Timberline: Lord Baden Powell Skit

Timberline: Lord Baden Powell Skit

(Timberline part 7)

We had themes each day that were used for the campfires each evening. One of those campfire programs included a tribute to Lord Baden Powell, the founder of Scouting. Doug had an old uniform that he had purchased that when dressed in it gave him the look of Baden Powell. Of course we were also about the age that Baden was when he started scouting so he and I were both able to act the part. Anyway as we would start the campfire we would have the usual skits by the staff and patrols and then announced that we had a special visitor to our campfire that night. Doug would then come up into the campfire area and tell a story about Lord Robert Stevenson Smyth Baden-Powell. (Later know as Lord Baden-Powell, Baron of Gilwell and /or B-P). Doug would then tell his story about his dislike for school and consequent trick s he would play on professors as they would come looking for him in the woods because he had skipped out of class. He would tell them about B-P hiding in the trees since “no one ever looks up” when they are trying to find someone .He would also tell them about his being in the military for England and some of the things that he would do such as go into an enemy camp disguised as an artist and in front of anyone who wanted to see him work draw a large butterfly with parts of the butterfly’s wing decorations being symbols that would represent various parts of the fort like where the canons, ammunition, barracks, and officer’s quarters were located. Thus he would have a complete map of the camp and no one in the camp would see anything except a beautiful butterfly.  He also would tell of various antiques that he would use such as galloping a horse along a road dragging brush so that the enemy would see a huge cloud of dust and think there was a large army approaching when in fact it was very small.  Doug would also draw with both hands at the same time as B-P did and would draw the butterfly to demonstrate it. He would then talk about Mafeking and the way B-P had defended that city from the Boer army for 217 days. Then he would tell about the book B-P had written called “Aids to Scouting” and how it had been so popular due to his courage and direction in Mafeking. By the end of the night he had thoroughly kept all of the scouts in awe about the founder of scouting. (In the years to follow Doug and I both shared the impersonations, as he was not always available to do it for some of the other courses we had been asked to do.) It was fun but I had to learn how to draw and write left-handed and didn’t do nearly as well as Doug.