Читать книгу Roy Blakeley's Elastic Hike - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 3

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A lot of fellows write letters and want to know if I’m a real boy. I guess they think I’m an imitation boy, hey? If they saw me eat they’d know I’m real all right. But one thing, anyway, I only eat one dessert at a time; Pee-wee Harris keeps three going at the same time.

Lots of scouts want to hike to where I live so as to meet me, but they better come at dinner time or else I won’t be here. I’m not saying I don’t like my home only I like the outside of it best.

If I’m not here when you come, go around to Bennett’s Fresh Confectionery on Main Street and maybe I’ll be there, but most likely I’ll be up at Westy Martin’s. He’s the only one in my patrol that has any sense—he’s kind of sober like.

In the summer you won’t find me at all because I go up to Temple Camp with my troop. They’re a crazy lot, especially my patrol. I should worry, because we have a lot of fun just the same.

If you come to Bridgeboro you’ll know where I live, because it’s on Blakeley’s Hill; only in the summer it’s all shut up like Pee-wee Harris. That’s a joke. My father says he’s like Barlow’s Drug Store, because he never shuts up—they don’t have such good sodas in there.

So now you see I’m real I’m going to write a story and it’s a crazy one. Once I wrote a story and I said it was the craziest one that I ever wrote, but even this is worse, because it’s crazier than all of them rolled into one. It’s about a whole lot of things all kind of separated together. Especially it’s about a toll-gate, only it isn’t a toll-gate.

So now I’m going to start and go on till I come to the end, only you needn’t think that’s really the end, because more things keep happening all the time. When you come to the end that only means, kind of, that you bunk into the back cover of the book; it’s kind of like a back stop. If it wasn’t for that there would be more, but anyway, maybe you’ll say there’s enough and you needn’t write to me and ask if these things really happened, because they even more than happened.

Anyway, if you want to call this story the elastic hike, you can do it—I don’t care what you call it. That’s a good name because it’s about a hike that stretched all out kind of like a rubber band only different.

So first I’m going to tell you how Westy Martin (he’s in my patrol) went out to the Rocky Mountains. He had a lot of adventures and they’re all in another story and I should worry about that only that summer my patrol was one scout short. So Pee-wee came up to see me—he’s short too. He’s so short he almost touches the ground. He has a fine shape, only his feet are too near his head.

So he came up to see me and he brought Dinkey Waters. Dinkey Waters is a new fellow in our town. His name is Dingman, but somebody thought it was Dinkman so we started calling him Dinkey. He lives in the red house up near Warde Hollister.

Pee-wee said, “Here’s a new member for your patrol to take Westy’s place, because, anyway, when he gets back he’s going to be assistant scoutmaster.” He said, “You got to thank me for finding you a scout.”

I said, “Does he know we’re crazy in my patrol? Suppose he should turn out to be sane?” Dinkey started laughing and he said he guessed he could be as crazy as any of us.

I said, “Guessing isn’t enough, you’ve got to be sure of it.”

So then he said he guessed he was sure—he was laughing all the time. I guess he meant he was positive that he wasn’t quite sure, or he wasn’t so sure about being not positive, anyway, he wanted to get into the scouts.

So that’s how we got in with Dinkey Waters, and just you wait till you see what happened. Just then I started telling Dinkey about the scouts when all of a sudden I had to stop on account of static and interference. Otherwise Pee-wee. That’s one thing about Pee-wee, you can’t tune him out. He doesn’t even need any aerial. He’s a loud speaker.