Not a normal childhood

I was on a camp out last weekend with Boy Scout Troop 1000 at Lost Maples State Natural Area when a bunch of us dads got to be talking about our camping experiences when we were Scouts.

Specifically, we were talking about the foods we cooked and how things had changed since we were boys. I made mention of the fact that a bunch of us raised rabbits, so we ate a lot of fried rabbit on our camping trips.

“You didn’t have a normal childhood, did you,” one of the dads said, more statement than question.

That got me thinking. To me, my childhood was perfectly normal. I guess one person’s normal in another person’s weird. What was perfectly normal to me was, in hindsight, not so normal to the average person. Yes, I raised rabbits – by the hundreds. I was also a beekeeper. On our one-acre hobby farm we also had cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks and turkeys.

In addition, we also had a large garden, three dogs, numerous barn cats and a continual parade of pets, including lizards, frogs, snakes, hamsters, mice, rats, hermit crabs, goldfish, and even briefly a young raccoon.

This being the days before home computers, portable music devices and the Internet, my two brothers and I practically lived outdoors, unless a favorite TV show was on. We rode bikes everywhere we went around town. Our neighborhood was our playground and the gang of us boys played games endlessly, picked fights, went fishing and did all the things boys did together back then.

My teenage years were spent playing with shotguns, fishing poles, steel traps, pocketknives, chainsaws and other sharp and blunt tools. How it is that I still have all my fingers and toes I’ll never know!

I paid for my first car by mowing lawns. My first real summer job was at the Ben Delatour Scout Ranch in Red Feather Lakes, Colo., about two hours northwest of my home. I worked there four summers in a five-year span. My first summer was on the kitchen staff. There was nothing unusual about that.

The last three summers I spent there were a little less than normal. I was dressed in the buckskins of a mountain man, lived in a teepee and taught wilderness survival and Indian lore merit badges. The one summer I didn’t work at camp I did my college internship as a sports writer for the Monte Vista Journal.

Dressing as a mountain man and teaching wilderness survival was easily the most enjoyable and memorable job I’ve ever had. You get to master some pretty handy skills when you teach boys how to light fires without using matches, how to cook without using utensils, and how to make a shelter without a tent or tarp. As a bonus one year, I did rabbit skinning and hide tanning demonstrations. There aren’t any merit badges for those skills, but they still drew large crowds.

In light of what my own boys have experienced so far in Scouts, I’d have to say my experiences were not normal. As I’ve moved around the country and gotten to know other people, I guess it is safe to say that I did not have a normal childhood. That begs the question, however, of what is normal?

Most of my friends outside the newspaper industry work “normal” jobs. I can tell you that life as a reporter is anything but normal. The average person does not spend his or her days chasing disasters, questioning politicians, reporting on fairs and festivals, photographing celebrities, jumping out of airplanes, taking media flights in vintage aircraft, touring stadiums and arenas under construction, or sitting through murder trials.

Granted, those aren’t every day events, but they’re all things I have done in the name of journalism. So, in answer of the original question, no, I did not have a normal childhood. Neither am I living a normal life. But it’s the life God blessed me with and I’m sure enjoying the ride.