Middle row: Dann Dunst, Dave Kilgour, Marlene Rutter, xxx(partially hidden), Steve Rutter, xxx, Gary Stults, Bob Marusich, xxx, xxx, David DJ Johnson, Tom "OT" Adams, Ralph Swoboda, xxx, Gil Bird(slightly infront), John Yearick, xxx, John E. Boehm, Mrs. Boehm
Back row: Jim Cobb, xxx, Mike Corn, xxx, xxx, xxx, xxx, Dave Black, xxx, xxx, xxx, Peter Scobie
Not pictured: Larry Brennan,
Here we see Jim Glass- James Madison Glass III- of Chattanooga, Tennessee, packing a box of trail food. Jim worked with me in the Packing House in 1966. In 1967 he was a Party Trainer, and Mark Johnson assisted me. I expected Jim to return in 1968, but he didn't. He spoke with a definite accent of the Deep South.
This photo is one of several I have of the old Packing House. Dan Dunst, photographer, took these shots with the 4x5 Graflex camera we used back then. Notice the bare wooden floors, which were a nightmare to keep clean, no matter how often they were swept or mopped. The walls were painted beaverboard, nasty, flimsy material which showed stains easily and generally pretty crummy-looking. The screen door behind Jim leads to the packinghouse storeroom; beyond was the Woodbadge Commissary. A turn to the right took you into the Kitchen storeroom and then into the Kitchen. The wall past the screen door was the back wall of the Kitchen's walk-in cooler.
At a slow period that summer, Dave Kilgour and his Trail Men came charging in one day (literally), and began to move furniture and supplies out of the Packing House. In the space of about a day and a half, they put down flooring and covered it with linoleum, and then paneled the walls up to about four feet with a tongue and groove type boarding- the same used in the Dining Hall. Needless to say, this greatly improved the look and ease of cleaning in the place.
A few more details are evident here. Jim is placing a package of survival biscuits in the box, taken from the metal can at his foot. These biscuits were part of the supply the Government provided for shelters in those Cold War days. Tins of them were stored in various locations around the country. I supposed the surplus were made available for groups like the Scouts. We would receive a shipment of these large, gold-colored tins every year. Any left over could be stored until the following year. (That's what they were meant for!)
They were actually pretty good biscuits, something like a graham cracker in taste, though not as sweet. They worked well with peanut butter, jelly or alone. We provided them for lunches on the trail, the other choice being Ry-Krisp on a couple of days. For years, the tins were used around the Base for waste baskets or storage of parts and stuff. They were opened in the Kitchen on the large, hand-cranked can opener used for #10 cans. The removed tops were large and pretty sharp, and the inside top edge of the biscuit can could give you a nasty cut, too.
All good things must come to an end, and the supply of Survival Biscuits eventually failed. The surplus had been used up. That's when we cast about looking for a replacement and came up- thanks to Sommers- with Hudson's Bay Bread.
Also notice that Jim is packing the boxes himself. Until 1967, the Packing House packed all Trail Food. In 1967 we decided to place the food out on shelves and have Voyageurs pack it on the morning of their group's arrival, after their test. That was far more satisfactory and eased the job of the Packing House staff. It got hectic in the Packing House on a Sunday afternoon with a dozen groups on Base, all needing their food boxes...
Pamplona! Oh, yes- what does this have to do with running the bulls at Pamplona?
Well, it was on a summer day a year or two after 1967 that I was looking at a newspaper in the office and read a story about the annual bull run, and saw that one American had been injured by a bull... a James Glass, of Chattanooga!
I talked with Jim a couple of years later. By then he was living in Huntsville, Alabama. He had been injured, but only slightly, fortunately. I told him how much merriment the article had caused at the Base among those who remembered him! I wonder where Jim is these days. Maybe he'll turn up again, too."