After the year with Jean in my science class, I went to the tree where I carved our initials and added 1978 to the totem. I wondered if I would be carving a year for now on and decided that that you not only look goofy, people wouldn't be able to find the initials, so I decided to cap the tribute with, "TLA." True love always...

Yet on the prayer front, the more I prayed, the more  I felt no amount of prayer would have Jean in any of my classes. I did find the feeling both strange and disappointing and wondered if it is my imagination at work. Why would I still have the feeling of us ultimately being together. It just didn't make sense to me. Yet I continued with the thoughts of appreciation for Jean in the past, as well as expressing the wish we would be together in the future.

New friends would enter my life and play a more prominent role.  Last year a friend named Ray, moved in behind me.  His father worked for Rockwell, was also a knife maker.  While competing for the National Bowhunters Association, won the National Championship. Ray loved making models, riding bikes at the park, but we basically shot pellet guns and spied on his sister and her friends.

Ray, too, helped me explore the park but had his territorial limits. We started setting up areas with log forts at different areas of the park. Ray had a sixth sense in where the older boys were hiding pornography and we would liberate one of these publications.

We would go through them for about a half an hour and becoming bored, would string one of them up in a quite area of the park and shoot at them. We liked to do this because there, were no shortages of bulls' eyes. These pictures were supplemented with bottles and cans. On the home front with other friends, we were getting yelled at for taking our parents', "Field and Stream when we played, big game hunter and for taking Time magazine when we played sniper.


During the last school year, my friend Timmy had been promoted from Patrol Leader to Senior Patrol Leader and was now in Charge of the troop. I became Patrol Leader and irked Timmy off because I started my own patrol name, "The Cobra Patrol," instead of the, "Sand Sharks."

Since I had come in, we still had the same hard Scoutmaster, but the troop was run by the boys and there was no shortage of parents helping out. Summer camp was where it was last year, "Lil' Arron Straus," located in Western Maryland around Little Orleans. The C & O Canal Towpath was located on the other side of the property.

I earned my Camping, Canoeing and Swimming Merit Badges, and we had a nice midweek backpack trip to Little Orleans, via the Tow Path and camped on an adjoining group area. Little Orleans was neat to us and very Huckfinn-ish as you walked under an aqueduct passage, and found a combination bar, general store, government services building and post office. Every position was filled by the same person, and at times, he would actually change hats. There was nothing but a rustic and country nature to the place. He was an interesting person and former owner of a stripe joint from Baltimore's famed, "Block."

The route back was mostly an uphill battle back to camp on a windy, rocky and dusty dirt road. We all had cussing fits when a vehicle would drove by. It took a good minute for the dust to settle and we had muddy and gritty teeth. Tim said it was ok to cuss as long as the adult leaders weren't around. As a Senior Patrol Leader, Tim was a bit disappointing as he was so slap happy and go lucky. Fritzy and his crew, the former SPL, were now Junior Assistant Scoutmasters who still carried on with their antics of smacking us around.

We finally reached the top of the mountain and saw a thunder storm bearing down on us and actually started really humping our backpacks in a vain attempt to outrun it. We made it to the turn off to camp when it unleashed and it was more like a war zone one was pushing through. The lightning was crazy and hitting the trees around us, producing deafening cracks and sending branches dropping around us. Tim was normally my fearless friend, his father was a calm Pennsylvania Dutch country boy and it was of no consolation to find Tim running though the woods, now scared crap-less.

The troop talk for summer camp was of next year, a two weaker that is being planned for West Virginia and the big fundraising push was on. Selling flowers for Easter, bake sales for the fall and collecting as much newspaper as possible. Tim and I collected them in a wagon with an old rabbit cage rigged to it so we could load it up.

By the end of our route, it took maximum effort to get the contraption to roll at all and one time, we dumped the whole affair in the middle of Taylor Avenue about three blocks from our street. Luckily a couple drivers asked us if we were scouts and once being scouts themselves, got out of their car and helped us out.

Tim was also going to be a big help in another way, I wanted Levi Blue jeans and was getting into fights with my father who basically thought the clothes that they were buying for me were fine. "What you think this household runs on desires and not money. We are buying you Blue Jeans and they are expensive enough!"

"Dad, you're always yelling at me about blowing out the seams and putting holes in them, Levis won't do that!"

"Pants are designed to be walked in, not as a surface so you can try to kill yourself with. Even Levis won't prevent you from killing yourself! God Damn it boy! If you want those jeans, you get a job, earn the money and buy them yourself!"

"I'm only thirteen!"

"That's as good of time as any and maybe you won't have enough time left to adventure yourself to death!"


At this time, Tim expressed to me his new problem; he was cutting lawns and being a good worker, had too many to effectively handle and needed help. Working for Levi Blue Jeans was worth it. At first I was Tim's assisting sidekick, who got paid a quarter of what he did, doing chores like edging, raking and sweeping.

It wasn't very long, until I started bringing along Dad's lawn mower that I sneaked out to be added to the trunk of the car Tim's dad would drive us to our lawns with. Many of Tim's lawns were not only cake, but very lucrative for their size. No matter how hard that I tried to get Dad's lawn mower cleaned, Dad knew I used his mower from the start and now had me cutting his lawn for using it.

Well, I tried to pray for Jean, but didn't like that feeling that my prayers wouldn't be answered and all that I was doing was irritating the Heavens. When I made it to school that September for eighth grade, I wasn't disappointed. Jean was in none of my classes. On top of that, when I went to my homeroom for eight grade, I was once again in a crowd of class members from Overlea, Fullerton and Perry Hall.

If you thought that I didn't really have a good attitude, you should have seen my fellow problems that would  make for me a, "Not so nice," class. Except the one, who would become my, "Main Squeeze!"