We had some fun in that car while it was on the Sneezenbunker land, and
two or three of the fellows said maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to keep it
there. That was because it wasn’t so far from Bennett’s. But most of
them said it was too near the center of civilization. Gee whiz, that was
the first time I ever heard anybody call Main Street, Bridgeboro, the
center of civilization.
I said, “I vote for Van Schlessenhoff’s field down near the river.”
Dorry Benton said, “I vote for it, too. But how are we going to get the
car down there? That’s the question.”
“We can carry it by a vote,” Hunt Manners said.
“We ought to be able to carry a vote, we’ve got two platforms,” I told
him.
Westy said, “Maybe if Mr. Jenson thinks the old trestle isn’t strong
enough, still he might be willing to give the car a start if we’re not
in it. It isn’t the car he’s thinking about, it’s we fellows. Then we
can walk down afterwards.”
Gee whiz, I had never thought of that before. We got kind of used to
having our meeting place there on the Sneezenbunker land, and it wasn’t
so bad. But now that we got to thinking about the river, good night, we
couldn’t get the idea out of our heads.
I said, “Let’s go down to the river and look around and decide how we’ll
have things down there, in case we can get the car moved. Maybe we can
use the shack where we found the inventor, as a kind of a branch
headquarters.”
“Can we catch fish down at that river?” the kid wanted to know.
I told him, “Sure, we can catch canned salmon and fishballs and
baseballs and everything. When we go down there we’ll let the fish know
we’re coming, we’ll drop them a line.”
So then we all started along the tracks down to the river to kind of
look around down there and make plans.
I said, “I hope the field is still down there; I hope Mr. Van
Schlessenhoff didn’t put it in the market. Anyway, the river won’t be
there.”
“What are you talking about?” Pee-wee yelled..
“I’m talking about whether ice cream should be fried or roasted,” I
said.
“You’re crazy,” he shouted.
“I admit it,” I told him. “If I wasn’t I wouldn’t be talking to you.”
“Why won’t the river be there?” he began shouting.
“Because it flows past Bridgeboro,” I told him. “Did you ever hear of a
river staying in one place? It takes an east-westerly course and flows
into New York Bay. You learn that in the third grade.”
“You’re so smart—where does it rise?” he yelled.
I said, “It rises in the morning, that’s more than you do.”
“What do you mean, in the morning?” he fairly yelled.
“In the northwestern part of the morning,” I said. “That’s why a river
has a bed. You rise from your bed, don’t you? Posilutely. That shows
your ignorance. I suppose you don’t even know that Great Neck is south
of Rubber Neck.”
“You’re crazy!” he yelled. “You think you’re funny, don’t you?”
Gee whiz, that’s my favorite outdoor sport, jollying Pee-wee.
Now that afternoon that we followed the tracks down to the river it
wasn’t so easy as it was on that Saturday that Mr. Ellsworth went with
us, nor on that Sunday that Westy and I followed the old rails down
there, tracking the inventor. The reason for that was that it was a
couple of months later, and a couple of months make a big difference
with cat-tails, because they grow even faster than cats. Now pretty soon
you’ll see how the cat-tails turned out to be tales of adventure—you
just wait and see.
That Saturday when we first followed the old tracks across the marsh the
cat-tails were not so high and we could see, kind of, how the trestle
was built underneath the tracks. The tracks were just high enough to be
out of the marsh. And the cat-tails were just a little above the tracks.
They grow awful thick, cat-tails do. I know all about them, because we
pick them and dry them and sell them for punk sticks to drive mosquitoes
away. We get a nickel a bunch for them—no war tax.
Now where the old tracks go across the marsh they are on a wooden
trestle part way, and the rest of the way the trestle is sort of solid.
Some places you can look down and see the marsh underneath and some
places it’s solid so you can’t do that. It’s a kind of a ramshackle
thing, because it was never used for passengers, but only to haul lumber
and stuff that came up the river in scows and barges.
Even in the beginning I guess the whole thing was just kind of thrown
together. Anyway, the old tracks were all half rusted away. The old line
was just about good enough to support that old-fashioned car of ours and
that’s about all, except in the place where the trestle was solid; I
guess it was stronger there. Anyway, the mosquitoes down there are
strong enough. Don’t say a word. They carry machine guns, those
mosquitoes. But in the field close to the river it’s dandy.
So now I’m going to start another chapter. I bet you think the trestle
is going to break down under our car—I bet you’re hoping it will.
Just you wait.