Camp Sebring was the place you wanted to go to in South Florida as a Boy Scout when I was a kid. It is closed now. We all piled into a rail car at the tail end of a Florida East Coast Railroad train for the trip there. I do not remember how many summers I attended. One memory is a song parody about the camp director:

“One sunny morning, when we were all in class,

Mean old Mr. Black lit a fire in the grass,

And as the flames spread around,

We all gathered ‘round,

Singing “There’ll be a hot time in the old camp tonight.”

I do not remember much besides making lanyards, but one event is burned into my brain. Some background first. My dad, Leon’s, third college degree was an MS in Science Education from Columbia University. I grew up in a science library. It’s part of why, at an early age, I was already a science prodigy. Dad built me an actual chemistry laboratory in the garage. It was a wooden cabinet on the wall whose front came down with chains holding it to be the lab desk, with shelves holding regents and equipment against the wall. There are many reasons I am sure he came to regret it. It was not a toy store chemistry set. It was a real lab. There was a chemical supply house downtown where we bought reagents. I have tried to remember its name, but I just can’t.

With Dad’s library, there was lots of trouble I could get into. Ammonia plus iodine – “touch powder” – Nitrogen Triiodide. It is an insoluble crystal that precipitates out from the solution it forms in. You pour the solution into a funnel with filter paper. When it dries you can set off an explosion with a feather! It is still ¼ unchanged iodine crystals, so when you set it off there is a cool purple cloud. Most substances have phase changes that go from solid to liquid to gas. But not iodine – it sublimates straight from solid to gas, just like dry ice. One day I made an especially big batch and was too close to it when I set it off. Of course this was after rolling it up into tin foil “bombs” – and stoopid here set it off with a hammer! I was 14 – intellectually advanced – sensibly retarded. I looked at my hands and arms. Embedded in them were iodine crystals. I knew it was poisonous. I freaked out. I went to my mother. We went straight to the ER. I told the doctor how it happened. I am sure the bemused look on his face was:

“How in hell did a 14-year-old do this?”

“It takes a lot more iodine than that to poison you. That is no more than we might put on a wound. Go home and wash. It will be absorbed.”

One tradition at scout camp was the counselors hiding in the woods at night and we had to find them. I had Fool’s Gold, iron pyrite, in my mineral collection. It was those two sulfur atoms in iron pyrite, FeS2, when dropped into swimming pool acid (muriatic acid) readily available at home, which was actually hydrochloric acid, that produced H2S, Hydrogen Sulfide, the source of the odor in rotten eggs! Hell, we lived in Miami! Plenty of pool acid!

It was all I needed to make clouds of hydrogen sulfide. Not poisonous enough in the open to harm the counselors, but unpleasant enough to drive them out of hiding and we would win. So much for that idea. Why? Like an idiot at so many points in my life I talked about it with my fellow scouts. At least one of them thought I had made an explosive, and talked to the intended targets, the camp counselors.

Next thing I know, I am surrounded by grown-ups wanting to know where the explosives were. Can you picture a 14-year-old trying to explain chemistry to essentially uneducated adults (at least in science). Nope. They confiscated my stuff, told me to stay in my tent. They had already called my father to come get me. Like I said, he had many occasions to come to regret turning me into his science prodigy! It was a 3-hour drive from Miami. No way I was waiting to face my father, AND I was pissed off at failing. I packed my knapsack, my aluminum boy scout cooking kit, filled my canteen, scrounged whatever snacks I could from the tents in my group, and headed for the woods.

Florida in 1962 was a very undeveloped state. There were failed housing developments consisting of little but paved roads! Not enough customers. Florida around Sebring was also very thinly populated. A night, a day and a night passed. It was that second morning while making my breakfast that a camp counselor finally tracked me down. I was often greeted by a lot of bemused looks on the faces of adults during that part of my life.

“Well, if you’re not kicked out of the scouts, I’ll sign merit badges for hiking, camping, nature – whatever – for you! You clearly qualify!”

I was not kicked out of the scouts but was never allowed back at Camp Sebring. I finished my Eagle badge. In high school I was in the Sea Explorers. More stories about my sailing adventures out of Coconut Grove, including near abuse by a pedophilic Scoutmaster.