There is something about the practice of “practical joking” that is
mighty pleasant and enjoyable, if the joke is on somebody else. It was
about six years ago that we quit practical joking, and the reason was
that the boys played one on us that fairly broke our back. We had always
been full of it, and an opportunity to play a joke on a friend was a
picnic for us, but this time we had all the tuck taken out and fairly
unraveled.
A party consisting of Hogan, Hatch, Root, Wood and Webb had been down
from La Crosse to the marshes shooting ducks for a week. We had prepared
to break camp and take the train to Brownsville at 2 o'clock, from which
we took a little steamer for La Crosse.
We were out shooting and did not get to camp until everything was packed
up, and just had time to catch the train with our hunting clothes on.
The rest of the fellows had been in camp an hour, and had put on their
good clothes, and washed up and looked like gentlemen, as they were,
while we looked like a tramp, which we were not. All got on the little
steamboat, and hugged around the boiler with the other passengers, for
it was a cold night.
We felt a little ashamed of the old hunting clothes that had been worn
so many years, and were covered with blood and dirt, but there was no
chance to change, and we sat down with the boys. Finally Root, who was
the biggest hector in the world, and a fine looking gentleman, turned to
the captain of the boat and said, pointing to us:
“I wish, captain, you would ask this red-headed muskrat trapper to sit
on the other side of me. He smells bad.”
If lightning had struck us we could not have been more astonished. The
passengers all looked at the dirty looking “muskrat trapper,” and stuck
up their noses. The captain asked us in a polite manner if we would
not please move and get on the “lee side” of the passengers. He said
he didn't mean any offence, but the smell of muskrats oftentimes made
people sick.
Well, it was a pretty tight fix, but we forced a laugh and looked around
at the rest of the boys in a familiar way, and began talking to them.
Not a man of them would recognize us. The captain turned to Hogan and
said, “Is this a friend of yours?” Hogan put on a look of disgust, and
said he had never seen us before. “However,” says Jim, “he may be a very
deserving person of his class.”
The captain said we had better go to the other end of the boiler and lay
down with the dogs where it was warm. We tried to pass it off as a joke,
and turned to Hatch and tried to get into conversation with him about a
goose he had killed the day before, but he wouldn't have it. He said we
could get the smell out of our clothes by burying them, and then he went
on to tell how he shot a skunk once, and spoiled a suit of clothes.
We spoke to Colonel Wood, one of our party, as a last resort, and all he
said was to draw in his breath with a “Whoosh,” and put his handkerchief
to his nose. We never felt so mean in the world. The whole gang had
combined against us, and we got up to leave them, meditating revenge,
when Walt Webb said, “Let's throw the cuss overboard.” We went and laid
down on the valises, and tried to think of some way to get even with
the boys, when Root told the captain that they had got some valuables in
those valises, and they didn't want any tramp laying down on them, and
he came along and actually drove us off of our own valise. 4
To make the matter still worse, a homely looking Norwegian dog that we
had borrowed to take on the hunt, and which was the worst looking brute
that ever was, and which had been the laughing stock of the camp for a
week, at this point came up to us, wagged his tail and followed us, and
the boys said, “Look at the dog the muskrat trapper owns.” That was the
worst give away.
We walked around on deck, and would occasionally stop and speak to one
of the boys, hoping they had given us enough and would relent, but all
the way to La Crosse not one of them would speak to us, and when the
boat arrived at the landing Root handed us a quarter, in the presence
of the passengers, and asked if we wouldn't help Mike Doyle, the cook,
carry the baggage ashore.
It was the worst joke we ever had perpetrated on us, and even after we
got ashore, and Hatch said, “Come, old sorrel top, let's go and get a
glass of beer,” we could hardly smile. Since then when we go hunting we
wear the best clothes we have got.
For years afterwards when fellows were joking, some of the party would
ask us “if the trapping was good this season.” We got so we could not
look a myskrat in the face. So we say that practical joking is splendid
if it is on the other fellow. Always quit when they get it on to you.