Читать книгу Roy Blakeley on the Mohawk Trail - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 5

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So now you know all about it—I mean how we happened to start. Harry said he was going to get up a pamphlet with lots of pictures telling all about how the Hunkerjunk is the toughest car there is. So I decided I’d write up all the things that expired, I mean transpired; that means happened. It’s kind of to advertise the Boy Scouts and show how tough they are—I don’t mean tough—you know what I mean.

One of the worst things happened before we started—Pee-wee decided to go. He brought his tent and his cooking set and we took some cans of baked beans and egg power and spaghetti and soup and salmon and a whole lot of other stuff. The car looked awful funny; there was a big canvas sign on each side of it that said:

HUNKERJUNK SPECIAL SIX

NON-STOP RELIABILITY RUN

Sticking up on the radiator was a flag that said:

30,000 MILES

HERE, THERE, and EVERYWHERE.

WE’LL MAKE IT.

On the back was another sign that said:

A LIVELY TEAM

BOY SCOUTS AND THE HUNKERJUNK

SPECIAL SIX.

On another sign it said:

THE HUNKERJUNK SPECIAL SIX

LIKE THE BABBLING BROOK

SHE RUNS ON FOREVER.

The hood was all sealed up; it looked like a first-aid bandage. There was a hole with a pipe sticking out—that was so we could put oil in. There were two other little holes on the hood so we could stick a long oil-can in and oil the fan and the generator and the distributor. The starter was taken off. There was a whole lot of excitement around the Hunkerjunk showrooms just before we were going to start. Outside around the sidewalk there were a lot of people too, staring at the car. Gee whiz, you couldn’t blame them; it looked awful funny.

All of a sudden we didn’t start because Harry got a ’phone call and I bet you don’t know who it was from—it was from Woods and Fisher in New York. They’re sporting outfitters—that’s where I got my compass that I lost down the sewer. That’s why my stories go every which way, because I haven’t got a compass any more. I should worry!

Woods and Fisher wanted to know if Harry would wait one hour before starting because then they’d send out one of their Happy Home Trailers to hitch onto the car so they could demonstrate it. They said it was dandy with places to sleep in it and everything. They said it had an oil-stove too. Harry told them to hold the wire and then he said to Brent Gaylong, “What shall we do about it?”

“I’ll tell you what to do!” Pee-wee shouted. “Tell them yes—tell them good and loud. While we’re waiting an hour we can go and get some sodas.”

“Wrong the first time,” Brent Gaylong said. Oh, boy, it’s awful funny to hear him talk, he’s so slow and easy, kind of. He said, “You got me down here to encounter the perils of the wilderness; you said we would keep away from civilization as much as possible; you aroused my hopes of starving in the depths and now you want to drag the whole of civilization after us. I left my happy home for you and now you want to be dragging a Happy Home jiggermaree after us.”

“You’re defeated by an unanimous majority,” I told him. “Maybe the oil-stove won’t work. Do you mean to tell me things always go right in happy homes?”

“What do you say, Herve?” Harry asked Hervey Willetts.

“It’s all the same to me,” Hervey said, “because usually I don’t look behind me and if it wasn’t there it wouldn’t bother me. If my happy home is running after me, I don’t care as long as it never catches me.”

“Do you call that an argument?” Pee-wee yelled at him.

“I’d feel kind of funny with home sweet home always on our trail,” Brent said. “I suppose the thing has hot and cold water.”

Harry said, “Will you stop that nonsense and tell me what I should do? I don’t see how they can demonstrate the thing with us going twenty-five miles an hour. Who’s going to demonstrate it anyway?”

Brent said, “That’s pretty speedy for a happy home. Most of them are kind of slow.”

“Oh, the more the merrier,” Harry said; “I’m going to let them send it—there’s no place like home. I never saw one of the blamed things; they don’t weigh much, I guess.”

“Happy homes are not to be judged by their weight, Harry,” Brent said, awful funny. “I suppose it’s very light, so we can do light housekeeping.”

So then Harry was kind of disgusted because we were keeping him waiting. He took up the receiver and told those people to send the trailer out if they could get it there in an hour. He told them the car wasn’t ever going to stop on account of the trailer and about how we weren’t going to stop the car any oftener than necessary. He told them how “non-stop” meant never for the engine and not very often for the car either. They told him they didn’t care as long as we would take it because it would be in all the pictures away off in the woods and all kinds of places.

So now you have to wait an hour till the trailer gets here. In the meantime, the Bridgeboro Evening Bungle sent a man to take a picture of the car with all of us sitting in it. After that Hervey and Pee-wee and I went around to Bennett’s and got some sodas, and we reminded ourselves of Christopher Columbus, not, I don’t mean because he drank sodas but because he was starting out—I should worry what I mean.

Anyway, this story is about the wild adventures of a happy home and how we got chased by it. And it’s even crazier than any other story I ever wrote about our adventures and that’s saying a lot, because they’re all crazier than each other. This one tells you how we got separated together and how we lost a lot of stuff—even one of the cylinders was missing. So now I’ve got to go down to supper.