HERVEY AND THE CAMP
I don’t know, it seemed kind of natural, sort of, for us to see Hervey
Willetts like that, away from all the other scouts at camp. I said to
Westy I was kind of glad we saw him first just the way we did and that
he wasn’t in the crowd at the landing.
Westy said the same thing. I don’t know why he said that, but it seemed
as if Hervey was different from everybody else; I guess that’s what we
were thinking. Most always he was alone.
He had lots and lots of friends, but they weren’t scouts at camp. He
knew all the farmers around the country, and sometimes he stayed at
their homes all night. He got acquainted with peddlers and tramps and
stayed away and, gee whiz, you couldn’t blame the trustees for getting
mad. He was funny in some ways.
He could do most anything, but yet he never bothered his head about
merit badges. Mr. Ellsworth (he’s our scoutmaster) said Hervey was an
adventurer, not a scout. He said he could do stunts, but he could never
do tests. Mr. Ellsworth said scouting is a kind of a harness, and Hervey
couldn’t wear a harness. Anyway, just the same he liked Hervey because
he just couldn’t help it.
I had to laugh to myself when I thought how he was sitting on that
shutter just waiting for it to be let down so he could have a swim after
hours. He could say he fell in and had to swim to the landing. If
anybody would be to blame it would be Chocolate Drop, who always let the
shutter down from the inside.
I was wondering how Hervey got out there on that shutter. He must have
climbed over the roof of the cooking shack and let himself down on the
side over the lake. I had to laugh when I thought how funny it would
look when the shutter was let down to see him go sprawling accidentally
on purpose into the lake, which would be just what he wanted. I knew he
intended to beat the rule, but gee, I couldn’t help seeing the funny
side of it.
But anyway, soon we forgot all about it on account of the scouts all
being at the landing to meet us. I guess every scout I ever saw at
Temple Camp was there. Bert Winton was there and Brent Gaylong. He was
just as lanky as ever, and his spectacles were half-way down his nose
like a schoolmaster, and he had that same slow, drawly, funny way about
him.
There’s always a big fuss when our troop gets to camp, because Mr.
Temple, who started the camp, lives in our town. Pee-wee says Mr. Temple
donated the camp, and he thinks that means he supplied it with
doughnuts. The reason why Mr. Temple doughnutted the camp is because he
was interested in Tom Slade when Tom was a hoodlum in our town.
Tom Slade used to be in our troop, but now he stays at Temple Camp all
the time, and he’s assistant manager under Uncle Jeb Rushmore, and Uncle
Jeb used to be a trapper, and he fought with General Custer, and Pee-wee
thinks that General Custer was named after cup custards, and General
Custer fought the Indians, and if it wasn’t for the Indians we wouldn’t
have any Indian pudding, and that’s my favorite dessert.
So that brings me to the part where we were all eating dessert that
first night we got to Temple Camp. Everybody was through supper and we
had the eats pavilion all to ourselves on account of it being too dark
to eat at the big mess-board out under the trees.
I guess you know all about the troop I’m in. It’s the first Bridgeboro
troop of Bridgeboro, New Jersey. If you want to know where New Jersey
is, it’s on page twenty-seven of the geography.
These are the three patrols in our troop, and about twice a minute
Pee-wee starts another one. But don’t pay any attention to the patrols
he starts, because they don’t amount to anything. The only warranted,
genuine patrols in our troop are the raving Ravens (he’s one of them, I
mean he’s about six of them) and the Elks and the Silver Foxes. I’m
patrol leader of the Silver Foxes.
The best thing about the Ravens is that they’re not Elks. And the best
thing about the Elks is that they’re not Ravens. And the worst thing
about the Silver Foxes is that they’re in the same troop with the Elks
and the Ravens—they’re more to be pitied than blamed. Temple Camp is at
Black Lake and Black Lake is in the Catskills, and the Catskills are
somewhere or other, I should worry, you reach them in the second grade,
that’s all I know.
So now you know about Hervey Willetts and my troop and Temple Camp, and
if you want to know all the rest about them you’ll find it in a lot of
stories I wrote that have my picture on the cover of them. All those
stories are crazier than each other. But if you want to read the
craziest one of all you want to read this one. Even the laughing brook
at Temple Camp died laughing.
It’s such a lot of nonsense that it’s dedicated to a crazy quilt. Every
bit of it is taken from life, and my sister says life ought to be
thankful to get rid of it. Many thanks, I told her. Anyway, I don’t care
what you say, this story is all about real happenings—real adventures
and real estate. _Oh, boy_, wait till you see the real estate that’s in
it.