REEL HEROES
We were glad when we got back to the chasm; anyway I was, I know that.
Our little tent looked good, standing there. Dub said he wished we could
camp there all summer, just us four. “Yes, and what would I be doing?” I
said. “Cooking meals for the four of us. Do you think all I came up to
Temple Camp for was to cook flapjacks for a human famine?”
“What are we going to have for lunch?” Pee-wee wanted to know.
“I’d make some angel cake if I only had some angels,” I told him. “How
about spaghetti and rice pudding? Only we haven’t got any cream.”
Oh boy, it was nice sitting around eating lunch. I know how to make
dandy spaghetti. You have to have a can of tomatoes and you pour them
over it. Once I flavored it with chocolate but it wasn’t any good, but
licorice isn’t so bad. Once I used a lot of long strings of licorice
that they call shoe strings--you get them three for a cent--I used them
instead of spaghetti. Only tomato sauce doesn’t go good with it. Black
spaghetti, that’s what we called it. It was only just an
experiment--experiments are all right as long as you don’t eat them.
“I can eat experiments or anything,” Pee-wee said.
Sandy said he’d like to be in Italy where the spaghetti grows. You could
just go out in the fields and pick it, that’s what he said.
“Do they plant it in grated cheese or just in the earth?” I asked him.
He said, “They plant it in the earth and they call it wop-weed over
there.”
I said, “Well, that’s news to me, I never knew where spaghetti came
from.”
“Well, anyway, we know where it goes to,” Dub said.
“Sure,” I told him, “but I never knew it grows just the same as
macaroni.”
“You’re crazy!” Pee-wee shouted. He was trying to keep some spaghetti
from wriggling away from his mouth.
“Hold your mouth up in the air and eat it by the attraction of
gravitation,” I told him.
“Spaghettidoesngrow,” he said.
“Explain all that,” I told him. “Here, have some more.”
“Are we going down to the other end of the chasm to see those movie
people this afternoon?” Sandy wanted to know.
I said, “Sure, we positively are, and I’ve got an idea. It’s an
inspiration, accent on the third syllable. _Look at Pee-wee!_” all of a
sudden I said. “He should use sandpaper to hold spaghetti--this is
terrible.”
Honest, I wish you could have seen that kid. He was trying to shovel
spaghetti into his mouth and it was slipping every which way.
“Take some salt in your hand so it won’t skid,” I told him.
“Whatsthinspiration?” he managed to get out.
“Go into second and don’t jam your brakes on too hard and you’ll make
it,” Sandy told him.
I was laughing so hard I couldn’t speak for a couple of minutes--seeing
Pee-wee eat spaghetti. I said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t get any rough
spaghetti but it’s very expensive.”
“How about the inspiration?” Dub wanted to know. “This expedition is
getting worse and worse.”
“Yes, and even he’ll write it up in a book and expect fellers to read
it,” Pee-wee said.
“It will sound all right as long as they don’t read too hard,” I said.
“You read a book too hard and you spoil it--I’ll leave it to Sandy.
That’s what knocks the back covers off most books.”
“This one will be the worst of any of them,” the kid said.
“Just the same,” I told him, “I’m always getting letters from Scouts who
want to join my hikes. I have to refuse them because they’re not crazy
enough. One fellow that lives in Nutley, New Jersey, said he could prove
he was a nut. Even I wouldn’t let that fellow in.”
“What’s the inspiration?” Dub wanted to know.
I said, “Oh yes, listen. What’s the name of that movie hero up the
chasm? Don’t you know, the man in the candy store told us?”
“Bunko Bravado,” Sandy said.
“We’ll go and see him,” I told them, “and we’ll dare him to do something
dangerous. And if he does, Pee-wee will save his life. There you are.
What could be nicer? Nothing whatever, said our young hero preparing to
jump from the cliff.”
So in the afternoon when we were all good and rested, we took a hike to
the other end of the chasm to see the movie people. Sandy said if they
were using rag dummies we might throw one down from the top of the chasm
and have Dub jump down after it and we’d take a picture of him and he’d
get the Gold Medal and the Burnside award.
“Is that the way you talk to new fellers at camp?” the kid shouted.
“Telling them to be crooked--gee whiz!”
“Didn’t you say that movie actors were crooked?” I said. “Did you say
they don’t really do things? Didn’t you say they were not regular
heroes?”
“I didn’t say they were crooked,” Pee-wee said, all excited. “I said
they’re not real heroes like Scouts, because they double and they use
dummies and it’s just kind of acting, the things they do. Do you think
they really walk up buildings and drop from telegraph wires and all
that?”
“You’d better look out how you talk to them,” Dub said.
“Do you think I’m afraid of them?” the kid asked him. “Gee whiz, they’re
only just actors. When they have to do things where you have to have
prowesses and things like that--and reckless daring----”
“Goodness me,” I said.
“I bet there isn’t one of them can dive like Hervey Willetts does,”
Pee-wee said. “They just do things that kind of make it _look_ as if
they’re brave. Scouts are real heroes because they no fooling take their
lives in their hands----”
“Like spaghetti,” Sandy said.
“Geeeeeee whiz,” the kid went on, “didn’t I see Freddie Fearless in the
_Leap of Love_ and he gave a good big jump into the ocean where it was
all rocks and a lady next to me nearly fainted and people were giving
sighs and everything but I didn’t because I had a wild cherry
jaw-breaker in my mouth----”
“That shows how really wild he is,” I said.
“_Will you shut up!_” he yelled at me.
“He wouldn’t eat tame cherries----”
“I wouldn’t eat tame cherries--I mean--will you _shut up_!” the kid just
screeched.
“He eats wild animal crackers,” I said. “Yes, yes, go on with your
story.”
“He went kerplunk into the water,” the kid said, “and I could see it was
only a dummy and they zipped the film quick. Then when he was climbing
into a boat it was that feller--Freddie Fearless. Geeee whiz, he gets
thousands and thousands of dollars for bein a ’fraid cat. Do you think
I’d be afraid to jump that?”
“What became of the wild cherry jaw-breaker?” Sandy asked him.
“It wasn’t rescued,” I said. “It was never heard of again.”