Come Dark

     When I was a kid, a guy could wander.  A fresh summer morning, any day of the week, a fellow could open his door, walk outside, and just go.  As long as you were back “come dark.” The folks never worried.  Dad had a job five out of seven, but he wouldn’t have worried even if he had been unemployed like Timmy Sloman’s dad.  I think parents were made of tougher stuff in those days.  They had grit. 

     There had never been a “check-in” policy with our parents; just the generally understood, “Be home come dark.”  My friend Derrick and I had heard rumors of a kid on the next block whose parents had him check-in every hour.  We shuddered to think of the humiliation.  That kid was sure to never have friends.  Because of that knowledge, we stuck pretty close to the “home come dark policy.”  We knew that worried parents sometimes behaved irrationally, some to the point of instituting check-in policies.  That was a fate too horrible to chance.

     There weren’t any “bad people” back then; at least none that we knew of.  Oh sure, the teenagers use to chase us and pound on us a bit.  Once they even tied Derrick up and left him in the woods overnight.  Luckily his parents didn’t find out, because they thought he was staying the night at my house.  The big kids were just having fun though, and Derrick did sort of deserve it.  He and Willy Slick had snuck into Willy’s brother, Sylvester’s, bathroom and poured melted Vaseline into his shampoo.  I’d have been mad too if I was forever stuck with the nickname “Slick Slick.”  It was too bad Sylvester was one of the “big kids.”

It’s not like they were “bad people.”  The phase of the big kids terrorizing us didn’t last for long though.  About the same time they all started smoking out in the woods, they got nicer.  Well, maybe not nicer, but they stopped chasing and pounding on us.  They just seemed sleepier most of the time; hungrier too. 

      I overheard my parents saying once that those teenagers should stop smoking those funny cigarettes.  I was mighty worried that someone really might make them stop.  I was sure if that happened, the chasings and the poundings would begin again.  Derrick was of the same opinion.

     One August Sunday when we were eight, just after returning home from church, Derrick and I overheard the older kids talking about this awesome waterfall where some guy had fallen and broken his back.  We were really disappointed later when we found out the guy with the broken back wasn’t there anymore.  I guess we thought they’d just keep him there like the old cannon at Cannon Beach; a living statue.  The least they could have done was put up a bronze one.  After all, this was history.  It would have been a whole lot cooler than a rusty old cannon that they don’t even shoot off anymore.  What’s the fun in that?  The waterfall was cool though. 

     We followed the big kids all the way to the waterfall, being very sneaky and careful so they wouldn’t know we were there.  We didn’t want them to “shake us off their trail” like the bad guys always tried to do in the TV westerns when they were headed for a hide-out, or a lost gold mine.

     We crept along through the woods behind the big kids after they had turned off the road.  The trail wound through a sea of salal and ferns under the dark green canopy of conifer branches.  Not far into the woods, the trail began to mirror the twists and turns of a stream that had carved a trench into the forest floor. 

     Derrick and I hopped down into the stream bed, so as to be more stealthy trackers of our quarry.  As we splashed through the shallows, clanked over piles of rock and did the eight-year-old version of cursing, from tripping over branches, we approached our unwary foes.  From our hidden position near to the big kids, we could hear their quiet conversation, though it was a little too low to understand.  Then one voice raised above the others, “Boy, I think I’m ready to head home.  If there were any little kids around they might want to follow, so they wouldn’t lose their way home.”  I thought it was weird the way big kids couldn’t help being loud sometimes.

     “Yeah, I think I’m ready to head home too,” said another voice.  “You’re right though.  A little kid wouldn’t want to forget how to get home.” 

I silently agreed with the second talker.  It was a good thing there weren’t any little kids around; at least none I could see.

“Yep,” the second voice said again, “a little kid sure wouldn’t want to be out here come dark.”

     COME DARK! The words screetched through my brain like a metal leafrake on a chalkboard.  Derrick and I both stared wide eyed at each other.  Besides the obvious reasons for not being caught out COME DARK, reasons known by every adventurer that valued his soul and skin, there was the possibility that our parents might decide that they needed to institute a check-in during the day; maybe even two or three times.  We couldn’t risk it.

     At the sound of the big kids trudging back through the forest toward the road, we began to scramble to the top of the gully where we had been concealed.  Just short of the brink the sandy clay mixture that made up the wall crumbled and deposited us back in the stream.  Derrick pointed out that it was a good thing we had landed in the water because it had help wash some of the red clay out of our white Sunday school shirts, which we had still been wearing when we set out on the waterfall adventure. 

After several minutes of the same repeated failures, we finally made it to the trail.  We turned in the direction the big kids had headed and we started to follow.  We couldn’t see them, but luckily big kids are easy to track, by sound and smell if for no other reasons.

Suddenly, Derrick froze.  “We ain’t,” Derrick said and then flinched violently.  His mom was an English teacher and I often saw that reaction out of him following a grammatical faux pas.  “We haven’t seen the falls yet,“ he corrected.

     “Yeah. That would be embarrassing.”

     “Yeah.”  We both turned and headed down the path in the opposite direction of home.  Somewhere ahead we knew that we would find monstrous torrents of water thundering down with rock crushing, and back breaking force, to the boulders below.

It didn’t take us long to find the falls.  The trail ended abruptly at a cliff.  To the right of us, the stream that we had been following leapt out of V-shaped gouge in the top of the cliff.  From there, it fanned out slightly as it curved earthward, then accelerated downward until crashing into a small pool, fifty feet below us. 

     Next, we did what every boy between the ages of 5 and 80 would have done.  We started throwing stuff.  Everything that was not nailed down got thrown.  Happily, we were in the woods and nothing was nailed down.  Rocks, sticks, small plants and old beer cans sailed over the brink in a seemingly endless stream.

We watched, time after time as the debris we threw leapt out, (fanned out if composed of loose materials) and headed earthward, crashing to the bottom of the chasm.  After an indeterminable time, Derrick and I noticed that the stuff thrown mimicked the waterfall in the way it leapt, curved, accelerated and the crashed.  This was the beginning of our road to understanding physics.  At that tender age we were touched with insight into the way the universe worked.  Derrick said it best after using both hands to uproot a large fern and throw it into the chasm, using a modified hammer-throw style.

     “Cool.  Did you see that?”

     Later in life it turned out that our first physics lesson really took with Derrick.  He is now working with a highly respected engineering firm and has several clusters of letters after his name.  I, being the brighter of the two of us, have not yet decided what I want to be, if I ever grow up. 

     Eventually, the thrill of throwing stuff took a break.  Any boy, of any age, will tell you that it never really goes away.  During that break we decided that the real fun would be to go down in the canyon, which had been washed out by years and years of that stream racing downhill toward the sea.  Well not really the sea, but the lake. 

     It took Derrick and I surprisingly little time to get to the bottom of the ravine.  We would have been down sooner if it hadn’t taken several minutes to find a good overhang in the bank, on which to ride down.  When we reached the bottom and looked up we were very disappointed to see that there weren’t any other overhangs on which we could repeat our tumbling method of decent. 

We quickly got over our disappointment when we realized that we had landed in the pool of water, thereby rewashing our Sunday school shirts.   Even better, we found that standing under the cascading waters of the falls further cleaned the fabric.  Derrick was slightly dismayed when the force of the water tore the pocket from the front of his shirt, but recovered quickly when he realized how extraordinarily clean the pocket had become.  He was sure his mom would be impressed. 

     For quite a while, we splashed in the pool, threw red clay mud balls at each other (requiring further dunkings in the pool) and found what we were sure were flecks of gold mixed in with the mud.  This discovery of treasure finally headed us in the direction of home, because my dad had a gold pan, somewhere in our garage.  I knew how to use it because I had once seen how it was done on an episode of Alias, Smith and Jones.

     Surprisingly, our mothers were not impressed that we had washed our cloths. I just can’t figure out mothers.  I couldn’t then and I can’t today.  Derrick pulled out the shirt pocket remnant, which he had carefully folded and tucked away in his front pants pocket.  He just kept holding it up to his mom.  The look on his face said, “If you’ll just look closer, I’m sure you’ll see how marvelous this is.”  She never looked close enough to be amazed.

     The upside was that we were home “come dark,” and no mention was made of having check-ins. 

My first experience with actually being caught out “come dark” was when I was four.  My sister says it was because I was too gullible.  I know that it was because I was blessed with an incredible imagination.  I heard my dad once suggesting to my uncle that it might be something on the opposite end of the intellectual spectrum, whatever that meant. 

One afternoon my sister and her friend were eating some red licorice.  “Hey where did you get that,” I demanded sweetly.  I had been practicing demanding sweetly,” and thought I was getting pretty good at it.

“From the licorice tree,” my sister said with a smile.  I should have known something was up right then.  My sister never smiled.

“Where’s that?”

“Oh, I can’t tell you.  It’s a secret.”

“Please…please…please!!!”  It made me feel kind of soiled to say please to my sister; like I needed a bath. How often does a guy feel like that?  I figured saying please at this point was for a good cause though.

“Well, let me check with my colleague.” 

“Huh?”

“Just a second,” she said, and then she leaned over and whispered something to her friend.  Then she turned back to me.  “We’ll take you to the tree, but you have to be blind folded.”

“No way!  Never”

“Then we won’t take you.”

“Oh, Okay!”

My sister ran into the house and emerged with a wad of cloth.  “Turn around.” she said.  Then she wrapped a strip of cloth over my eyes and around the back of my head where she tied it, with several clumps of my hair, into a knot.  

“Hey, what’s that?” I said about the sack that was then yanked down over my head.

“A pillow case.” My sister replied.  I could hear her dumb friend snickering off to my left. Not being satisfied with just a blindfold, my sister had put a pillow case over my head.  That really bugged me because it was her pillow case, which probably had cooties.  Also, I had been able to see pretty well around just blindfold by itself. 

“How much farther is it?” I asked

“We have to go quite a ways just to get to the turtle.”

“Turtle.  What turtle?  I thought we were going to a tree.”

“We have to have the turtle carry us over the lake.”

“Lake.  What lake?  I want to go home.”  I said.

“Lic-ooooooo-rice.”

“Never mind.  When do we get to the turtle?”  We had to walk a long way to get to the lake. 

“Okay, we’re at the lake now.  Step right where I take you, because if your feet splash it will scare off the turtle and we won’t be able to get a ride.” 

“That turtle is a scaredy cat.”

“Shhh.  You’ll hurt his feelings.  Stop here.  Now keep moving your feet so the turtle knows we’re here.  If he can’t feel us walking, he won’t know we’re here and he’ll swim under water.  You don’t want to go under water with a pillow case over your head do you?”

“How fast do I move my feet?  Is this right?  Should I go faster?  Do you think this is too fast??????”  I was happy it was a short turtle ride.  It sure was a smooth ride and it’s back felt as sturdy as walking on solid ground.

After a quite a bit more walking, we finally arrived.  The girls took off my blind fold and I looked up.  I was really disappointed.  “That’s not a licorice tree.  It’s a cedar, just like the one in our back yard.”

“No really,” my sister said.  “Licorice trees are a kind of cedar tree.  I’ll prove it.  You wait here and we’ll climb up and throw some licorice down to you.” 

Soon, licorice started dropping down all around me.  “Here you go.  Here’s another.”  It was good too.  Apparently, licorice is warm when you pick it off a tree, almost as warm as if it had been in someone’s pocket for an hour of walking. 

“I’m coming up too,” I called.  There was a pause.

“No don’t bother.  That was the last piece.” 

I scrambled up anyway.  I was sure she was lying.  After getting up in the tree I could see she was right.  They had picked them all.

“When will it grow more?”

“Well, its magic.  After dark they grow again.  If you clean my room for me, I’ll bring you back tomorrow for more, but you’ll have to wear the blindfold again.”

Just as I was about to agree, I noticed a house through the trees, and a swing set, and bicycle.  And I knew whose bike that was.  It was Chris Jameson’s.  I realized that they had tricked me, that it had been a sham.

“Hey, I know where we are.  You liar.  That’s Chris’ house right there.”  That darn licorice tree was hardly more than a block from home.  That’s when I had realized that dumb turtle hadn’t even gone across the lake.  I yelled some stuff at my sister that the big kids in the neighborhood sometimes yelled at me.  I didn’t know what it meant, but my sister seemed to and it must have been bad.

She climbed down out of the tree with her friend, and then yelled for me to come down too. 

“No.  Now I know where we are and I’m going to stay up until this tree grows more licorice.  It’s already starting to get dark.  I’ll come home after that.”

“We made up the stuff about the licorice tree.  There isn’t going to be any more.” My sister called.

Well, since I had just caught her in one really big lie about a turtle, I wasn’t going to believe that story, and I told her so.  She yelled for a while, and finally gave up and stomped off.

Before long, I noticed that “come dark” had arrived, and I was caught out in it.  I kept waiting for the licorice, but it never arrived.  

Well into the night, my parents and my sister arrived.  Apparently, they had forced a confession out of her.  Later, I began to suspect that the confession had been concerning the whereabouts of a missing pillow case, and finding me had just been a byproduct of the pillowcase search. 

Luckily, my parents blamed the “getting caught out come dark incident,” on my sister and there were no talks about instituting a check-in policy for me. 

When I was nine I had my next, “caught out come dark incident.”  I blamed that one on the big kids. 

By that time, the big kids had already begun smoking their funny cigarettes and had decided they needed a more private place to smoke them.  Privacy to a kid is spelled f-o-r-t.  They decided, with surprising wisdom, not to build a tree fort that they could fall out of.  The alternative being an underground fort.

Derrick and I stumbled across the fort one day as we were exploring the woods.  It was a good thing we didn’t actually stumble into it though because it was deep; really deep. 

The first stage of the big kid’s fort, the hole, was the first thing we had ever seen the big kids do that we considered cool.  They had dug a square hole, with straight up and down sides.  It was as long and wide as my room at home and deeper than my room was tall.  It was awesome.

“Wow,” Derrick said turning to me “It’s furnished.”  He pointed back down to a couch that had been dropped into the pit, and pushed up against one flat sandy wall.

Next to the pit, there was a pile of lumber that the big kids had stolen from a construction site.  They were obviously going to put a roof on their fort.  They just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.  There wasn’t a ladder, but after searching around we found some rope.  We tied one end to a tree, using a good sturdy knot Derrick had learned from his cousin, and we climbed in. 

There were some sticks on the floor of the pit which we used to carve our names and little shelves and tunnels in the sandy walls.  We were very surprised later to find out that the big kids didn’t consider these to be improvements.  After that attempt at interior design, the chasings and poundings resumed again for a while. 

Shortly after getting tired of improving the fort for the big kids, and then deciding we needed to make a fort like it for our own, we noticed that it was starting to get dark.  Shortly after that, we noticed that what we had thought was a good sturdy knot, wasn’t.  I had grabbed the rope with both hands and hopped my feet several feet up the dirt wall when I heard the sounds of “swish” and “kerpow,” just like Indian Jones’ whip would have made.  Then I noticed that the rope was no longer holding me up.  Derrick said the sound I made when I landed was really funny.  I don’t seem to remember that.  I just remember the sense of doom, and a bit of pain.

Wide-eyed, open-mouthed and unusually quite, Derrick and I gazed up at a darkening square of sky above us. Derrick flopped down on the, until now ignored, couch that the big kids had lowered down into their fort.  He unflopped even quicker when two rats ran out from underneath it.  I thought the rats were monumentally cool, until I realized that I was likely to be spending a long dark night with them. 

After several minutes of scurrying and squeaking, Derrick and I were able to calm ourselves down.  During that time the rats had thoughtfully disappeared back under the couch.  I didn’t have any faith that they would stay there once the darkness had completely arrived. 

Derrick and I spent the few remaining minutes of light digging and scraping holes in the walls that we hoped would serve as a ladder to climb out.  We soon realized that dirt that was really good for digging deep holes in, carving names in and scraping shelves into is not the kinds of soil that supports the weight of a nine year old boy.

Just as we were coming to the realization that we were about to be caught out “come dark,” we snatched up sticks to protect ourselves.  I didn’t say anything to Derrick, but I was pretty sure that sticks the size of pencils which had been perfect for carving names in hard sandy walls were probably not going to be perfect for protecting little boys from monsters.  I kept that little tidbit to myself.  I figured that when the creatures of the night attacked I’d yell, “Get em’ Derrick.”  While they were chewing him up, I would hopefully figure another way out.

Knowing it was going to be a long night we did what we could to increase the likelihood that we would be able to get some sleep.  We screamed for help and scrabbled frantically at the walls until we dropped, exhausted, to the ground. 

Through the night we could occasionally hear the scurrying, sniffing sounds of the rats.  That wasn’t so bad.  What really bothered us was the sound of the mummies, vampires, and werewolves that circled above us all night long.  We could hear them shuffling along, just out of view.  Occasionally, we would hear them sniff; testing the air for the scent of little boys to devour.  The only thing that kept those villains at bay was the sound of our war cries.  These war cries sounded remarkably like whimpering, sniveling and crying. 

The next morning we were found by the big kids.  After hauling us out of the pit, they proceeded to chase and pound us for a while.  We didn’t mind.  It was a small price to pay for our rescue.  We then ran home embraced our parents and begged them to institute a check-in policy.  Twice, maybe even three times, a day sounded pretty good.

Sleeping Out

            I work in a building where many of my co-workers complain about the mold and mildew.  They say it arouses their allergies, and they have taken to calling it a “sick building.”  If I were to start referring to it as such, I would say that the name might have more to do with the attitude of the occupants than the structure itself.

            I personally adore the smell.  To me that smell is a doorway in time, back to my childhood.  It is the smell of a canvas tent, well used and put away by a small boy whose definition of dry wasn’t quite the same as his father’s. 

            That tent was my first avenue to the adventures of camping out.  My father had come home with the tent, one day when I was five.  It wasn’t new, which even at five I could tell.  I don’t know where he had picked it up, probably a ditch on the side of the road, but I was five and new or old didn’t matter to me.  I had a tent. 

            My cousin had had a tent, but apparently it hadn’t fared too well on a cold December campout in his back yard.  Flammable not being a word that had become part of my cousin’s vocabulary at that point, his unwise efforts to provide some lifesaving heat had proved problematic for the tent.

            The day my father came home with the tent was magical.  We thought, talked and acted like mountain men all day long, without the scratching and cussing that is.  That night we cooked out over a campfire.  We ate like I’m sure all the best mountain men ate (popcorn and root beer floats).  Then we finished the night snoring away to the delightful, moldy scent of old canvas.  I thought the evening a total success. 

            The next weekend, my tentless cousin came to spend the night.  The food was about the same, but he added a bit of authenticity to the night with what I was sure was some authentic mountain man style cussing and scratching.  Though flammable wasn’t part of his vocabulary, he had obviously spent enough time around mountain men to acquire some of their other linguistic peculiarities.  By the sound of it, those mountain men had been pounding their fingers with hammers, and dropping heavy objects on their toes while my cousin was engaged in new vocabulary acquisition.

            The popcorn and root beer float portion of the evening was enjoyable, as it had been the previous weekend with my father.  I must admit I enjoyed the show of cussing and scratching as well, but before we had been out more than a couple hours I noticed a strange phenomenon.  In just the one week since I had spent the night out with my father, the nights had become noticeably darker, exponentially so.  And where just the week before there hadn’t been so much as an owl, cat or stray dog that had come to visit, my cousin and I were experiencing what could be described as a monsoon of monsters and viscous animals.  We could hear them just on the other side of the canvas. 

            The night before I had been lucky enough to stay up late and watch the first half of The Blob, on Nightmare Theater. 

Good Parent Advice - If you are going to let your young child watch the beginning of a scary movie, it is imperative that at the point in the movie that your child sees the monster, you must realize you have reached the point of no return.  You must allow the child to watch the movie to the conclusion, where the heroes defeat the monster and the world is safe once more.  Otherwise that monster will arrive in your child’s life every time the light gets low enough to make reading difficult.

            As I was saying, the night before I had gotten my first glimpse of The Blob.  I knew the Blob still lived because I had seen its gelatinous mass quivering in the doctor’s office after consuming the teenager that had come across it in the woods.

            Soon after we had bedded down, my cousin complaining that the smell of the tent was affecting his allergies, I heard the wet mucusy sounds of an approaching gooey mass.  I shook my cousin awake. 

            “Chance, it’s the Blob.”  Even though the sounds of the monster’s approach had stopped as it heard me croak the warning to my cousin, Chance obviously appreciated the gravity of the situation.

            “What?!  The Blob!  Help, Uncle Paul!” Chance yelled as he exited through the side of tent, where previously there had been no exit.  The last echoes of my father’s name still quivered in the air as my cousin entered my house.  He was soon joined by me and the rest of my family who had been awakened by Chance’s screech.  It was then that I noticed something I had been suspecting since I had first learned of the existence of mountain men.  Mountain men sleep in the buff.  My sister also learned something that the other girls at school wouldn’t believe her about until they found out for themselves in the seventh grade growth and development class.

            My cousin and I later figured that mountain men must survive through employing the same glass-shattering, high-pitched screech.  It obviously was capable of frightening away a full grown Blob, so surely it would be capable of driving off something as insignificant, by comparison, as a grizzly bear.

            Armed with a new knowledge of sleeping out survival tactics, I spent many nights sleeping out with friends that summer.  Almost every time I would hear the mucusy respiration of the Blob.  I was however, never able to get tentmate corroboration of these sighting, or rather, listenings.  Each campout evening, the Blob would stealthily depart immediately upon my rousing whatever companion was in attendance.  That friend would then spend the rest of the night listening for the same wet sound that caused me to awaken the him.  However, on not one occasion did the gelatinous devil return after my tent companion had awakened.  I took this as an obvious sigh that the beast was as clever as it was evil.

            I always explained to my companions that they need not worry while camping out with me, because I had learned many valuable lifesaving mountain man skills.  The “screech” and the appropriate use of the emergency mountain man tent exit which my cousin had been kind enough to create in the side of the tent, earlier that summer.  With these two skills, I would tell my fellow camper, survival was assured, or at least pretty likely.

            I still have that old tent.  It must be fifty or sixty years old by now.  I went to the garage today and pulled it out.  I unrolled the lovely, pasty green package and was greeted with that familiar nostalgic scent.  My eyes began to tear up as I spread out the wrinkled green fabric.  The old ropes felt rough against my hands, like I remembered they always had, and I heard the resonating clank of heavy long steel nails that we had used as tent stakes.  My father would have used those nails on landscape timbers thirty-something years ago if they hadn’t found their way into those folds of green canvas. 

            I snuffled a sigh through mucusy nostrils and rolled the package shut again to the clack of wooden tent poles.  Instead of pushing my old friend back to the hidden recesses of garage shelves, I hid it in my car.  It would be a present for my son, tomorrow.  A dense wrinkled green something that looked like it had been found on the side of the road. 

            Smiling, I took out a handkerchief and sneezed my way back into the house.

Roasting by an Open Fire

          As I sit down to write this little piece, I breathe deeply and enjoy the aroma of wood smoke that wafts up from my clothing to wrap my office in a comforting blanket of scented memories. 

“What stinks?” says my daughter as she passes my office door.

“She who smelt it…, oh you mean the wood smoke?” I reply.  I find it deeply offensive when she refers to any smells in my vicinity as “stink.”  Stink? You couldn’t get further from the truth.  This is the stuff of boyhood memories.  Not all of these recollections are pleasant, but they are my past and have made me what I have become.

          I recall sharing a compassionate shoulder, when my friend’s house burned down and he thought he had lost his pet rabbit to the blaze.  Incredibly, there had been no need for all that sissy compassion stuff, because his parents had amazingly taken his rabbit to live out in the country that very morning.  Wow, can you believe the luck?

          There is a memory of playing ranch hands with my buddy Derrick.  That day I learned that if you are going to be pretending you are a ranch hand out on the range branding cattle, there are several things you shouldn’t do.  First, don’t make real fires.  Second, don’t put real metal in those real fires. Most importantly, don’t let your clumsiest friend play the ranch hand while you play the cow.  The good news about that is the doctor says that after one more surgery the branded part of my anatomy will look almost as good as new.

          I also hold closely many memories of talking with friends around a campfire in the deep woods.  Or lately, in my lazy old age, I have been talking with them around the fire pit in my back yard. 

          Last evening, as we stood around the fire, tendrils of smoke from the crackling teepee of fir and cedar wrapping around my legs, I was struck by the recollection of a long ago scouting trip along the Pacific Ocean.  This trip was on the Olympic Peninsula, on the coast of Washington State.  I was a young teen and had spent the previous two days along the beach practicing my swearing.  As our last night of the hike approached the leaders were, of course, wishing me warm thoughts, mainly about the warm place I was likely to spend eternity for all of the swearing I had been doing.

I had spent much of that day saving huge amounts of time over my hiking companions by wading all of the coastal streams instead of wasting precious exploration time walking half of a mile upstream to the bridges. 

          One stream in particular stands clear in my memory.  I knew to take off my pack and hold it above me as I waded, since I was pretty sure that the water was deeper than my waist.  I chuckled as the water reached my waist, knowing that I had outsmarted the stream.  I didn’t feel quite as smart when the water suddenly closed in over my head for three or four long steps, but upon reaching the other side I was pleased to find that my pack was still dry.  All would have been fine if gravity and that crumbling stream bank hadn’t conspired to throw my pack back down into the water that I had so bravely crossed.  That point wouldn’t be important except that I was standing in dripping wet clothes as the spare, and previously dry, clothes in my pack thirstily soaked up as much of the stream as they could.

          As luck would have it, we were scouts and well versed in the art of fire building.  At the end of that day’s hike I coaxed a first year scout into building a camp fire that would surely have my clothes dry in minutes.  Or at least before the frigid spring evening winds off of the Pacific Ocean turned me into a human popsicle. 

          Again, I used my incredible intellect to increase efficiency, and reduce effort.  I decided not to waste time removing my clothes, but instead decided that they would dry just as well on me, and keep me warm in the process. 

          It was quite toasty, so I had to keep turning in circles.  After a while one of the fathers asked if there was a thermometer around because I looked done to him.  I was too much better a man than him to react.

          “Hey Ken,” Nathan’s father said. “I would have thought your pants would be clean after all that walking through water you did today.”

          “They are.  If you were wearing your glasses, Phil, you’d see they are as clean as they were the day I bought them.”  I knew I had him with that one.  “Wait, you are wearing your glasses.”  Looking down at my pants I saw that the left leg was brown from the cuff up to about mid-calf.  It looked like I had walked through bogs all day rather than clear running streams.  Then I noticed something extraordinary.  The brown was moving up my pant leg. 

Amazing as it seems, a coal had jumped out of the fire and landed on the cuff of my then bone dry pants.  There had been no flame, just a gentle smokeless smoldering that crept its way up. 

“I’m on fire!” I yelled.

“Eternity’s a long time, Ken.  You might want to start getting used to it now.” Someone said.  I think it was Phil, though to his credit he was the first one to throw water.  He missed the flames and hit me in the chest with the water, but it did run down to my pant leg and eventually extinguish the flames.  Before the fire was put out, it had burned to just above my knee.  Amazingly, my shin was left unscorched.  However, in track that spring I became known as Hairless Lefty.  I guess there are worse things to be called. 

A few years ago, I went on a campout in the Cascade Mountains, with a few friends.  We hiked in about eight stinking, sweaty miles to our favorite lake.  We started out stinky, and the sweaty part of the hike just made that worse.  I soon began to express my happiness over having just purchased a pair of the most comfortable boots ever made. 

I believe those boots were handmade somewhere in the Swiss Alps, and were reputed to be the most comfortable boot in the world.  This was reputed, mostly by me.  I hadn’t actually heard them reputed by anyone else, but I surely made up for their previous lack of notoriety.  Jealousy soon became apparent, and I was forced to walk on ahead in comfortable solitude while sticks and pine cones rained down around me.

That evening at the camp fire while all the rest of my aging buddies grumbled about blisters and sore tired feet, I spent a short amount of time reputing again on the comfortable ride my new boots had given me on the hike up.

While the others whined and begged for pity I sat with my back against my pack, my feet stretched out to warm by the fire.  Then for the first time since we had begun our trek, I noticed a trace of a smile tug up at one corner of Richie’s mouth. 

“Well hallelujah," I said, “You’re finally going to start enjoying yourself.  Good, it’s about time.  This great clean mountain air and that glistening mirror of a lake have finally brought you around.”

“Yeah Ken, that’s it.”  Richie said, with a vaguely familiar smirk growing on his face.  I knew that look.  I had seen it before, and I knew it for the pure evil that it signaled.  I just wondered what had produced it.  I suddenly felt a weight develop deep in my guts, and could feel the thud of my heartbeats as they resonated through that weight.  A cold oily slick of perspiration beaded up and dripped from my forehead, and a uncontrollable trembling began throughout my nervous system.  That smirk can do that to any one.

I remembered where I had seen that look before.  I had seen it in 110 degree weather, with Richie behind the wheel of my car.  We were outside of Las Vegas, with our friend Ted running behind us for a half a mile, his hand stretched out vainly trying to grasp the bumper of my Datsun B210.    Sure, Richie had had his reasons then; something to do with Ted’s chili dinner the night before.  Richie had been wearing that same evil smirk then and I worried about why it had surfaced again.

“Hey Ken, you know, I have to say those are some really nice boots.  Maybe you want to tell us a little more about ‘em?” Richie said.  As he was talking to me, he elbowed Mel, beside him. 

“No.  Maybe later.” I murmured.  I knew something was up.  My sense of self-preservation had been put on red alert.  As it turned out, it was too late.  The rubber sole on my right boot had heated up so much that the glue attaching it to the rest of the boot had liquefied and the sole slid off onto the dry mountain soil; glue side down. 

Apparently, those Swiss Alps boots didn't have the soles sewn to the boot, as is the practice with pretty much every other boot in the world.  Someone should talk to those Swiss about that.  I leapt to my feet in a cat-like effort to save my boots.  Unfortunately, hot melted glue is about as slippery as greased Teflon, and my left boot still had a thick gooey layer waiting for me. 

I spun a graceful pirouette as my second boot parted company with its sole, and I landed ungracefully on my derrière, in the fire.  I saved myself, and surprisingly, my pants from any fire damage.  This is because of my quickly employing what I like to call “the poodle scoot”, which extinguished the fire on my hind parts as they were scuffled quickly across the campsite. 

I would have returned the boots, but my friends had stuck the soles of them against a tree while the glue was still hot.  I figured it would be pretty much impossible to heat the soles back up to peeling temperature without burning down the tree and starting a forest fire, so there they remain to this day.  I think they are listed as an attraction is several hiking guidebooks. 

I hiked out of the mountains the next day with what amounted to the world’s most expensive pair of camp fire scented slippers.

After the tragedy of the burning boots, I decided that American made was the way to go.  A was able to find a pair of fireproof boots which were made in Detroit.  They seemed just the right footwear for me. 

The next year, the same friends and I made the second annual trip, to the same lake as the previous year.  I thought this strange.  The annual trip was supposed to visit new destinations each year, but for some reason, the rest of the gang insisted.  Apparently, they had such a good time there the year before, they wanted to go back.  They said it was a place that was good for the sole.  They are an odd bunch.

The trip progressed in pretty much the same fashion as the year before.  There was one notable exception. My fireproof boots were fireproof.  Unfortunately, they were not insulated. The steel toe and shank turned out to be great conductors of heat.  Though the boots were fireproof, my feet were not.  Luckily, Richie had brought along a king sized first aid kit; known for some strange reason as the “Ken Kit.”  As I mentioned, my friends are an odd bunch.

For the record, I think it is rather childish for a grown man to name his first aid kit. 

The hike out the next day wasn’t too bad.  The guys carried my gear, and I got to wear my world’s most expensive campfire scented slippers on my blistered feet.

          Some of my fondest memories have been created around a camp fire.  To this day I keep a one legged pair of jeans stapled to my garage wall by my workbench.  The sight of that one amputated leg with the blackened fringe at mid-thigh, and the slightly charred smell, never fail to bring back memories of the good old days.  Hanging next to the pants is a pair of highly campfire scented slippers. This display often reminds me to make it to church on a fairly regular basis.

I Don't Wanna Go Home

I Don’t Wanna Go Home

by Ken Goree

My daughter, Carly, had begged for months to go on a camping trip with me; just a father and daughter adventure.  I am a teacher, and she had the same spring break as me, so the timing was right. 

It was just April, which in Western Washington means most of the outdoors is still coated in a lovely, spongy blanket of emerald green moss and algae. 

Carly and I decided to go east of the mountains to find a drier climate.  Our destination was the Mardon Resort, on the Potholes Reservoir.  We had been there for several fabulous trips in previous years.

The second week of April, Carly and I loaded up our gear and little black and white mop of a dog, Jaicy, and headed east. 

“Carly, are you…achoo…ready to…achoo…go?”

“What, Dad?”

“Are you ready to go?” I repeated.

By the end of the drive, I had finally come to the conclusion that one of my students had given me a cold for a spring break present. 

Carly and I checked into the campground and set up the tent.  The moment we finished that, the flinty grey sky opened up and it began to rain.  So much for a drier climate. 

Carly was a good sport about my cold.  She played at the resort playground in the rain, while I curled up in my sleeping bag, with my head hanging outside the tent.  I wanted to be able to keep at least one bloodshot eye on her as she played. 

I didn’t find out until the next day that I should have stayed in bed.

When the rain tapered off to a drizzle we took our little dog for a hike into the desert.  The three of us climbed up and down basalt cliffs, pushed our way through sage brush and squished through mud in places where water had seeped through the O’Sullivan Dam. 

We were having a great time until the mosquitoes, gnats, and midges attacked.  The bugs had let us slip by so that they could close in from behind as a living wall of insectile malice. That finished the hike for us.  When the bugs are so thick you can’t inhale, it’s time to turn back.

Returning to camp there was a new challenge to face.  Peter, an eight-year-old boy, decided to hang out with us.  After breaking several pieces of our camp equipment, I finally located his family’s campsite and returned him to his proper environment.

Soon after, Carly and I went into the tent for what we hoped would be a comfortable night’s sleep.  It was cooling down quickly, but we had our winter sleeping bags.  We expected to be warm and toasty.  What we didn’t count on was a monsoon and a hole made by the canvas hungry mice in my garage. 

Late in the evening, the rain started again.  It came down so hard I mistook it for passenger jets taking off from the Moses Lake Airport.  Around midnight, my daughter informed me that her sleeping bag was wet.  I had her move to my side because most of the stream that was rushing through our tent was staying on the side where Carly had been sleeping. 

Then our soggy dog Jaicy decided that she needed to sleep inside my sleeping bag with me.  I finished the night warm, but not comfortable. 

By morning, the weather had cleared.  I should have known something was wrong. 

We shared a sumptuous Captain Crunch Breakfast, while Jaicy was cuddled up next to me on the wooden picnic bench.  As I petted her, I felt a small lump down under her fur. 

Curiosity being one of my stronger instincts, I checked to see what is was.  “Uhhhgg! A tick!”  I almost squealed out loud.  In all the times we had been to the Mardon Resort we had never seen ticks. 

As I looked over her body some more, I found more, and looked more and found more and on and on and on.  My little puppy was covered with the things. 

Then I remembered that Jaicy had slept in my sleeping bag with me.  “Uhggg!!!”  Again, I almost squealed.  I would have if Carly hadn’t been there.  What I did do was shudder violently for several minutes. 

Next, I frantically checked my body over; completely confident I would find hundreds of little black vampires latched on to my flesh.  Not a one.  I couldn’t believe it.  Then I thought.  Oh no.  They want younger, tenderer meat.  They’ll be all over Carly. 

“Dad, what are you looking for?” Carly asked as I scanned her arms and legs.

“Little bugs that bite people sometimes.”

“Oh, like when the nurse at school checks us for lice?”

“Ya, something like that.  I’ll check your hair in a minute.”

“Okay,” Carly said.

I checked Carly over and…nothing.  I was in a happy state of confusion.  After giving her a clean bill of health, I showed her one of the ticks from the dog. 

I checked in the tent and found a tick crawling up the wet nylon wall.  I figured I couldn’t damage the tent anymore than it already had been by the mice, so I used my hatchet to take care of that tick without a single shudder.  Then I checked in my sleeping bag.  Three of them were crawling around inside (some shuddering was involved) so I checked myself over again.  Still nothing.

Carly, Jaicy and I jumped into the van and took a trip to the nearest feed store, 30 miles away.  I bought some flea and tick drops for the dog, and I asked the girl at the counter what I should do about the ticks that were already on the dog.  I had heard you weren’t supposed to pull ticks directly off the skin, so I hadn’t. 

“Oh, go ahead and pull those critters off.  It’s okay with this kind.” 

“How come I didn’t get bit?”

“This type don’t like people so much,” she said.

“The feeling is mutual,” I replied as I turned away and tried not to shudder.

Removing the ticks from Jaicy’s neck, body, and legs was a revolting job.  However, it was a little satisfying too.  I dropped them onto the warm parking lot asphalt as I pulled each loose.  I intended to run over them with the van when we drove away.

When we arrived back at the campsite, I figured we’d be packing up to go home.  After all, we had been soaked, almost frozen, subjected to Peter’s vandalism, and had narrowly escaped being tick food.  I was ready to go home.  Enough was enough.

“Dad, what are you doing?” Carly said to me as I was starting to take the tent down.

“Packing up, Sweetie.  I thought you would want to go home.”

“But I like camping with you, Dad.  Can’t we stay another night?  Something always happens when I’m with you.  I just can’t wait to see what’s going to be next.”

 “Whatever you want, Princess.”

 “Achooo!”  I grabbed a sleeping bag that had been drying in the afternoon breeze and wrapped it around myself.  Then I began to shake with the fever and chills of the cold that had been a spring break present from one of my students.