Expo 79

Every year, the Pee Dee Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America held an Exposition on the Florence Fairgrounds that were adjacent to Florence Regional Airport to display scouting skills to the public. It was one of the most exciting events of the year for Scouting as folks from all across the Pee Dee region would come out to view the local troops displays of crafty skills, and each troop strived to outdo the others with their displays. Popular themes were First Aid demonstrations, Cooking, Woodcraft, Camping and Pioneering. Expo involved each troop setting up an encampment which would be graded by a group of judges comprised of Scoutmaster of various Pee Dee area troops. Each encampment would be graded on layout, cleanliness, adherence to Scouting principles and competition was fierce. The arrangement and cleanliness of the encampments was part of the score and the display of Scouting skill carried the remainder of the overall score.

Troop 625 of Bennettsville, SC had a reputation of being a rowdy bunch of ruffians; a rag-tag group of misfits in the strict world of Boy Scouts. It was a reputation we bore with pride, as some of the other Troops looked down on us as not being a "real" troop because we didn't have a large amount of alumni that had achieved the rank of Eagle Scout, that our membership was below 35 Scouts and we didn't parade around in full uniforms with sashes full of Merit Badges or belts adorned with Achievement Awards. More than likely a 625 member would be seen sporting a Lynyrd Skynyrd tee-shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. We were, by definition, "rednecks" and we were proud of our reputation.....don't mess with 625!

Expo '79 was just around the corner and JB presented us with an idea for our display. He announced at a Thursday evening Scout meeting that we would be erecting a 20 foot tall observation tower and guaranteed us we would win the blue ribbon this year. He showed us a few pictures of a tower design he had come across in an old "Pioneering" merit badge booklet and Troop 625 collectively drew in closer, buzzing with excitement over the proposal. This would be a daunting task to undertake and we excitedly jumped at the chance to showcase our skill!

The next three Scout meetings consisted of planning and assembling the tower. JB decided that the smart thing to do would be to erect it ahead of time to work out all the kinks of construction and assembly, and we did exactly that. Several of us got together the following weekend and went to the 625 campsite at Doctor Charles farm to locate and cut down Blackjack Oak trees for the material to build the tower. The Blackjacks were then hauled back to the Boy Scout hut and we proceeded to learn how to build something incredible!

The tower was the "double tripod" type. Two tripods twelve feet long were fashioned by lashing three twelve foot trunks together, erecting one and inverting the other inside the first then bracing the open ends of the tripods with crossmembers lashed on with rope. When completed, the tower would stand just shy of twenty feet tall and would have a platform to allow an observer a place to stand. Guard rails would be lashed in place at the top, and an additional length of Blackjack would be lashed perpendicular to the guardrail to allow a flagpole to be held in place.

The tower was erected and refined over the next two Scout meetings as we would assemble it, tear it down then reassemble it until we could do it in the dark, blindfolded and with one hand tied behind our backs. We became engineers, construction hands and most importantly team members during this time. When it was finalized we had every aspect of it's construction and erection down to a science and could have it built and ready to occupy in thirty minutes flat. All that was left was to show up at Expo and show the Pee Dee our skill.

Troop 625 arrived at the Florence fairgrounds around 5 pm and began to set up camp. We had the ancient two man tents supported by one pole and it took two people to properly erect them so we were pretty busy for the following hour and a half fighting those canvas rags and setting up a kitchen covered by a fly for JB. Every occasion was marked by JB and his "camp kitchen". It was the epicenter of most 625 activities.

Jim Linder brought a pair of Army surplus field telephones and we strung a wire between tents for a direct line of communication should the need arise, and arise it did. We spent half the night "ringing" the phones until JB told us to knock it off or face disconnection. Clearly, it was time for redirection! After an impromptu meeting we ambled over to see what was happening in Rattlesnake patrol's campsite.

We arrived to a snickering Harry Hollis who exclaimed "there's a firecracker in the porta john over there!" It was an old trick: light a cigarette, lay it down and lay the firecracker fuse halfway down the cigarette. When the "cigarelly" burns down it will light the fuse and set off the firecracker. It's the poor kids time-delay fuse.

We watched the porta john first in anticipation then in horror as we saw Warren "Bubba" Black barreling towards the porta john with recognizable motivation, then breathed a sigh of relief when he bypassed the john and continued on towards the Kentucky Fried Chicken tent an entrepeneuring troop from Hartsville had set up. Their scoutmaster was also the owner of Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises in Hartsville and Darlington and seized the opportunity to supply us with the secret blend of eleven herbs and spices the Colonel made famous. They sold out both days!

With Bubba bobbing off safely, we returned our attention to the john and just as some kid from Florence was approaching we heard the pop of the firecracker and expected the Air Crash team from Florence Regional airport to respond, but instead only two people paused to survey the scene for the curious clamor, then returned to their previous tasks. Harry opined that the next time he will use an M-80, or perhaps a good old smoke bomb. He then picked up a rock and nailed a porta john squarely on the side which drew a protest from the occupant, and guffaws from 625 followed by a fifty yard dash back to the safety of the 625 campsite.

After a restless night of barely-adequate rest we rolled out of the tents to find JB swilling his coffee and revved up for the task. As we choked down grape, strawberry and blueberry Pop-Tarts JB started laying out the accoutrements of observation tower construction......the black jack oak poles and rope. Lots and lots of rope! Nolan Wallace "Jackie" Johnson was noted for overkill, and we didn't have to worry about buying rope for at least five years following Expo '79. Boy Scouts love rope.....that explains why JB loved rope, too.

The tower progressed at a remarkable pace and was upright in a mere thirty minutes, thanks to our practice sessions over the previous two weeks, and Expo '79 started casting stares in our direction. Even without the flagpole you could see that tower from every spot of the Florence Fairgrounds. People were starting to amble over and ask questions about it as we scurried about, correcting the leaning upper section and JB using a folding wooden ruler and trigonometry to ensure that the sections were indeed plumb and colinear before we pulled the lashing tight.

We had fashioned a rope ladder and I scaled the completed structure to fasten the ladder and start on the decking. I lashed three poles in a triangle that attached to the upper tower section and started hauling up pieces of blackjack to lash down to form a deck. We ran into a snag with the point where the deck pieces met the uprights and JB got mad when his idea didn't work but my idea of coping out the sections worked. I overheard Warren Black say "He would make a good engineer" to which JB replied "He's too damn hard headed, Bubba!"

With the tower complete, there was one last task to do. No tower is complete without a flag, and Harry had the flag and flag pole! He had the American flag, the BSA Troop 625 flag and the "Rebel" flag on a 15 foot bamboo pole that was handed up to Wally Odom who had shot up that tower the moment I came down.

He attached the flag and we all sucked in our breaths......the flags were a good thirty feet off the ground and there was Wally, looking for all the world like an airplane warning beacon atop the tallest structure on the fairgrounds.

Several of us wandered off to check it's visibility and the further away you got from it, the bigger it appeared! It literally dominated the skyline which forced that teen adolescent "juice" flow and that flow increased when we arrived back at the tower. A couple dozen scouts from other troops were there, admiring it and taking turns scaling it, acting like excited students playing on the jungle gym during recess.

It wasn't long before pretty much the entirety of Expo '79 was in the 625 campsite, looking for even the faintest flaw to be used as a chance to discredit this crowd of heathens, these terrors of Camp Coker rednecks. The official judges came by and after a lengthy interrogation of JB they shook hands and departed. JB looked like he was about to bust the buttons off his shirt he was so swollen with pride and announced that the award ceremony was at 3 pm, and make sure you are in full uniform. "I will be conducting an inspection" he barked "And I expect each of you to be in full dress uniform. No, and I mean no exceptions! Comprende?"

We heeded his advice and got dolled up for the three pm soiree which I found odd. Three pm is much too early for a formal event requiring such baubles and trinkets associated with scouting regalia but we all proceeded regardless of my protestations and got dressed, and fell in as patrols to march as a troop to the award ceremony. As we marched away, I turned to get a glimpse of the tower. It was an impressive achievement for a group such as ours and we all knew it, and cockily made our way into the arena.

After opening announcements, an appearance by John Jenrette and a talent show that featured a black troop from Marion that did an acapella version of "Boogie Fever" the awards were presented. Ribbons were awarded for best campsite, cleanest campsite and dragged on through the mundane skills of scouting that escaped us and finally the ceremony got around the "Troop with most merit badge" portion of the ordeal and presented the "Blue Ribbon"....the absolute, highest award to be bestowed at Expo upon Troop 625 of Bennettsville, SC for the observation tower we had built.

We were overjoyed and exuberant in our celebration as JB strode to the podium to accept our ribbon. Although we were tickled we all knew 625 had won it when every single person at Expo 79 had come by repeatedly to marvel in it's engineering and simplicity, and everyone was talking about it. It's a shame we didn't charge admission to scale it as we would have been able to buy lots of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

That tower hung around for a couple of years following that. We reassembeled it for the Marlboro County Arts Festival as a demo and it came to rest at Camp Coker in 1980. It was erected one last time and donated to the camp. It stood there outside Copenhaver Lodge for a year before being dismantled and the remains were discarded. I think JB planned it that way so he didn't have to fool with disposal!

That tower represented the pinnacle of scouting not only for ourselves but also for Daddy. He motivated a rowdy group of teenagers into working together and sharing together. There was no merit badge available that anyone could earn that qualified you to be JB. He was a remarkable man that left a remarkable legacy.

Have a rice day, y'all!