Cub Scout Pack 528 Activities

Bill Gober’s recollected activities for Cub Scout Pack 528 (El Portal Elementary School, San Leandro, CA), 1966–1968

Field Trips

• Cookie factory. This was my first trip: I wasn’t even a bobcat yet!
• Snow sledding in the Sierra Nevadas, March (?) 1967 & 1968.
  • We went to the cabin belonging to a well-to-do family in the pack.
• Short airplane flight. My first time ever in an airplane.
• SF Giants game at Candlestick Park (with a Boy Scout troop).
• Dairy farm.
  • It was in December 1967, the day after Mark Luther died (of leukemia, I think). He was in my class at school. The following Arbor Day, my class dedicated its tree to him.
• McDonalds (behind-the-scenes look).
• Fortune cookie bakery in Oakland’s Chinatown.
• The Presidio (Army base and old Spanish fort at the entrance to SF Bay).
  • From the fort we looked up at the underside of the Golden Gate Bridge.
  • We had lunch at the army base mess hall. I expected it to be austere (benches at long tables). In fact, we sat in chairs around separate tables, like in a nice cafeteria or modest (but large) restaurant. They served us ‘naked hamburgers’ (patties without buns), which bothered some of the boys. I just plopped my patty between two slices of bread and ate it like a hamburger.
• Nike radar (& missile?) installation overlooking San Leandro & Oakland.
• Pool outing to Oak Knoll Naval Hospital.
  • I was quite familiar with this pool, because Dad took my sister Becky and me there a lot.
• Pool outing to the Hayward Plunge.
• Pool party in one family’s in-ground back yard pool.
  • Same family that owned the cabin in the Sierra Nevadas.
• Some place that did silk-screening on T-shirts.
• We went someplace in Berkeley (a museum?) one time.
• Visit to the General Motors auto assembly plant in Fremont, just off I-880.
  • In the mid-1980s, the plant became NUMMI, a joint venture of Toyota and GM, where they made Chevrolet Corollas Novas.
• Taxidermist. Or was that a school field trip?
• Hockey game. A professional team in Oakland.

Other pack activities

• Scout-o-Rama 1967 at the Oakland Colisseum.
• Scout-o-Rama 1968 at the Cow Palace, on the border between San Francisco and Daly City.
• Selling Scout-o-Rama tickets in 1967 & 1968.
• Pack picnic, Summer 1968 (before 18 July — Mom was very pregnant with Stephanie). It included the Pinewood Derby car races.
• Balsa (wind-up) rocket races, as part of a pack meeting in 1967.
• 2 paper drives (probably one per year), at least 1 bottle drive.
• 2 Blue and Gold dinners (February (?) 1967 & 1968).
  • Both years, I missed the setup session (the previous evening?) because I went to Kenny Young’s birthday party.
  • A lot of the pack members resented that I got out of working on the setup.
• Monthly pack meetings.
• Weekly den meetings.
• Police/sheriff station. I remember sawed-off shotguns and leg irons.