Troop 187

Like a lot of guys, I spent the formative summers of my ManCub years in Boy Scout camp. Camp Briarwood to be exact. Socially awkward and sexually confused adolescents from all over the tri-state area would attend, in hopes of validating their moist existences with merit badges and totin' chips. There was a definite hierarchy among the different troops and mine wasn't too bad. We didn't have to take much crap off of too many guys because we had a sweet trailer and a dutch oven. Plus my one friend, Ryan was frigging huge, he was 6 foot 250 lbs in the eighth grade. Everyone called him Bear. Like I said we didn't take too much crap from the other troops except for the dreaded troop 187 from Toivola Meadows.

They didn't come every year, and the first time I went they weren't there. Everybody talked about them though like they were a pretty big deal. Apparently the year before some Tenderfoot didn't get out his Totin' Chip for 187's Patrol leader and the patrol leader broke an axe handle over the kids shin. Apparently the kid was pretty messed up and had to quit Scouts.
Anyway most of the stories sounded like a bunch of crap to me so I just shrugged them off. The next year I went back to Briarwood though, I got to see them for myself

Most of the different troops got there early on a Friday afternoon. We all set up camp pretty quickly because of some nasty cumulonimbus clouds. We were all zippered into our two-man pup-tents when the thunderstorm started around 8. Some of us were still awake when Troop 187 showed up around midnight.

They drove up in three stripped-down Chevy Conversion vans that had all been spray-painted primer gray. I could hear the rain hissing as it evaporated against the hot engines. They didn't use any flashlights or anything, just some ghurka knives to clear brush. They slept right there on the ground under a lean-to, wrapped in nothing but mud and army surplus wool blankets. I didn't get my first close look at the "Toivola Twisters" until the next day at roll call.

There were ten of them and they were all almost as big as my friend Ryan. Five of them had beards already and all of them had pit-hairs. Their Scoutmaster let them drink coffee in the morning and walked around camp with a Colt .357 Python strapped to his leg. None of them wore Boy Scout uniforms, just some faded fatigues and khakis. Their senior patrol leader had a tattoo of a skull on the back of his left leg, and this was in the early 90's.