KERFLOP
Now I’m going to start writing the next chapter and I’m going to keep
writing it till the dinner gong rings, so you can see it’s going to have
a good ending. It has a good ending even before it starts. It ends in a
rice pudding, but oh boy, wait till you see what the last one ends in. I
bet you think I’m a crazy author, hey? Anyway, I have a lot of fun.
So now I guess I’ll tell you how my celebrated, world renowned, crazy
hikes started. First we got carried away in a railroad car and that was
a dandy hike only it wasn’t a hike at all, but it was like one only
different. Then four of us had a bee-line hike and went straight to a
place on account of a solemn vow that we wouldn’t turn right or left.
Then, the next one was a funny-bone hike dedicated to an insane asylum
and the next time I go on one like that, I’ll know it--follow your
leader, that was it; _oh boy_! Then we had a tangled trail hike where we
had to keep turning to the left no matter what--some mixup! We went home
by the way of the Cape of Good Hopeless. Then, we had an elastic hike,
because it stretched way out. Most of the fellows that read about our
hikes like them--no wonder, because they don’t have to go on them.
Anyway, that night up at Temple Camp I didn’t think any more about a new
kind of a hike, because I couldn’t think of a way to have a table d’hote
hike, having all the different kinds of hikes kind of separated
together. But anyway, I thought up a good name for that kind of a hike,
I’d call it the symposium hike, it’s taken from the word simp and it
means a lot of different things together.
Early the next morning, as soon as anybody could see the bulletin-board,
Scouts started coming up to my patrol cabin to join the hike--jiminies,
you’d think I was the Pilgrim Fathers starting out. I told them there
wouldn’t be any hike till I thought of a good one. “Do you think I
haven’t got my vast public to think about?” I told them. “Boy scouts all
over the country who are always writing letters to find out if I’m real
or just imitation. And anyway,” I said, “I’m not going to take the whole
of Temple Camp with me--only just four fellows.”
That same morning I got an idea and I’m sorry now that I got it. I was
just going out on the lake with Dub Smedley--he comes from Jersey City,
I don’t blame him. We were going to catch some sunfish. All of a sudden
I saw Pee-wee sitting way out on the end of the springboard dangling his
legs. He belongs in my troop (I guess you know that) only up at Temple
Camp, I don’t see much of him, lucky for that, I’m not kicking. He hangs
around the cook shack most of the time. Me, I’m out for life, liberty
and the pursuit of snappiness. You follow me and you’ll have some fun,
don’t worry, especially in this story that’s every word true. Even the
ink I’m writing with is true blue or true too or too true. I’m even
greater than George Washington, because he couldn’t tell a lie and and I
can only I won’t. And besides, I’d rather be myself than George
Washington, because he’s dead--anyway, we were going out to fish for
sunfish when I happened to see Pee-wee. I was eating an apple and I
threw the core at him and that’s the end of this paragraph, just where
he starts to yell. Gee whiz, you’d think it was the end of the world.
“One strike out,” I shouted at him. “What’s that you’ve got in your
hand?”
“It’s something I invented,” he hollered at me, “and you’re so fresh you
nearly knocked it in the lake. Did I say I’d give you a shot?”
“Come on, let’s row over to him,” I said to Dub. “I’d rather jolly him
along than catch sunfish.” That’s my favorite outdoor sport, jollying
Pee-wee.
So we rowed over just under the springboard and I caught hold of one of
his legs so the boat wouldn’t drift. “What is it anyway?” I asked him.
“Let’s look at it.”
“It’s a windmeter,” he said.
“A which?” I asked him.
“It’s for telling which way the wind blows,” he said, “and I’m going to
see if I can sell a lot of them. Maybe the Boy Scouts of America could
use them and maybe they’ll get advertised in _Boys’ Life_.”
“They don’t care which way the wind blows,” I told him. “Let’s look at
it.”
Oh boy, that was some invention. I’m glad Edison never saw it or he’d
have died from jealousy. It was a long, thin bottle, maybe about ten
inches long; Dub Smedley said a tooth-brush came in it. There were a lot
of crinkly strips of confetti all different colors fixed to the cork;
the ends of the strips were bound together and fixed to the cork with a
pin. It was kind of like a comet only smaller. It was quite a little
smaller. The way you did was to stick the cork in the bottle and hold on
to the bottle and let the confetti all fly loose. Then, you could tell
what way the wind was blowing. You moved it around in your fingers like
a compass till the confetti blew straight out and then you knew that the
closed up end of the bottle was pointed the way the wind _wasn’t_
blowing. And the other end was pointing the way the wind _was_ blowing.
When you wanted to put that wonderful instrument in your pocket you just
stuffed the confetti into the bottle and put the cork in that way. There
were three or four matches in the bottle and a lightning bug in case the
matches wouldn’t work. There was a cricket too and there was a hole in
the cork so the wild animals could breathe.
“What’s the cricket for?” I asked the kid.
“Will you let go my leg?” he shouted. “Do you think I’m a mooring buoy
or something?”
“What’s the cricket for?” I asked him. All the while Dub Smedley was
laughing.
“That shows how much you don’t know about scouting,” Pee-wee said, good
and excited. “That’s named the _Chipmunk Scout Emergency Kit_, and maybe
I’m going to get it patented. It’s a combination windmeter and you can
drink out of the tube if you’re famishing and you can use it for a
compass too, because if you lay a cricket on the ground he’ll always
start going south----”
“Starting for Florida, I guess,” said Dub.
“It’s wonderful,” I said. “It’s the most wonderful invention since
Luther Burbank invented the shoe-tree.”
All of a sudden Dub said, “That would be a good idea for a crazy hike;
we could go whichever way the wind blows.”
“If we do, I’m the one that invented it,” Pee-wee shouted. He meant the
hike. You know he’s the one that invented the Boy Scouts of America. I
wouldn’t just exactly say he invented the earth, but just the same, he
made some wonderful improvements on it.
I said, “That’s a very fine crazy idea; we can hike to the four points
of the compass.”
“You mean six points,” Dub said; “north, east, south, west, and hither
and thither.”
So then I began to see that he’d be a good one to go on one of my crazy
hikes.
I said, “How about yonder? We might go there, too. As long as we have a
windmeter we can go everywhere.”
“Oh, we can go more places than that,” Dub said.
I said, “Sure, only one thing, I hope the windmeter reverses so we can
come home again.” I said, “Has it got a reverse gear, kid?”
“Will you let go my leg!” Pee-wee hollered. “Geeeeeee whiz! You grab my
windmeter in one hand and you grab my leg with the other and if you
don’t look out, you’ll pull me off the springboard; a lot you care with
your crazy talk! Now you’ve got a new feller started with all your
nonsensical nonsense!”
I said, “Those are harsh words, Scout Harris. I’ve made a special study
of crazy hikes ever since I was eighteen years old; I’m fifteen or
sixteen now, and don’t you suppose that by this time I can be sure I
don’t know what I’m talking about?”
“Will you let go my leg!” Pee-wee kept hollering. All the while Dub
Smedley was laughing so hard I thought he’d tip the boat over.
I said, “You’d better look out, the water is supposed to be on the
outside of the boat, it’s put there on purpose.”
Oh boy, you know how it is when I get started in mortal comeback with
Pee-wee. Dub he just sat in the stern of the boat laughing and laughing.
I had hold of Pee-wee’s leg, I mean one of them, because he’s got two
and I’m thankful he hasn’t got four. All of a sudden a fellow that was
in swimming caught hold of the boat so as he could rest and he kind of
pulled it around and before I could let go of Pee-wee’s leg down he came
kerflop into the water. I grabbed hold of his hat and pulled it down
over the head of the fellow who was hanging on to the boat so he
couldn’t see and he let go and then the next minute he and Pee-wee were
trying to climb up over the same side of the boat and it was getting
swamped and Dud and I were laughing and the kid was sputtering and----
_Oh boy_, there goes the dinner gong. I should worry about this chapter.