mark on it, and make it a record of your
Scout life - and if you lose it, if you break it, if you don't carry it -
you're a - you're a - a - MUMBLEBUMP!

So there!


 * OLX 2.1 TD * Scouts Own - Home of the Saskatchewan Scouter Echo
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 * Origin: Scouts' Own - Regina, Saskatchewan CANADA (306-777-2998)
(1:140/27)