How I earned my Beer Merit Badge and got kicked out of Boyscouts

Not long after I had passed the bar exam and had been sworn in as a member of the bar, I received a phone call from Judge Trubeck’s bailiff. Judge Trubeck was the chief district court judge in the juvenile division, and my old scout master. With little explanation, I was summoned to meet the old judge at his court.

I walked through the mass of crying children, angry teenagers, terrified parents and dyspeptic social workers and entered Judge Trubeck’s courtroom. A hearing was in progress. A young lady sat in the witness box, sobbing and shaking with mascara being streaked down her cheeks by rivulets of tears.

I only heard enough testimony as to be confused as to what the matter of the case was, but had the strong impression that things were going horribly bad for the shaking and tear-logged witness. “You may step down, ma’am,” said Judge Trubeck noticing me sitting in the gallery with a smile. The young lady stumbled out of the witness box and clumsily took a seat at one of the party-litigant tables. At the table on the other side of the judge’s bench the tired looking assistant district attorney regarded the young lady with a mix of contempt and irritation.

“I will grant Ms. Chavers’ request for a hearing to vacate the judgment of this Court terminating her parental rights,” pronounced the judge. “Mr. McDermott.”

Upon hearing the judge say my name I sat up straight feeling slightly startled. “Mr. McDermott,” repeated Judge Trubeck urging me to respond.

I stood. “Yes, your Honor.”

“The Court appoints you to represent Ms. Chavers in the matter of her deprived child. Her parental rights have been previously terminated based on the grounds that she failed to appear at the original hearing on the district attorney’s Motion to Terminate Parental Rights.” He gave me a court date, which I dutifully wrote down. “We will now go off the record,” said the judge to the court reporter.

I asked the sobbing mess that was my client if she wanted to go out in the hallway and talk. Judge Trubeck chimed in. “Ms. Chavers,” he said. My client looked up at the judge. “If you don’t mind, please step out in the hallway. I have a matter to discuss with your counsel.” Ms. Chavers stood and zig-zagged out of the courtroom steadying herself against the backs of the pews in the gallery as she went.

“Mr. McDermott,” said the old judge. “Good to see you.” I told him it was a pleasure to see him, too. After a little small talk, the judge announced to the court report, “Let’s go on record.”

“Before me is Mr. McDermott,” Judge Trubeck began, “attorney, and formerly a member of boyscout Troop 222 at the time that I was an assistant boyscout master of said Troop.” Oh, shit, I thought to myself. I knew exactly where this was going.

“Please raise your right hand, Mr. McDermott.” I complied. “Do you swear that the testimony your are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

“I do,” I said lowering my hand, noticing that the greying assistant district attorney was regarding me with a mixture of curiosity and bewilderment.

“Mr. McDermott,” started the judge. “Is it true that you were a member of Troop 222 at the time I was an assistant Boyscout master of said Troop?”

“Yes, your Honor.”

“Did you bring beer to a campout at which I was present, Mr. McDermott?”

“Well, your Honor, that depends what you mean by ‘bring,’” I said.

“Please explain,” said Judge Trubeck, obviously enjoying himself as he grinned widely and sinisterly down from the bench.

“I didn’t actually bring the beer,” I stammered in my defense. In an exercise of complete futility I tried to explain it wasn’t me who brought a case of Coors to the campout a little over a decade ago when I was thirteen years old. I had a few sips but didn’t care much for it, and looked on in horror as Jerod ran wildly through the camp site wielding a machete, etc.

The whole story had become thoroughly mythologized in the minds of everyone familiar with the it. Somehow I was the alleged ring leader of that crazy evening. My alternative, and honest recounting of the incident was wholly lacking in merit and persuasiveness. The judge laughed heartily and directed the court reporter to go off the record. And that’s how I began my legal career as a regular in the cheerless halls of the juvenile division representing deprived and delinquent children, child molesters and child abusers.

***

It was never my intention of being a model boyscout. I was well on my way to being pushed out of Troop 222 on the occasion that our scoutmaster, Mr. Dudley asked me why I was not participating in some activity at a troop meeting, the purpose of which was to earn a particularly important merit badge. “Don’t you want to become an Eagle scout?” he asked.

“Nah,” I responded. “I’m just in it for the camp outs.” The grave look on Mr. Dudley’s heavily bearded face indicated that I had just given the wrong fucking answer. I’m sure that moment was the beginning of the end of my career as a boyscout.

Our troop meetings took place at a big Presbyterian church. For three consecutive meetings in a row, Brian and I had been relegated to cleaning out the basement in the church where Troop 222 crap had been stored for the previous fifties years. We were being punished for stealing paraffin fire starters from another troop’s display at the scout-o-rama the month before. But like me, and all the other guys in the Frontiersmen Patrol, we weren’t in it for the glory of achieving eagle scout, we were in it for the camp outs, and the next one was scheduled for that coming weekend.

Doug’s older brother drove Doug, Brian, Jerod, Phil and me to the campout. All of us but Doug rode in the bed of Doug’s brother’s El Camino. We stopped at a gas station. Doug’s brother filled the El Camino up with gas and went in to pay. He came out with a big grin and a case of Coors. “Here you go guys,” he said handing us the box full of liquid insanity. “Better stash it somewhere so you don’t get caught.” We began to stick individual cans in our back packs and anywhere else so that we could smuggle the contraband into the camp site.

Doug’s brother just bought us the beer. No one asked for it. In retrospect, Doug’s brother must have been a sadistic prick. What possible good could come of handing over booze to a pack of thirteen year old jackals?

Later that evening we collected in one of the tents of the Frontiersmen enclave of the Troop 222 camp site. “Here it goes,” said Brian, pulling open a tab that made a hiss. “Here it goes,” said Doug, Phil, Jerod, and finally myself. Oh, there would come a day that C.H. McDermott and alcoholic beverages would find each other very agreeable companions, but it wouldn’t be that evening, there in that tent with my fellow Frontiersmen.

I watched as the bunch of them punched back, one, two and then three beers. All I ever managed to get down was three quarters of my one and only beer. After the lot of them managed to suck back their fourth beer, things started to get out of hand.

Doug burst out of the tent and began thumping his chest like he was King Kong. Phil ran down to a group of eagle-bound scouts who sat quietly around a roaring camp fire, probably making smores and quizzing each other in math. He made a complete muck of things by running through the camp fire, sending glowing embers flying in all directions.

Jerod, who I suspected of being semi-retarded when sober, picked up a machete and began chasing Jason Billings, a diminutive blonde-headed kid with glasses, screaming, “I’ll kill you!” and laughing maniacally.

I sat at the entrance of the tent watching the mayhem, while Brian barfed his brains out all over the inside and on everyone’s sleeping bags.

Knowing this wouldn’t come to any good, I crept back to the other tent that Brian and I were supposed to share for the evening, and gathered up the left over beers we had hidden there. I took them over to the other tent that by then reeked of vomit and threw the beers in it. I heard Brian try to say “ouch,” or something that sounded like it as a full can of Coors bounced off his head, and burst open, spewing Rocky Mountain elixir all over Brian and the contents of the tent.

“Shhhhhh,” I said to Brian. “Go to sleep.” Brian responded by saying something that sounded like, okay. I zipped the tent up, and went back to mine where I found some toothpaste, gave my white and pearlies a good once over using my finger as a tooth brush and drank a lot of water.

I peaked out of the tent to get an update of the madness that was unfolding. Jerod had Jason pinned against a tree readying to cut his head off with the machete. Phil was pissing on the blazing campfire. Doug was offering anyone who cared to a fight.

I hunkered down in my sleeping bag and waited for the inevitable.

The Frontiersmen were rounded up by Mr. Dudley, Judge Trubeck and a couple of other fathers. “Hey, who’s in there?” came Mr Dudley’s deep voice at the entrance of my tent. I turned my flashlight on and pointed it at my face, and tried to smile pleasantly. “You’ve been drinking beer?”

“On my honor, I have not,” I lied. Mr. Dudley asked me out of the tent as he went in to search for beer, and found none. He looked me over closely and right into my eyes. “I had nothing to do with it, Mr. Dudley, I swear.” I could tell from the way he looked at me with his eyes narrowed to suspicious slits, he didn’t believe me one little fucking bit.

As my good fortune should have it, everyone but me was hauled back to the city and to their respective homes that evening where four sets of parents were delivered their drunk thirteen year old sons, still in their boyscout uniforms. The next day at the campout was lonely and awkward, but not nearly as lonely and awkward as it would have been if I had been taken home like the others the night before.

Jerod, Phil and Doug never came back to Boyscouts. Brian and I did, and were banished to the basement again for another month. There in the musty darkness, Brian and I agreed, we had had enough of digging that hole and filling it back up, and made that our last day as upstanding youth in the service of Boyscouts of America, Inc.

***

Representing Ms. Chavers was a task as hopeless as it was thankless. She never kept her appointments with me to help prepare some kind of compelling case as to why the order terminating her parental rights should be vacated. The problem was that if she wasn’t crashed out in some den of inequity, she was too busy being high on meth to keep appointments with her counsel. But, she did show up for court on the 23rd of December, the day before the courts would be closed for the Christmas holiday.

Without the aid of my client, I made mostly legal arguments as to why the order terminating should be vacated. As to my client’s suitability to raise her child I could say nothing, as she fidgeted nervously, looking about her aimlessly.

Judge Trubeck ruled that the Motion to Vacate was denied. The young Ms. Chavers collapsed to the ground, curled up in the fetal position and bawled so loud you could have heard it in the hallway outside the courtroom. The assistant D.A. looked down at her disgusted and said, “It’s too bad you didn’t care this much earlier,” which I thought was a little cold.

The bailiff picked my client up off the floor and hauled her out of the courtroom.

“Merry Christmas,” said Judge Trubeck to me.

“Merry Christmas, Judge,” I said.

“Hey, you want to meet a group of us at the Polo Grill? It’s a reunion of some Troop 222 guys.” He listed off a bunch of names I had completely forgotten or never much cared about to begin with.

“No thanks, Judge. I’m going home to get drunk.”

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