yastreb

Our troop has sold Country Meats in the past. Compared to the official popcorn fundraiser, these things practically sell themselves. The sticks themselves are only $1, so people seem to be more apt to purchase several at once. We have a very small troop, around 10 at the time we did the fundraiser, and managed to sell an entire box (154 sticks) in the time it took to find someone willing to buy one popcorn item. We managed to sell enough so that the scouts who participated in the fundraiser were able to fund their summer camp the next summer (with the addition of the council scholarship). Though, I've never heard of having to "give a portion back to the bsa". As far as I know there is no such thing with troop-organized fundraisers. As for the profit margin, it's $89 a case with 154 sticks per case, so $65 profit per case, 42 cents per stick. So, 42% profit. It's a little higher than popcorn's 33%, but even if it was less than popcorn's profit it would be worth it because it actually sells! We ended up eating the leftover popcorn for an after-meeting snack.

Interestingly, in my search for something else, I did run across this Trained strip. The site says it's from the 50's, but I'm assuming it wasn't that common as this is the only reference I have ever seen to one. I've actually been using the "newer" mylar patch since I started as an ASM. I've worn it for years and nobody has commented on its shininess, or it being green. That's a good idea, thanks! We usually try to get new scouts up to near First Class level before summer camp but haven't done an organized program like our camp's own program. (Our camp, and several out-of-council camps I've been to call it Brownsea, I wasn't aware of other names for it.) We're trying to recruit, so I hope we can give it a try sometime. Right now we don't have many active scouts, our senior scout is Second Class, so he's almost ready. But, you're right, the best way to learn and retain something is to teach it to someone else. It just seems to me having them retain it from week to week is difficult enough, let alone to their upper-level ranks! I wonder if this is why the Scoutmaster is trying to train their memories using Kim's game.

Thanks for all the replies, they've been very informative! I think it is a pity that they discontinued the program, at least up until first-class I'd say it was a measure of skill, something I think the Scoutmaster training doesn't cover well enough. A week of training at summer camp seemed very rushed, there's no way you could master first-class in just that amount of time (it's sort of the same reason we've skipped Brownsea once or twice, we have to retrain the boys anyway). It would be nice perhaps to use the red-colored rectangular ASM emblem from the pre-1920's era to show skill level of adult leaders, as an incentive to keep us on our toes! I agree with what qwazse said, that A/SM's should basically earn first class themselves. I've had to do a major personal refresher course as the SM and I are having to train a new Patrol Leader as our troop recently hit several bumps. My shirt that's pictured there has a collar. Out of the four shirts I got, three have collars: two with short sleeves and one with long sleeves. The tails aren't much longer than my more modern shirt. The fourth shirt, that I failed to mention in my first post, is a collarless shirt, it's boy-sized and has a square tenderfoot emblem and patrol patch. Perhaps the guy had a son in the troop, cause it wasn't his shirt, I'm sure.

The Girl Scouts have been selling cookies all over the place here lately. I guess I never paid attention to their prices, but after our troop started to try to sell popcorn last year $4 a box sounds great! We started selling popcorn in the fall and did horribly. I think many others can attest to this, but when a customer is eager to buy popcorn and donate to the scouts, hearing the price actually makes them physically recoil. Most end up walking away, but some would rather their $20 bill go in the donation bucket. We actually made enough donations to pay off the popcorn, now half our inventory of popcorn is in the trunk of my car. We'll be eating some at the next troop meeting, then sell some more when it gets warmer. The Girl Scouts are famous for their cookies, if the BSA publicized the popcorn as heavily, I am sure the Boy Scouts would become infamous.

I've got a question regarding the olive-green uniform used in the 1960's, but first a little background. I recently acquired a collection of Boy Scout stuff at an auction, with it came four uniform shirts in pretty good condition. From what I gather from the membership cards, the previous owner was an Assistant Scoutmaster for at least 1962-1963 (I looked him up, he would have been 32-33 years old at that time). Three of the shirts were adult-size, two had a camp patch, the city red and white strip, numerals, and the Assistant Scoutmaster patch of that time. The strange thing to me was that these two shirts also had the first-class emblem on the pocket. The third shirt was the same as the other two, but stripped of all patches except for the first-class emblem on the pocket. My questions are as follows; Was there at any point in time a precedent to have a boy's rank on an adult uniform? After researching on my own I found this site with some interesting history on the connection of the adult leaders' roles and the first-class rank. It seemed that before 1938 the first-class and A/SM patches were differentiated only by color (nothing was said on the site about placement). Then I ran across something that said adults could earn the boys' ranks themselves, however I don't know much about that. Would I be correct in assuming this adult legitimately earned first-class? Anyway, what I'm trying to do is collect and build old uniforms. As I would like to be able to wear them myself, I was lucky that they were all my size, with the Assistant Scoutmaster patch no less! So I've taken the shirt that was stripped of patches and replaced the ASM patch, added my state strip and very hard-to-find community strip. I also had a vintage Eagle knot which I added (I don't think they had Arrow of Light knots back then). I guess I would eventually need to remove the first-class emblem to make it truly authentic, even though going through Scoutmaster training is similar in content. Did they have "Trained" patches back then? I'll be wearing the uniform to the next meeting, I'm keeping the first-class patch for now as a demonstration. Hopefully it will garner some interest in maybe actually wearing at least a uniform sock or two. Our troop is so small that it might actually be feasible to dress them all in old uniforms if they'd only be a little more enthusiastic about it. The only thing difficult is finding the community strip. By the way, the original uniforms just had Philadelphia with no PA state-strip, does anyone know if this was normal back then? I've tried to attach a picture of one of the uniforms in question if anyone is curious.

Hello, I thought I'd make an introductory thread as it appears I can make only one post at this time. I'm not new to scouting, I joined as a Cub Scout and finished my Eagle before going to college. Now that I've finished with college, I've come back into scouting and now am the Assistant Scoutmaster for our small troop. I'd like to see our troop grow beyond our current three or four scouts, but it is not easy. I am glad I've found this resource. I am sure it will be very helpful as I'm also interested in scouting's history. Collecting old memorabilia from scouting's past is a bit of a side hobby I recently started.