Roy Blakeley's roundabout hikeFitzhugh, Percy Keese
General
Roy Blakeley's roundabout hike
Fitzhugh, Percy Keese
Adventure stories; Boy Scouts of America -- Juvenile fiction; Hiking -- Juvenile fiction
We started walking around the lake, going toward the brook--that’s west.
If you look at the map you’ll see how we went. It’s about three and a
half miles around the lake. If you want to see Pee-wee jump up in the
air just tell him it’s longer one way around the lake than it is the
other way. Just tell him that with a sober face if you want to see some
fireworks. When you get past the brook it’s all woods, but there’s a
trail. It’s hard to follow it in the dark unless you’ve been over it in
the daytime. I bet I’ve been over it a hundred times. If you ever come
to Temple Camp I’ll take you around.
While we were hiking around through the woods I asked Dub how he made
out with those pictures he took that day we were on our way from Bagley
Center to the chasm. He said they came out pretty good.
I said, “Then all you’ve got to do to be an Eagle is to take the life
saving tests? I should think you would have done that before this.”
“What’s the use?” he said.
“Awh, come out of it, Dub,” I told him. “Just because you can’t stay all
summer, is that any reason for not caring about your tests? _Boy_, if I
had only one test more to be an Eagle you can bet I’d hop over the top
all right. There are lots of Scouts here that would change places with
you, you can bet.”
“Yes--they wouldn’t,” he said. “And go back to a flat up over a bakery
store? I bet you and all your patrol, and Pee-wee, live in nice big
houses.”
“Believe me,” I told him. “Pee-wee would change places with you to live
over a bakery store. If he lived over a bakery store you’d never see him
up here. Look out where you’re stepping, it’s marshy near the shore.”
He said, “Look at the luck that Easton fellow had--the Gold Medal and a
hundred bucks. And he doesn’t need it either, his folks are rich.”
“That has nothing to do with it,” I said. “You win a prize or you don’t.
Being rich hasn’t got anything to do with it.”
“Yes, but he would have stayed all summer anyway,” Dub said.
“Oh gollies, is that all you’re thinking about?” I said. “Gee, you
weren’t like that when we were at Beaver Chasm.”
“I didn’t have to go so soon then,” he said.
“It wasn’t until after Bobby Easton won the Gold Medal that you started
grouching,” I said to him.
He said, “What do I care about the Gold Medal--or being an Eagle Scout
either? They don’t get me anything.”
“_Good night!_ Don’t get you anything?” I said.
“Sitting home minding the baby while my mother’s out working,” he said.
“What good is it being an Eagle Scout when you have to do that? Or the
Gold Medal either--what good is it? Now I’m sorry my mother let me come
up here at all. Gee, all she could scrape together was two weeks’ board
and that isn’t enough up here even just for two weeks. Fellows buy cones
and hot dogs and everything and go to the movies over in Catskill. I
couldn’t even chip in for the closing events.”
I said, “Well, what of it? You won’t be here anyway.”
“Don’t rub it in,” he said.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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