NORTHWARD BOUND
As far as it is possible to reduce Pee-wee’s ideas to a common
denominator, they comprehended a scheme somewhat as follows. I hesitate
to ask the reader to study a map in vacation time, but road maps are not
so bad, and if you will glance at the crude one which I have included
here, you will see that the Hudson River formed a sort of backbone to
Pee-wee’s pilgrimage and colossal enterprise. The Hudson River rises
somewhere or other, pursues a southerly course, and empties into the
Hudson Terminal, whence it derives its name.
From the neighborhood of Bridgeboro there is a state road which runs up
through Tuxedo, Newburgh, Kingston, Saugerties, Catskill and points
north. It goes so far that it runs out of our story altogether, and it
is a very good road except for motorcycle cops who lurk in the bordering
woods. It does not run directly north from Bridgeboro but (as you may
see) makes a rather sweeping curve between Bridgeboro and Newburgh. From
that point north it runs pretty straight along the river. The bee-line
way to go from Bridgeboro as far as Newburgh would be up through
Westwood, Nanuet, West Haverstraw, and Fort Montgomery. From this latter
point the hiker might (only scouts prefer not to) follow the state road
all the way up to Catskill.
Now it was these towns somewhat east of the state road in its lower
section that Pee-wee picked out as the points of his famous relay race.
He did not intend to be autocratic in this matter and when the letter to
himself was once out of his own hands, the hikers might go as they
pleased so far as he was concerned. The one requirement was that each
relay hiker should move _northward_ to a town or village where it was
known that scouts could be found.
Pee-wee’s own responsibility would end at Westwood, which he now set out
to invade, and where he intended to let loose his contagious enthusiasm.
Then he would return to Bridgeboro and, on the morrow, set forth in the
flivver for Temple Camp, where he would live in austere retirement
awaiting the lone, unknown hiker who would be his guest and friend.
But before we accompany Pee-wee to his own chosen terminal we must pause
to scan the letter which he prepared for eventual delivery to himself:
To Walter Harris if they don’t know who you mean ask for
Pee-wee Temple Camp Leeds Ulster County N. Y. This letter is
brought by relays and each scout that gets it takes it to
another scout only he has to be sure to go north toward
Temple Camp everybody up that way knows where that is and
knows me two. Whoever brings it to me and delivers it into
my hand stays at Temple Camp for the rest of the summer and
his meals free absolootly positivly and they always give to
helpings sometimes and bunks in Mamoriel Cabin with me
_posativiy sure_.
P.S.—This is true. and I mean it.
Walter Harris,
Alligator Patrol.
I mean Green County
With this official passport into the golden realm of Temple Camp, safely
deposited in his trouser pocket, his scout handbook as a kind of high
legal authority stuck in his back pocket, and the road map stuck in his
belt, Pee-wee sallied forth from Bridgeboro eating an apple.
The last that was seen of him by any inhabitant of Bridgeboro was when a
jitney driver saw him hurl the apple core at a willow tree along the
road on the northern outskirts of Bridgeboro. He was then going about
three miles an hour, scout pace. The jitney driver saw him take another
apple out of his pocket. The weather was clear and warm, the wind north
by east.