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Category: The 60's
* Scouting through the Summer of '67
Chuck joined the Boy Scouts as soon as he'd turned eleven. He couldn’t wait to join because his brothers George and Bill had already been Boy Scouts for a couple years, and every time they’d gone camping, it just killed Chuck to watch them pack their backpacks, roll their sleeping bags, and head off with the rest of the troop.
They belonged to a troop that had over twenty-five years of history in Cleveland, but by the time Chuck had joined they were fairly dysfunctional and were facing the threat of losing their charter because they had no Troop Leader. Despite their problems, Troop 34 was still were allowed to hold “meetings” in the neighborhood Baptist church each Tuesday night at 7 p.m. because one of the older guys belonged to that church.
Somehow Troop 34 always managed to scrape together some adult who would act as a leader to take them camping, and it was usually an alumnus member of the troop, until one day out of the blue, Troop 34 found Harold Fotkowski, who everybody called Footy. He was a real, live, full-time, chartered leader in his mid-thirties, and had a passion for camping and the Scouts. Footy was cool for an “old guy” and brought stability and improvements to the troop.
For the second summer in a row, Footy arranged for Troop 34 to have their annual weeklong summer camp at the Clendening Boy Scout Reservation in southern Ohio. Their campsite was a rustic clearing in a forest of young maples and tall oaks, had a covered shelter with three picnic tables, a fire pit outside the shelter, a hand-driven water pump, and a wooden outhouse set at the far end of the clearing. About a half mile down the gravel road was the main camp office where the tough and fit, Camp Director Thomas Hazzard lived and reigned as head-honcho and chief despot.
The muscular and super-tanned Hazzard also ran the waterfront which was on the beautiful Clendening Lake where the scouts swam, fished and canoed. Each day the troops could reserve private swimming and boating sessions on top of the daily open swim each afternoon, and on the second day, Footy had arranged 34’s first crack at the canoes for 11 a.m.
* 11 / 22 / 63
The year was 1963, and Chuck Bamata was ten years old. He was in Miss Baker’s 5th Grade class at Benjamin Franklin Elementary School in Cleveland, Ohio. Miss Baker was an ancient spinster whose best pal seemed to be the equally ancient Miss Richardson. On that day, the class was in their afternoon session, with a little more than an hour to go, and it was like any other day until something strange happened.
Miss Richardson, the Sixth Grade teacher interrupted the class, whispered something to Miss Baker and the two teachers left the room abruptly. The class erupted into curious chitter-chatter until the door reopened, and Miss Baker came back into the room crying.
Chuck and his classmates sat wide-eyed and wondering, as they watched her fumbling with her hanky, trying to compose herself. She sat down at her desk wiping her red eyes, and just looked at the class silently, as if searching for the words.
Sitting directly in front of the teacher’s desk was the teacher’s pet, Karen Kowalski who finally asked her what was wrong. Miss Baker’s eyes scanned around, taking in the whole class in a single second glance. She took a deep breath in, but her crying stuttered the intake of air.
She wiped here eyes one more time and said quietly, “Class, something terrible has happened.” She took another stuttered breath, and finally told thirty-four ten-year-olds the terrible news. “The President has been assassinated.”
Chuck and his classmates knew that it was bad, but weren’t sure about the word with “ass” in it. Miss Baker must have noticed the blank looks, because she elaborated for them, “The President was shot and killed.” Her tears began flowing again.
Like most ten year olds, Chuck’s sole exposure to death was in westerns and war movies. In his mind, he saw President Kennedy in a dusty street, drawing pistols against a bad guy, who oddly enough looked like Nikita Kruschev. The bald Russian shot first, and Kennedy grabbed for his stomach in pain, falling to the dirt.
Tommy Crespett made some smart comment that Chuck couldn't make out. But Miss Baker surely had, along with the giggles of all his immediate neighbors. She went off on him like a hungry cat on a crippled mouse, and sent him to stand in the cloakroom, the standard punishment for misdemeanors like talking in class.
She chided Tommy for his crime, and made him an example of shame, "Tommy, when you’re grown up, you can one day tell your children in shame, that you were sent to the cloakroom for punishment, on the day President Kennedy was killed.” Tommy Crespett looked sick.
* Boot-hopping with Chuck
Chuck Bamata lived in a residential neighborhood that was a crisscross of streets with middle-class homes built in the 1920’s on the west side of Cleveland, Ohio. Winters in Cleveland were long and cold, but kids growing up there didn’t stay indoors, and they were able to get into just as much trouble when the snows fell as in the days of summer. As a teenager, Chuck had grown from building snowmen and snow forts as a child, to wild neighborhood-wide snowball fights, to boot-hopping.
Warning: Boot-hopping and doing doughnuts are dangerous. Do not try this at home!