Little Boy Lost (1)

  It was early August, 1952. The Korean War was grinding on and the 1st Marine Division was holding a hill (nicknamed Bunker Hill) against Chinese forces. The fighting was intense, but very little information was getting back to the newspapers in the states; everything seemed quiet around my neighborhood. I was 12 years old and the excitement I was looking forward to was my becoming a teenager on August 18, and I would be starting high school (9th grade) - and even better I was getting ready to go on a camping trip to the High Sierras with the older Boy Scouts.

   I was big for my age. I had already reached nearly my adult size, about 5 ft 10 inches and around 160 pounds, and I had skipped a grade in school. This was not at all because I was mature; it was a convergence of coincidences. I was the oldest of the 3 boys in my family, and my Mother had wanted to be a teacher; the Depression had disrupted her plans (later in her 50s she became a teacher of English to refugees from VietNam and Cambodia). Her urge to teach had me reading before I was in the first grade, and I still remember the books she had used in elementary school in the early 1920s - in particular there was a Texas history book in which later I looked back on blatant propaganda (Texas was "wonderfully nice" to Mexicans, Indians and Negroes). By the time I was in the fourth grade, both fourth and fifth grade classes were small, so they were merged together. I was moved from the fourth grade side of the classroom to the fifth grade side, and that was that.

   So here I was in Lynwood (southern California), champing at the bit to head up to the High Sierras. The older scouts had left town on Tuesday 5 Aug, and I had to wait a few days until I was “cleared”. I had bouts of bronchitis, which may have been due to smog, but naturally my parents didn’t let me go on an adventure until I was completely well. By Thursday I was fine, but it’s about 450 miles from Lynwood to the Emigrant Basin, which is just north of Yosemite, so my next hurdle was how to get there. Fortunately one of the older scouts (Mike) had a summer job, he was 16, and he had a car. He couldn’t leave for the campsite until Friday, so Mike drove us to the trailhead, arriving in the late afternoon. The hike to the camp was about 5 miles, and it was after dark when we got there. The elevation was about 8,800 feet and I was exhausted and pitched my pup tent in the dark; there is no doubt that it would have failed inspection. I slept through the night and got up the next morning ready to go fishing with my brand new Ted Trueblood fishing gear. The other scouts who had been there for a few days knew the best fishing holes and were happy to tell me. This was going to be a great day, but in a few hours everything went wrong.