Surplusman
01-25-2009, 09:57
Hiking the AT 1960
Actually, I hiked the AT from about 1958 until 1962, when my Boy Scouting days came to a close. I was a member of Boy Scout Troop 681, Falls Church, VA. Every summer we would hike the AT in Shenandoah National Park for a week or two. In retrospect, we had some first rate adult leaders. Mr.Russell Moody was our Scoutmaster, and the original Scoutmaster of the troop, Mr. Harry McQuarry, was still involved. Mr. Moody’s son Rusty was in my patrol. Sad to say, Mr. Moody passed away of a heart attack, at age 53, in late 1963. A number of his Scouts, including myself, were pallbearers at his funeral in Arlington National Cemetery. Our backpacking mentor was Ed Garvey, who I believe had a son in the troop. Mr. Garvey lived two streets down from me. It was not until years later that I read Appalachian Hiker and realized the connection between him and the AT. Every year, in preparation for our hike in SNP, Mr. Garvey would bring his complete backpacking outfit and would explain each item and some of his backpacking philosophy. A lot of what we learned from him would be considered obsolete today, but he had a very deep feeling for backpacking, hiking, and above all, the Appalachian Trail itself that went far beyond the ordinary. And he put his money where his mouth was in taking care of the AT, both physically and politically.
Let me backtrack a little here and tell you about my introduction to the art of camping out in the Boy Scouts. My first weekender was at Cacapon State Park in West Virginia. We had these old green canvas tents with floors in them. Of course, this is where I learned that you didn’t brush up against the inside of them if it was raining. My tentmates were older than I was, and one in particular, was a loud-mouthed jackass. The other older guys, though, were very helpful to us who had just joined. There are two incidents that stand out in my mind about Cacapon; Billy’s famous first aid procedure and the worst breakfast I have ever had. Billy was new Scout, too, and he would give you the shirt off his back. He was friends with everybody, and if you needed to borrow anything, chances are he had brought it along. But Billy’s train of thought sometimes went out to where the trains don’t run. In first aid class, we covered the procedures for getting someone out of harm’s way after they had been zapped by a live power line. Supposedly you would get the line off of them with a dry stick, tie a rope around their leg, and drag them to safety. Our next hypothetical medical disaster was someone who had just about severed their arm off. Our instructor, who had gone thru the first aid procedure a couple of times, looked straight at Billy and asked him what he would do. Without a moment’s hesitation Billy popped out with "Tie a rope around his leg and drag him to safety." More of the Adventures of Billy later on.
The second part of this concerns our first breakfast in the field. It consisted in part of soupy, greasy scrambled eggs, nearly solid oatmeal with grapes in it, and half-raw bacon. I wasn’t the only one to think that this attempt at breakfast was bad. The liquid eggs, the oatmeal & grapes, and the bacon were furtively dumped in a large clump of bullrushes nearby (shame, shame!), taking care not to let the cook see what we were doing. I never tasted anything that bad again, not even at the U.S. Army Reception Center at Ft. Bragg in 1967, where , as our first meal in the Army, we were served up wrinkled grey-n’-serve sausages decorated with white flecks of gristle, and jumbo pancakes with a liquid center and some tasteless brown "syrup" to dribble over them.
Backpacking in the late 1950’s was pretty much of a DIY affair, especially for a Boy Scout. Most of us made out own pack frames, and those who used "store bought" frames were mostly the WWII surplus plywood and canvas Army pack frames. There was an Army surplus store in Falls Church so there was a ready supply of packs, musette bags, mess kits, etc. if you were so inclined. We all used musette bags as bookbags when I was going to grade school. You could get them at the surplus store, in mint condition, from a hugh pile, for a little over a dollar each. Since the TV miniseries "Band of Brothers" came out, I guess musette bags are popular again…but not for just a buck and change. My pack frame was made out of pine boards with parachute cord wound around horizontally it to cushion your back. Actually, it was quite comfortable and allowed air to reach your back. Off of it was hung a Boy Scout pack. The pack, I remember, was a very sturdy but plain canvas affair with D-rings all over it so you could lash your sleeping bag to it with clothesline rope. Stoves were mostly homemade Buddy Burners, fueled by coiled corrugated cardboard soaked in wax in tuna fish cans. These worked real well, but were pretty big and hung off of our packs. For cooking we had the traditional BS mess kit and the aluminum Palco canteen. While rummaging around in the attic at my Father’s house a few years ago, I found my old mess kit and canteen. When Dad came along on some of our shorter hikes, he used his father’s WWI mess kit. I have that mess kit now. Still scratched on it is "Sgt John H.Vogt, Co. D, 23<SUP>rd</SUP> U.S. Infantry, 2<SUP>nd</SUP> Division, AEF" Backpacking food wasn’t really a specialized thing like it is today, and we carried lots of canned goods and small boxes of thick cut bacon. One of the guys was carrying a glass jar of grape jelly, which predictably broke. We were so hungry at one point we picked out of it all the pieces of glass we could find and ate it on crackers with peanut butter anyway. Luckily no one got cut externally or internally. Almost everybody carried a small Boy Scout axe and I was no exception. Dad still has mine, a nice little Bridgeport. Cooking time in those days, with exception of the Buddy Burners, meant attacking every small tree around to provide firewood. The Boy Scout mess kit worked out well enough (we didn’t know any differently back then) but were a pain in the neck to clean. One time on a section hike of the AT near Harpers Ferry, Billy struck again with his amazing logic, this time at lunchtime. That morning, Billy showed up ready to hike with a 12" cast iron frying pan hanging off his pack. When we broke for lunch, everybody got down to making a cooking fire and frying up their can of Spam or some other greasy canned food. I was eating lunch with Dad, who decided to come along as an adult supervisor. It was a beautiful sunny day with a clear blue sky. In the middle of eating, we heard a muffled "Ploof!" and a couple of seconds later the sound of what seemed to be raindrops pattering thru the trees. Dad looked up and said "It can’t be raining. There’s no clouds and the sun is out." It turned out that the sounds we heard in the trees were actually beans from what should have been poor Billy’s lunch. Billy brought along a large can of pork & beans to cook up in his frying pan, but for once he forgot to bring along a can opener. Instead of asking if anyone had an opener {he could have asked me: I always carried a P-38 on my keychain… and I still do), he thought that the best way was to set the closed can of beans in the frying pan over the fire. He figured at best that the can seams would split open gradually and he would get his hot beans. Instead, he got a bean bomb and very little lunch.
We never wore the Boy Scout uniform to hike except on maybe the first day. Ed Garvey, in Appalachian Hiker, couldn’t seem to figure out why we didn’t wear the uniform for hiking. True, it was a rugged set of clothing, but uniforms were meant mainly for meetings and church, the way we and our parents saw it. And if you had even dared to wear the uniform with the shorts and knee socks, you would have been laughed off the planet. Occasionally we would pass other Scouts all decked out in shorts and knee socks, with their leader sporting the campaign hat to boot. They looked miserable. Of course, what we hiked in wasn’t what you would call performance clothing, either. Cotton was the order of the day. Jeans, sweat shirts, t-shirts, regular shirts, and shorts. Once you were soaked with sweat from going up and down the AT in mid-summer in Virginia, you stayed that way.
There really wasn’t any lightweight hiking footwear as we know it now. Most kids had combat boot or combat boot type thick leather high-topped boots. I had a pair of logger’s boots that were hell to break in. Many years later I surpassed this personal milestone in foot discomfort while wearing a pair of reproduction Confederate infantry shoes as part of a Living History demonstration. These shoes had one piece wooden soles and heels, with canvas uppers tacked around the sides of the soles. Like the originals they had a little pony shoe for a heel plate and a mule shoe for a sole plate. The unyielding sole forced you to walk flatfooted like a duck, all the while striking sparks on gravel or asphalt as you clanked down the road.
While I get nostalgic for those backpacking days of 50 years ago, the nostalgia is for the guys I hiked with and the good times we had. I don’t feel nostalgic for heavy, hot equipment and clothing, and inedible greasy food. Neither do I miss tent trenching, fire rings, and chopping down trees (no matter how small) for firewood. I like Leave No Trace. I like performance clothing, lightweight packs and contents, comfortable hiking boots, trekking poles, Esbit stoves, hammocks, and anything else that makes my time hiking more enjoyable with less fussing. 50 years ago were not the good old days of backpacking; The good old days of backpacking are right now. Enjoy them!
Actually, I hiked the AT from about 1958 until 1962, when my Boy Scouting days came to a close. I was a member of Boy Scout Troop 681, Falls Church, VA. Every summer we would hike the AT in Shenandoah National Park for a week or two. In retrospect, we had some first rate adult leaders. Mr.Russell Moody was our Scoutmaster, and the original Scoutmaster of the troop, Mr. Harry McQuarry, was still involved. Mr. Moody’s son Rusty was in my patrol. Sad to say, Mr. Moody passed away of a heart attack, at age 53, in late 1963. A number of his Scouts, including myself, were pallbearers at his funeral in Arlington National Cemetery. Our backpacking mentor was Ed Garvey, who I believe had a son in the troop. Mr. Garvey lived two streets down from me. It was not until years later that I read Appalachian Hiker and realized the connection between him and the AT. Every year, in preparation for our hike in SNP, Mr. Garvey would bring his complete backpacking outfit and would explain each item and some of his backpacking philosophy. A lot of what we learned from him would be considered obsolete today, but he had a very deep feeling for backpacking, hiking, and above all, the Appalachian Trail itself that went far beyond the ordinary. And he put his money where his mouth was in taking care of the AT, both physically and politically.
Let me backtrack a little here and tell you about my introduction to the art of camping out in the Boy Scouts. My first weekender was at Cacapon State Park in West Virginia. We had these old green canvas tents with floors in them. Of course, this is where I learned that you didn’t brush up against the inside of them if it was raining. My tentmates were older than I was, and one in particular, was a loud-mouthed jackass. The other older guys, though, were very helpful to us who had just joined. There are two incidents that stand out in my mind about Cacapon; Billy’s famous first aid procedure and the worst breakfast I have ever had. Billy was new Scout, too, and he would give you the shirt off his back. He was friends with everybody, and if you needed to borrow anything, chances are he had brought it along. But Billy’s train of thought sometimes went out to where the trains don’t run. In first aid class, we covered the procedures for getting someone out of harm’s way after they had been zapped by a live power line. Supposedly you would get the line off of them with a dry stick, tie a rope around their leg, and drag them to safety. Our next hypothetical medical disaster was someone who had just about severed their arm off. Our instructor, who had gone thru the first aid procedure a couple of times, looked straight at Billy and asked him what he would do. Without a moment’s hesitation Billy popped out with "Tie a rope around his leg and drag him to safety." More of the Adventures of Billy later on.
The second part of this concerns our first breakfast in the field. It consisted in part of soupy, greasy scrambled eggs, nearly solid oatmeal with grapes in it, and half-raw bacon. I wasn’t the only one to think that this attempt at breakfast was bad. The liquid eggs, the oatmeal & grapes, and the bacon were furtively dumped in a large clump of bullrushes nearby (shame, shame!), taking care not to let the cook see what we were doing. I never tasted anything that bad again, not even at the U.S. Army Reception Center at Ft. Bragg in 1967, where , as our first meal in the Army, we were served up wrinkled grey-n’-serve sausages decorated with white flecks of gristle, and jumbo pancakes with a liquid center and some tasteless brown "syrup" to dribble over them.
Backpacking in the late 1950’s was pretty much of a DIY affair, especially for a Boy Scout. Most of us made out own pack frames, and those who used "store bought" frames were mostly the WWII surplus plywood and canvas Army pack frames. There was an Army surplus store in Falls Church so there was a ready supply of packs, musette bags, mess kits, etc. if you were so inclined. We all used musette bags as bookbags when I was going to grade school. You could get them at the surplus store, in mint condition, from a hugh pile, for a little over a dollar each. Since the TV miniseries "Band of Brothers" came out, I guess musette bags are popular again…but not for just a buck and change. My pack frame was made out of pine boards with parachute cord wound around horizontally it to cushion your back. Actually, it was quite comfortable and allowed air to reach your back. Off of it was hung a Boy Scout pack. The pack, I remember, was a very sturdy but plain canvas affair with D-rings all over it so you could lash your sleeping bag to it with clothesline rope. Stoves were mostly homemade Buddy Burners, fueled by coiled corrugated cardboard soaked in wax in tuna fish cans. These worked real well, but were pretty big and hung off of our packs. For cooking we had the traditional BS mess kit and the aluminum Palco canteen. While rummaging around in the attic at my Father’s house a few years ago, I found my old mess kit and canteen. When Dad came along on some of our shorter hikes, he used his father’s WWI mess kit. I have that mess kit now. Still scratched on it is "Sgt John H.Vogt, Co. D, 23<SUP>rd</SUP> U.S. Infantry, 2<SUP>nd</SUP> Division, AEF" Backpacking food wasn’t really a specialized thing like it is today, and we carried lots of canned goods and small boxes of thick cut bacon. One of the guys was carrying a glass jar of grape jelly, which predictably broke. We were so hungry at one point we picked out of it all the pieces of glass we could find and ate it on crackers with peanut butter anyway. Luckily no one got cut externally or internally. Almost everybody carried a small Boy Scout axe and I was no exception. Dad still has mine, a nice little Bridgeport. Cooking time in those days, with exception of the Buddy Burners, meant attacking every small tree around to provide firewood. The Boy Scout mess kit worked out well enough (we didn’t know any differently back then) but were a pain in the neck to clean. One time on a section hike of the AT near Harpers Ferry, Billy struck again with his amazing logic, this time at lunchtime. That morning, Billy showed up ready to hike with a 12" cast iron frying pan hanging off his pack. When we broke for lunch, everybody got down to making a cooking fire and frying up their can of Spam or some other greasy canned food. I was eating lunch with Dad, who decided to come along as an adult supervisor. It was a beautiful sunny day with a clear blue sky. In the middle of eating, we heard a muffled "Ploof!" and a couple of seconds later the sound of what seemed to be raindrops pattering thru the trees. Dad looked up and said "It can’t be raining. There’s no clouds and the sun is out." It turned out that the sounds we heard in the trees were actually beans from what should have been poor Billy’s lunch. Billy brought along a large can of pork & beans to cook up in his frying pan, but for once he forgot to bring along a can opener. Instead of asking if anyone had an opener {he could have asked me: I always carried a P-38 on my keychain… and I still do), he thought that the best way was to set the closed can of beans in the frying pan over the fire. He figured at best that the can seams would split open gradually and he would get his hot beans. Instead, he got a bean bomb and very little lunch.
We never wore the Boy Scout uniform to hike except on maybe the first day. Ed Garvey, in Appalachian Hiker, couldn’t seem to figure out why we didn’t wear the uniform for hiking. True, it was a rugged set of clothing, but uniforms were meant mainly for meetings and church, the way we and our parents saw it. And if you had even dared to wear the uniform with the shorts and knee socks, you would have been laughed off the planet. Occasionally we would pass other Scouts all decked out in shorts and knee socks, with their leader sporting the campaign hat to boot. They looked miserable. Of course, what we hiked in wasn’t what you would call performance clothing, either. Cotton was the order of the day. Jeans, sweat shirts, t-shirts, regular shirts, and shorts. Once you were soaked with sweat from going up and down the AT in mid-summer in Virginia, you stayed that way.
There really wasn’t any lightweight hiking footwear as we know it now. Most kids had combat boot or combat boot type thick leather high-topped boots. I had a pair of logger’s boots that were hell to break in. Many years later I surpassed this personal milestone in foot discomfort while wearing a pair of reproduction Confederate infantry shoes as part of a Living History demonstration. These shoes had one piece wooden soles and heels, with canvas uppers tacked around the sides of the soles. Like the originals they had a little pony shoe for a heel plate and a mule shoe for a sole plate. The unyielding sole forced you to walk flatfooted like a duck, all the while striking sparks on gravel or asphalt as you clanked down the road.
While I get nostalgic for those backpacking days of 50 years ago, the nostalgia is for the guys I hiked with and the good times we had. I don’t feel nostalgic for heavy, hot equipment and clothing, and inedible greasy food. Neither do I miss tent trenching, fire rings, and chopping down trees (no matter how small) for firewood. I like Leave No Trace. I like performance clothing, lightweight packs and contents, comfortable hiking boots, trekking poles, Esbit stoves, hammocks, and anything else that makes my time hiking more enjoyable with less fussing. 50 years ago were not the good old days of backpacking; The good old days of backpacking are right now. Enjoy them!