At the tender age of five I returned home from my first day of school and of all the things I could have told my mother the one thing that had to be said first was “I’ve got a girl with red hair in my class!” A young lassie of Scots descent, Mary Jane McKinnon, was in my class. She was the first red head I had ever seen. Ever since that day I have had a partiality for the pretty pale freckled faces framed by flaming locks. Mary Jane and I were in the same primary class for nine years and then spent another five years at the same high school. While I was too shy to even attempt any sort of relationship my passion never faded over those years.
After high school she went away for university and I never saw her again. Since then there has been no shortage of red-heads in my life and even though they occasionally stir up old memories Mary Jane has been mostly forgotten. A few years ago I met an attractive cousin of Mary Jane who had a strong resemblance to her and I stupidly talked too much about Mary Jane instead of flattering the woman I was talking to. Not too smart.
Fast forward to yesterday. I do a lot of volunteer work with the Boys Scouts and Girl Guides Organizations. I also like to browse through vintage books. Over the years I have built up a collection of old handbooks from both organizations. Yesterday I discovered a book I didn’t even know existed. It’s called the Girl Guide Knot Book.
Boys Scouts seem to get all the attention for their ability to tie knots so I checked my shelf and found a Scout handbook called From Tenderfoot to Queen’s Scout which is about the same age, 1965, as the Girl Guide book which was published in 1968. I compared the two.
The Boys Scouts’ book has nine pages covering eight different knots and another page each for two lashings and two hitches for a total of thirteen pages.
The Girl Guides not only have a book devoted strictly to rope work but it has eighty-two pages covering about fifty knots, ten hitches and six lashings. Add to that two pages explaining the terms used, several pages demonstrating various other uses for rope and four blank pages for keeping notes and you have a grand total of eighty eight pages. Top it off with an illustration of a rope ball gag on the cover and you now know why Girl Guides have the edge over Boys Scouts when it comes to activities involving rope.
How does this involve Mary Jane? I looked inside the cover of the Guide book to find the date of publication and discovered that it had been printed in Glasgow Scotland. I’m not sure if a preference for TUG’s is something that can be passed on genetically or if it might be a cultural preference but I’m now wondering if the smooth opening line that eluded me all those years ago could have been replaced by a simple piece of rope.