Courageous Trail Cruncher's Clan - 18 Aug 61


18 Aug 61
BETTY CROCKER CROAKING COOK BOOK

Mountain Men starting A “Sweet-Camp” -– doing chores as they see and reason them without any need for orders given.
PTOOIE ON PTOMAIN!   By Chef Pierre:
Cooking is merely making more tasty Grasses, Roots, Seeds, Flesh (Wheat, Taters, Peas, Bacon) that ARE already edible and nutritious. So, three learning sessions. Reasoning out & preparing dried camp foods. Start with total ignorance and build upward step-by-step. Breakfast: Flapjax & Salt Pork. Lunch: 2nd-day Russian Soldier Soup, eaten cold; body of zup getting richer, fully body. Supper: Buckeye Jim (and Jose).
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After lunch, White Belt Young gave a lecture & demonstration of Judo. Went out to axe timber in the afternoon.
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S  N  E  A  K  -  A  T  T  A  C  K  !  !
   Wellsir, they warn’t doin nuthin special-like, ceptin layin leisurely round Base-Camp, slurpin up the last of their own cooked Buckeye Jim, joshin good, lookin up and claimin first Good Medicine on yonder star, feelin mighty man-like after this powful week of larnin. Yessir, by gum, real Mountain Men. Over the hump now. No worries.....But sudden like, outta the dark come that Bearded Daemon – not sayin a single solitary word. He goes up to the smallest pup in the crowd. Hands him a hunk of cardboard. Tush red the printin on it. His mouth clanks open! His plate and cup clank down!  He heads up to his shelter at the fastest walk you ever done see. On the way past he hands the card to Avalance. Clank! Clank! On to Bear Claw: Clank! Clank!  Now mind you sir, never was any words said all the while.  Wellsir, the short of it is that that there thing were a Tellygram and within 1 minute it made th rounds and cleared the campfire area so Sam Gommowitzl could crawl out in his nite-shirt to In-quire what’s all the ruckus?!
He read the card: big letters: --WESTERN UNION
                TO:  All Mt Men
                     This is A Practice Survival Scramble. Stop. You have
                     30 Minutes to Prepare A Maximum Survival Pack & Get
                     Out of Camp. Do Not Stop.
                                          (Signed)
                                          President John F. Kennedy

Twenty-nine-&-½ minutes later, the shaken crew was pushin hard on a really fierce forced march.  All the while Brillo Chin is tronpin up and down the line, smackin over aspens in the blackness, holerin out detail instructions, ignorin the cusses. Finally, Thoreau’s Throw. Half hour rest till snortin wheezing quiets down to dull roar.  Yarned “Charlie” in the dark. Start back down in higher spirits.  Starlight Shuffle. Charlie growls from off trail! Panic!  Disciplined back into line. Shooting Star as Ramrod got “Lost” and “left behind” ... not noticed until the next Count-Off. More panic! Trailside lecture on what did and what could happen.
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SERIUOSNESS of KEEPING IRON DISCIPLINE on a FORCED SURVIVAL HIKE at NIGHT
  If the Point Man fails to keep an iron fist over his Scouts Out, Ram Rod and all men, it is too easy to lose somebody.  If one man lets down for one second, the whole troop can collapse during a trying moment. Don’t make no nonsense because that’s when Old Lady Nature will get you.
White Belt
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Back in camp, BIG campfire! Really confident & expansive now!  Bout 11 pm Muscle Back yarned his 100-mile bike trip he took last week into Mt Evans wilderness area to teach a neighbor Cityboy “how”.  Every mistake in the book!
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Sixth Installment.

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