Eliminating much of the background of becoming a bugler in the scouts might make a shorter story, but I won't guarantee anything. In short, when I became a Boy Scout (after being a Cub Scout through all the appropriate and required levels) it was probably a given that I become the Bugler of our Scout Troop - maybe I was the only trumpet (or coronet) player but I wouldn't swear to that.

The story, as I remember it, was during one of the outings we scouts often experienced, the day had been long and I was "all tuckered out" and crawled into our mountain tent. I must have really been beat because, with the pre-arranged plan my brother was supposed to wake me up to blow taps and when he tried his best, I simply could not be awakened. There is a faint recollection of remembering all the cookie crumbs left over from the cookies my brother had apparently given me in hopes of sufficiently awakening me long enough for me to blow taps and then go back to bed. Taps was not played that night.

My scouting days were a little messed up on different occasions but that "taps-less" night must have been indicative of those messed up moments.

My dad was probably the most supportive father among my scouting buddies because he had made our sleeping bags. Instead of buying a factory made bag, for whatever reason, dad spent some tedious hours cutting up strips of brown awning material, some old cotton blankets and scrounging up a couple long closures to enable the Venrick kids possess the most unique sleeping bags. (Maybe my mother got involved with the sewing but nothing is real clear about the actual making of those sleeping bags - but I know they were not factory-made.)

Apparently I also whined for something similar to air mattresses and dad suggested I use a couple inner tubes (how auto & bicycle tires used to be--with an inner tube). The night I decided to use my inner-tube lined home-made sleeping bag was a near disaster. Being the slightest of build or frame probably had a lot to do with my problems that night but I recall a near physical fight when some of the kids tried to pull the inner tubes away from me and me, barely being able to hang onto the sleeping bag the inner tubes were soon gone and (like my bugle blowing duty) apparently zonked out in a deep sleep. Whatever the reason, when I woke up the next morning I was staring into the eyes of a Guinea hen on a pile of eggs - those nice Boy Scouts had raised the lid of a Guinea hen house and lowered me into that hen house beside a setting hen.

My, wasn't scouting fun! I suppose today's victims might have chosen legal routes to sue those scouts for messing with my mind. My solution was simpler, I quit the Boy Scouts at the Life Scout level and let my brother claim all the glory of being the only Eagle Scout in the Venrick Family.

My musical ability of playing the coronet in school obviously was the main reason I became the Scout Bugler (for a while). I played in about every group I could find an empty chair in the coronet section. I even got to play in a small band that worked a circus - I think that was just once, but it was fun. A symphonic orchestra needed a Third Part Coronet chair filled. Another small band welcomed me for a while - its bald leader was famous for triple-tonguing his trumpet in spite of not having any teeth! I was involved with a church orchestra and the main thing I remember about that was once forgetting my coronet after practice one week and left my horn there at the church building. Being a very serious student of music I went to get my coronet one day to practice (a little). My horn was no where to be found. I even called the police who came out to the house to make a report and check the doors to see if they had been jimmied. Later I got a call from the church reminding me that I had left my horn at the church building last week.

The other main event I recall in my career of playing in the Lancaster High School marching band was the time I was riding my bicycle home one night and ran into a parked car (after gawking at a neon sign in a yard). I was carrying one of those 90 degree-angled flashlights but that didn't prevent me from running into a parked car causing the door handle to poke a hole in my hand between my thumb and forefinger of my right hand. Several clamps were required to close the wound and my hand was immobilized for a while and got stiff while it was healing. But I still had to "play in the band" -- the music director needed me to be in the specific position for the precise formations at half-time during the football games. It didn't matter if I couldn't play - I learned teamwork and numbers count even if you can't perform completely. I guess the absence of sound from a single (third part) coronet was not a serious issue considering there were 124 other band members properly doing their job.

### THE WORDWRIGHT

Posted by Bill Venrick at 8:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

PROCRASTINATION

Hugh Singleton, a fellow member of the American Amateur Press Association, writes regularly in an e-journal he calls “THINGS IN MOTION”. The following is printed with his permission – I think it fits in with my series of "Ruminations", “chew on it” for a while, OK? “Thanks, Hugh!” THE WORDWRIGHT.

NO ONE is likely to be more aware of the tendency to put off doing anything that has no urgency than I am—it has been one of my most persistent dragons of discontent. Who is at fault? Who causes the needless delays in doing things long and sincerely planned? The acknowledged culprit is me, and no amount of self-condemnation has served to diminish by one iota the guilt that fills the baggage I carry on my back. What a shameful stain on the fabric of one’s character!

Those quick moments of regret that whiz by us in our younger lives acquire longer stretches of our attention as we creep into our senior days—the feelings of remorse seem to press heavier on our conscience and we are now and then moved to action, but so long as we feel no serious threat of death, we continue to shove a lot of worthwhile endeavors into the bin marked “later.” Most of us need to step back and take a hard look at “later” and exactly what it means to us.

When is it all right to put aside telling a friend that he or she has added greatly to our lives? Is there a time when we shouldn’t worry about the favor we promised to do for someone but never got around to doing it? And how about those things we promised ourselves: doing a painting or writing a poem; reading certain books and watching certain movies? From my own years I know that in time, all those things we planned to do later will become lost in the dusty corners of our memory and instead of satisfaction, we fill our last years with unnecessary regret and
thoughts of what might have been.

Written by Hugh Singleton, a good friend of mine in Florida.
THE WORDWRIGHT

Posted by Bill Venrick at 9:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

RUMINATIONS, Number One

February 2007 marks one year that I have been at this location in cyberspace. It has been a great experience and the feedback has been helpful but I honestly wish more would take the time to use the COMMENTS section. Its not that no comments come in but candidly those who pretend to want to comment are either purveyors of the philosophy that anything goes in life. Since my 17th birthday I have made it a point to believe God has a purpose for our lives and self-gratification is not one of those purposes or virtues. There is nothing wrong with sexuality within marriage, after all, it wasn’t God who was surprised to find that Adam & Eve were naked, it was Adam & Eve, and what they learned from flirting with temptation was just the beginning of becoming wise as the world.

THE WORDWRIGHT is not a pulpit for such purveyors nor is it our intention to sell anything from this website. It is those kinds of comments that come to us – trying to sell pills, propaganda or even get a loan or mortgage. Please, if you like what you read, let us know; if you want to sell something, try the old-fashioned way, pay someone for space and join the commercial world of sales & marketing.

A rumination is one of those words we borrowed from Latin that is used to define the cud that a cow chews. In fact any animal that “chews the cud” (buffalo, goat, deer, camel and antelope for example) has a stomach with four chambers: the rumen, reticulum, omasum and abomasum. It’s quite different from the way humans chew their food; when a cow chews its food and swallows it, in just a few minutes back up comes that food, you can see it come back as a lump sliding up her neck. So with that word picture in mind, the ruminations this web site will be sharing from time to time are just some thoughts that would be advantageous for you to “chew over”, hopefully again and again.

To assist in getting my 2nd year off in words from THE WORDWRIGHT, this entry has just a couple topics you can “chew on” for a while (long or short) and see if you can look at life from a different perspective.

WHERE’S THE FOREST?

No doubt you’ve heard the expression, “I can’t see the forest for the trees.” Why is it we have so much trouble seeing the forest because of the trees? Or maybe you’ve heard “It’s as plain as the nose on your face.” Either expression has to be read with a bit of humor. I have often “lost” something that I was using or looking at just moments before and somehow my concept of what it looks like or perhaps my mind became so occupied with other things that the former object might just as well vanished before my eyes. Usually here of late I have learned if I just quit thinking about it, it appears almost as quick as it disappeared. It was there all the time.

The very things God wants us to do we fail to see because we are so focused on the “spiritual” things of our lives. There are, however, some things that God actually wants us to do! Even a casual reading of the book of Exodus is so detailed you would think it was from a parts list an engineer wrote out. God specifically told men what to include in the tabernacle but it was their job to “go find” or “make” the objects God wanted used for building the tabernacle. Read through the list in Exodus 26th chapter; it took all kinds of people: weavers, rope makers, goldsmiths, silversmiths and foundry craftsmen, just to name a few. But those people had to work with their hands to make something. God didn’t wiggle his nose and the skins of sea cows floated down from the sky—hunters provided the sea cow (manatee or perhaps hippopotamus) and craftsmen who worked with hides dyed them to order.

Where man took the wrong fork in the road was when it comes to “salvation” he felt like it wasn’t right to be “free” so they came up with “things” they had to do, and penance was one such “works”. You can’t win back your favor with God – once He forgives you, forget it. Isn’t that what God does when he “throws it back over his shoulder into the sea”? It’s a forgotten or done deal – once God forgives us he does not bring it up again (like humans often do). (Read Isaiah 38:17b; Psalms 32:1-2)

“Chew it over” again and again. When our sins are forgiven, they’re forgiven – and God throws this plus in, He forgets them as well!

THE WORDWRIGHT

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EVER DO SOMETHING YOU REGRETTED?

C. W. Gusewelle, a columnist writer who used to write for The Columbus Dispatch, once told the story of how, as a youth, he shot a crow on impulse, for a lark, and when the crow only suffered a broken wing, C. W. took it home and tried to mend it but the bird died.

Gusewelle learned as a young man, his first lesson in “the certainty of consequences.” Even after thirty years he remembered the exact spot where he buried that crow. He wrote, “The past never can be entirely put behind. What we have done is part of what we are, and will be with us always – as this memory has stayed with me.” C. W. Gusewelle then asked his readers, “How much accumulated weight of deliberate or careless wrong is one prepared to carry? In the end, that calculation governs the decisions of a life.”
Credit: The Columbus Dispatch, August 27,1996.

THE WORDWRIGHT

Posted by Bill Venrick at 9:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)