INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS
Pee-wee emerged safely, if not triumphantly, from this ordeal amid much
laughter, and was just congratulating himself upon his skillful handling
of “the trade” in a period of acute shortage when he received a knockout
blow. In depositing the trifling price of the peppermint sticks in his
trousers pocket, he discovered there four gumdrops glued together and
clinging so affectionately that nothing could part them.
At the moment of this discovery, Scout Harris, thus driven into a corner
and standing at bay with nothing but one huge, consolidated gumdrop for
defense, heard the unmistakable sound of another car crawling over the
rocks and hubbles of that outlandish road in second gear. On, on, on, it
came like some horrible British tank.
And now again he heard voices, “We can eat about twenty of them in my
patrol; y-mm. Are we hungry? Oh, no! Hot frankfurters! Oh, _boy_, lead
me to them. I could even eat the sign, I’m so hungry. Put her in high.
What do we care about the road?”
Pee-wee listened and waited in terrible suspense. Scouts! He knew
something about the scout capacity. Then, upon the fresh morning air
there floated another voice calling a sentence which he knew too well;
it was the good scout motto.
“Hey there, you, whoever you are, Mr. Refreshment Man? _Be Prepared!_
We’re s-c-o-u-t-s, we are, and we’re h-u-n-g-r-e-e! We haven’t had
anything since breakfast at four-thirty. We had to come around through
this rocky tour or detour or whatever you call it. Somebody ate the
bridge last night. Are there any scouts down in this South African
backyard?”
If Pee-wee had not heard that familiar motto “Be Prepared,” he would
have known the approaching caravan to be scouts by their talk and
banter.
_Be Prepared._ Pee-wee glanced at the bare counter and the empty jars
and the shiny dishpan which held nothing but Pepsy’s ball of worsted and
the terrible ornamental thing that she was knitting. There they were,
just as she had laid them the day before. Poor little Pepsy....
Then they descended upon him as only hungry scouts can descend.
Pee-wee’s glowing promises which decorated the woods (and which he could
not fulfill) had brought the party to a state of distraction. It was a
big Crackerjack touring car overflowing with scouts and driven by a
smiling scoutmaster. It seemed as if they ought to have been pressed in
and down with a shovel, like ice cream in a quart box.
“For the love of—” one of them began.
“Look what’s here, it’s a _scout_.”
“That?” shouted another. “Let’s have the magnifying glass, will you?”
Pee-wee straightened himself up to his full height. The big Crackerjack
touring car stopped.
“_Some_ detour,” the scoutmaster said with an air of infinite relief.
“Do they have scouts down here?” a member of the party asked.
“I’m only staying here, I belong in Bridgeboro, New Jersey,” Pee-wee
said.
“Don’t talk about bridges,” another scout said.
“Talk about something pleasant. A scout is supposed to save life, scout
law number six; let’s have a couple of thousand hot dogs, will you?
We’re dying. And forty-eleven dozen doughnuts with the holes removed.”
“Do you—I—eh—do you—need any tire tape?” Pee-wee stammered, playing for
time.
“Tire tape! What do you take us for? A lot of blow-outs? Let’s have some
eats and _we’ll_ take care of the blow-out.”
“Come on, hurry up, a scout is supposed to be prepared,” piped up a
natty scout wearing the bronze cross.
“Where’s all the food?” the scoutmaster asked, glancing at the empty
counter. “We were led to suppose—”
“Don’t you know what a shortage is?” Pee-wee piped up in sheer
desperation.
“We know what a _shorty_ is,” one of the party shot back.
“You don’t expect us to eat a shortage, do you?” another said. “Come
ahead, hurry up, a scout isn’t supposed to be cruel. You can always
depend on scout signs that you find in the woods. A scout that puts
scout signs—”
“Those are different kinds of signs!” Pee-wee shouted. “Those are trail
signs. You think you’re so smart! That shows how much you know
about—about—”
“Three strikes out,” one of the scouts shouted. “About—about industrial
conditions,” Pee-wee concluded. “Don’t you know what a—a—what d’you call
it—a—”
“Yes, that’s what you call it,” a scout laughed. “Don’t you know what a
reconstruction period is?” Pee-wee fairly yelled, amid uncontrollable
laughter. “If something happens like a war—or a—a bridge burning down—or
something—or other—that makes business conditions—what d’you call it—it
makes them all kind of upside down, doesn’t it? Sometimes—kind of—things
are hard to get. Everybody knows that.”
“We can see it,” a scout said.
By this time the scoutmaster was laughing heartily but with the greatest
good humor. Pee-wee continued bravely, to the great amusement of the
party.
“Gee whiz, nobody ever came along this road. You admit that scouts are
hungry, don’t you?”
“We _proclaim_ it,” said the scoutmaster.
“I ate a lot of the stuff and my aunt wouldn’t cook any more stuff for
us because nobody ever came and it got stale and I ate too much of it,
that’s what she said. So now, anyway, we’re going to start in again
because the business world—and we’re—we’re going to speed up
production.”
“All right, speed up the auto and good luck to you,” the scout with the
bronze cross said. He seemed to be a patrol leader.
There was a little fraternal chat before this boisterous troop moved on
and all seemed interested in Pee-wee and his enterprise. They were on
their way to camp somewhere down the line.
“You’ll succeed all right,” they called back to him, “only be sure to
have plenty of stuff on hand when we come back in a couple of weeks or
we’ll kill you.”
“Do you like waffles and honey?” the proprietor shouted after them.
“We’ve got the bees working overtime for us,” a scout called back.
“I’ll have a lot of those—ten cents each,” Pee-wee announced. “Do you
like clam chowder?” he called, raising his voice to cover the increasing
distance.
“Don’t you make us hungry,” one called back. “Good luck to you, you’ll
make it a go all right.”
“I’m lucky, I always have good luck,” the small optimist screamed at the
top of his voice. “Do you like peanut taffy? Do you like hot corn,” he
added, fairly yelling this sudden inspiration after the departing
sufferers; “with butter and pepper on it; do you like that? I’ll have
some!”
These were the last words they heard as the big car moved slowly over
the rocky, grass-grown road. They are good words to end a chapter
with—hot corn with pepper and butter on it....
Oh, boy!