Thread: The Great Summer of 08

Well, thanks to some recommendations by Doc, I spent my summer well ... like it was 1914.


I also went up to 12,441ft to watch the sunrise





I did a little rock climbing

BUT apparently i'm too stupid to figure out how to get my images to work ... wow three degrees and a friggen picture stumps me. Tried using the add image tool and linked to picasa but no luck. Ohw ell. Just go here LOL

Picasa Web Albums - Ronald - Philmont 2008

Good to see ya back man. Also glad to hear you had a great summer! yall cut much lumber?

Do it like this:

Just open your image, right click on it, click on Copy, go back to the initiated Reply to this thread, right click then choose paste.

Indeed. We chopped down a fair number of trees and made railroad ties out of them with the scouts. It was a great time. We also played some "Logger Ball" with them, embracing what was quickly becoming the American Sport.

so how did the shaving and razor gear work out? give us some details son! Did you convert any of the other counselors to the straight? lets hear about the summer! tell us a tell.

Well, I had no brush and no soap so I just used a can of Barbasol. As far as the kids were concerned it looked "old timey" enough. So once a week I'd head out to the front of the cabin, or the backstop of the Logger Ball Field (built out of railroad ties and lashing). I'd head out there with a small cooking pot of hot water, a small wash cloth (plain colored, nothing fancy or printed), my set of 3 razors in the period correct pouch my great grandfather kept them in, shaving cream, and depending on my mood, either in my interpretive clothing, or just my union suit (think long red underwear with the butt hatch) and top hat.

I'd head out around noon. One, because that was lunch time and I had a break to shave and it wasn't freezing cold like in the morning, and two, because there were more people hanging around out there then. I'd just squirt out a lather get the face lathered up get out one of the three razors and begin with a shave of the side burns, down to the neck and then touch up around the chin. I was sporting one of those gnarly big mustaches at the time so I wasn't shaving that.

Needless to say I got a lot of questions from both scouts and adults as to how I was doing that. Lots of the adults didn't know that people still shaved like that but remembered their fathers doing it. The kids, well they just had seen movies where it was done and were amazed. I then ran into a barber and was asking him about honing and stroppinig. He was kind enough to send me xeroxed pages from his barber text book describing the method used and also pictures of the path to take when honing a straight. He also sent me a barbering catalog that had sharpening stones and soaps (cheap ones though) for straights in it.

My staff likewise got interested and I showed 2-3 of them how to shave with a straight. I described the method. They asked a lot of questions about why I used a strop and whatnot. It was very informative for them. They really wanted to get into shaving with straights but they just need to find razors of their own and get started. It definitely added another bit of "program" to an interpretive logging camp out here. One that probably hadn't been done out here before. I still really want to get a nice tin cup or porcelain cup and a good brush and some soap. If I'd have had those, it would have just polished off that image of a logger from 1914 out in the woods having himself an afternoon shave.

Hark, I got the pictures to work YAY!