Before our Troop was formed, boys from Pack 67 went to Troop 41 in Landisville for their scouting. I had about 7 boys in my Webelos den and John [Ward] thought that would make a good nucleus to start our own Troop. The Troop was chartered in February 1971. At that time, Mill Creek and Chatelaine were dreams in some builder’s mind. To form a Troop you must have a sponsor. Some men from the Hempfield Optimist Club had boys in the Cub Pack so that was our contact to the Optimist Club to be our Sponsor. Golden Acres was the largest development around at the time. John wanted to have our Troop designated as Golden Acres Troop #167 since it had started from boys from Cub Pack 67. Someone else had that number, so we settled for 267.

The Troop held their first meeting in the basement of John’s house on Nissley Road, and in the yard when weather permitted.

One of our first campouts was a Western District Spring Camporee at Long’s Park. We used camping gear borrowed from men in the neighborhood. Some of the neighborhood boys who had joined Troop 41 slowly transferred to our Troop. By the summer of 1971 we had about 13 boys and decided to go to summer camp at Camp Mack. Since we had signed up late, we had to settle for a site in “mosquitoville” down below the pool close to Hammer Creek.

In the fall of 1971, we got permission from the school district to use the gym or multi-purpose room at the old Landisville Elementary School for our meetings. This meant packing everything up every week and taking it home with us. It was getting near the end of the school year in 1972 and we didn’t know where we were going to meet for the summer. I got talking to a friend at work one day and happened to mention our predicament. He said he was on the board of that little church on Centerville Road and they had this little building behind the church they were using for storage. The board gave us permission to use the building and cleaned out the front portion for us. We called it the “Scout Hut”. By 1973 we had grown to about 25 boys. I proposed building a small addition for them to use for storage. They turned this idea down but agreed to clean their things out of the rest of the building so we could use all of it. The building had a pot-bellied stove that used kerosene for fuel. In the wintertime, John or I would stop in on the way home from work, go outside the building to the fuel storage tank and open the valve. Then you turned the one on inside and when there was a puddle of fuel in the pot, you lit it with a match, or 3 or 4, or however many it took. By 7:00 when we arrived, the room would be warm. When it was really cold outside, the floor would be soaked and wet from the condensation.

The Optimist Club donated $100.00 as seed money to buy our first equipment. John bought our first tents, called ‘overnighters’, from the scout office. They looked like teepees, and each held two boys.

Paul Roscoe had a table saw and he cut up some sheets of plywood to make patrol boxes. He had seen the plans in Boys Life Magazine. The boys put them together and painted them in the driveway. John had rope for handles, and I made legs at home and sheet metal leg holders at work. I understand these patrol boxes are still being used. I had a portable charcoal grill we used for cooking on campouts when we didn’t use wood. When we needed more of them, Armstrong provided the material, and I spent some lunch ours making them.

We needed money for cooking utensils and dining flies, so we started having monthly paper drives (at the time you could sell newspapers to the Eden Paper Mill). You could call and make an appointment when they would accept them. We would put our notices in people’s mail boxes and on the appointed Saturday, the boys and fathers would go door-to-door collecting newspapers.

In the years when we went to Mack, you had no choice of food. We cooked over charcoal and heated water in large tubs over a wood-fire to wash dishes. This one particular time they gave us spaghetti to make. Being inexperienced, we heated the water to make the spaghetti on the charcoal. Since the water didn’t get hot enough to cook the spaghetti, the boys made dough balls and played catch. That was one night I’m sure the trading post sold a lot of junk food.

I have a favorite story: The Troop went camping one time on some land owned by one of the boy’s parents, near a stream behind Lititz. It weas decided not to camp near the stream. In case of rain, they might get flooded out. So, the tents were set up on higher ground, away from the stream. Well, the rain came and the wind blew. Some of the tents blew down. They told me that one boy was wandering around in his pajamas calling my name… That was one campout I was not even on.

One of the highlights of the Troop at that time was a fifty mile hike on the Appalachian Trail, supervised by Dale Barney and Bill Adams.