“Faded love and faded memories …”

Nineteen eighty-four was truly a banner year. I traveled to England with my high school band, earned the rank of Eagle Scout, turned 18, worked my first of two summers on staff at Philmont Scout Ranch and entered college. Of all those milestones, a case could be made that Philmont left the strongest impression. I’d been there three times as a camper, but there’s nothing like spending nearly three months in a magical place that’s touched your soul.

From left: Me, Ken, Mark, Bill, John and Matt. (Cattle skulls anonymous.)

I had yet to fall seriously in love for the first time. Sure, I’d had junior high and high school crushes, but I never dated. My weekends were spent playing Dungeons &Dragons with friends and performing in the pep band for GHS basketball games. Still, I had a romantic heart and love songs  spoke to me, even if I had no experience in that realm. Listening to the Oak Ridge Boys singing about a broken old cowboy lost in lonesome reverie at the Y’all Come Back Saloon or encouraging a lover to sleep peacefully amid dreams of a heavenly future only fed my fantasies of love.

Packing up Molly at the end of the season.

The official program at Abreu camp was three-pronged: adobe brick-making, burrow packing/racing and the cantina. The latter was my purview. I had a hand in the other activities, as the Cantina del Duke was only open for a few hours in the afternoon and a few in the evening, leaving time for teaching scouts how to mix water, dirt and straw in proper proportions to form solid, sun-dried adobe bricks. Such bricks had been used to build the cantina and those produced that summer went into an addition on the east end of the one-room saloon that had been begun some years before. I’m not sure if our work was sub-par or if the plans changed, but I think the addition was scrapped sometime later. Guess I need to investigate that further.

Cantina del Duke with the addition under way.

Besides the official program activities, we added some fun of our own. We challenged crews to Wiffle ball games – we always won, even if it meant dragging games out countless innings ’til we finally had more runs. Afternoons in the cantina could be slow, so squirt-gun fights occasionally broke out. I believe the first was initiated by some scouts who liberated my pistol during a contest of marksmanship that involved shooting paper cups off the bar. They thought they had got the better of me, but I had a secret weapon: The pump-action backpack sprayer for fighting backcountry fires rested just outside the cantina by the brick-making tools. That baby was the original Super Soaker! Peace through superior firepower.

Nighttime in the cantina was livened up with a little activity we called the chuggin’ contest. We’d call for contestants and then line up a row of pitchers filled with root beer. Let me just say it’s a good thing we had a sawdust floor in that place. But what a riot that was! And the scouts loved it. We may have received one or two complaints from scoutmasters upset about their boys barfing the night before a long, hot hike, but most got a kick out of it.

I’m thinking we closed the cantina at 9 so crews could hit the sack. We didn’t have a campfire program. So, to unwind after closing I’d join the rest of the staff (Bill, Mark, Matt, John and Ken) in the cabin where we’d listen to music and shoot the bull. In heavy rotation were cassettes of the “Oak Ridge Boys Greatest Hits:Volume 1” and Alabama’s “Mountain Music” and “Roll On.” Turned out my dad had two of those in his collection, so they joined me at Western Illinois University when I started there just a couple days after finishing up at Philmont in late August.

We’d sing along, doing our best to mimic that beautiful baritone on “Dream On.” And Bill would play air drums during the break in “Mountain Music,” grinning ear-to-ear just as he recalled Michael Martin Murphey doing during a performance of “Carolina in the Pines” at a Philmont staff function some previous year. I was enthralled to know Murphey had played a select show for the staff. I only knew him for “Wildfire” at that point, but my exposure to Murphey’s music through Philmont broadened my horizons and I bought “Blue Sky - Night Thunder” when I returned to civilization. I’ve since acquired a greatest hits collection, which serves me well.

So, the banner year. As I’ve explained, my job at Abreu was officially cantina manager. Whoa! Management position right off? And in the backcountry! Not sure how impressive that is, but I thought it was pretty cool at the time. Still do, for that matter. That meant slingin’ root beer and hawking chips. The root beer – Fanta by Coca-Cola – sold for 35 cents a cup and $1.50 a pitcher. The chips – Funyons, Ruffles, Cheetos, Doritos, Fritos and the like – were also 35 cents, I think. I kept inventory and sales records for the summer and I recall totaling somewhere over $13,000 in sales. That’s a lot of root beer and chips.

Well, between my sales and the revenue generated in the cantina and trading post at Ponil, the trading posts at Baldy Town, Ute Gulch and Phillips Junction and the trading post and snack bar in base camp, the Philmont trading post system generated more than $1 million in sales that summer.  It was a milestone worthy of celebration. In recognition of the sales feat, I was rewarded with a sweet little Buck Gent lockblade pocket knife, engraved with my name, “Banner Year” and “1984” on one side of the stainless steel handle. On that scale was an image of the Philmont bull; on the other, a rendering of the Tooth of Time.

This prize was entirely unexpected. I carried it in my pocket for a short while, but the wear diminished the clarity of the bull and Tooth images, so I decided it was better kept in storage. It remains boxed, one of my most treasured keepsakes.

PHILMONT PLAYLIST

Mountain Music - Alabama

Seven Bridges Road – The Eagles

Ghostbusters – Ray Parker Jr.

Music Time (live) - Styx

Slew Foot – James McMurtry

Snowblind (live) - Styx

Y’all Come BackSaloon – The Oak Ridge Boys

Carolina In ThePines – Michael Martin Murphey (Check out that grin.)

Dream On (SingleVersion) – The Oak Ridge Boys