I remember really wanting to be in Boy Scouts. I liked the idea of doing outdoors stuff and they ran all the scouts' pictures in the newspaper every year. When I got in at 12, my troop leader was pretty hands off. Never any abuse that I knew of. But the kids, were crazy. Using drugs and stealing cars on campouts. Trying to encourage the younger kid (me) to get into trouble. I quickly got out.
Within a couple of years about a third of the troop had been convicted by our lenient local judge for a couple of unrelated local murders, including one murder where they mutilated the body during satanic rituals and another where they killed a Down's Syndrome man because they believed he had ratted them out for dealing. The judge generally gave them sentences of around 5 years. From what I heard, most of them committed more murders inside and earned life sentences. Not sure what eventually happened to all those hoodlums.
Life in an oilfield town back then could be a little rough.
