Our Camping Trip
A number of the boys of the Main and Town Site Offices have
established a camp up the lake, where they expect to have great times on
week-end fishing trips. One of the number contributes the following account of
the first experience.
“You see, Dick and Kirke and B.S. and tom and Harry and R.T.
and I thought it would be a great idea to go on a week-end camping trip up the
lake, and so it was! A great idea, you bet! Well, all the boys except Harry and
I packed up the duffle on Saturday afternoon and proceeded on their merry way
up the lake. The duffle consisted of a tent and fly, four cots, two hammocks,
??, dishpan, plates, knives, forks, aprons—well, everything that goes to make
up a cam not to speak of ‘eats’ enough to last over Sunday. As I say, the boys
packed this stuff up in a rowboat and a canoe, and towed it up the lake behind
a motor boat, which dropped them at the camping place, and went on its way
rejoicing. I guess they must have worked more or less that afternoon getting
things fixed up, but I don’t know, for Harry and I didn’t go up then, as we had
dates for that evening. But along about 11:30 of this moonlight night Harry and
I and our junk embarks in our canoe. It was a beautiful night, no kiddin’; it
sort of got under my skin, and to keep myself and Harry from feeling lonesome
I’d break out in a song now and then.
“It took us a good little while to paddle up there, but when
we arrived, here was the whole caboodle of ‘em a-standing on the lake shore to
welcome us. They looked like a multiplication table of Hamlet’s ghost standing
there, but you bet the noises they let loose were anything but ghostly. We got
out of our canoe, and ate enough fried potatoes to make Hoover tear his hair in
agony. By this time the boys thought it might be about time to turn in for the
night. As R.T. and I pull the two canoes up to shore, and figures we’d lie down
in them, since all the rest of the boys had either cots or hammocks, and we
didn’t. So we did that; and you know they are not so uncomfortable after you
sort of fit in your ribs to those of the canoe—but I’d like to see Mr. Cowart
try to sleep in one.
“I was lying there rolled up in my blanket, looking at the
moon, and about to go to sleep, when ‘bzzzz’ went a mosquito in the immediate
vicinity of my left ear. But this was only the advance guard, and it wasn’t
long before the whole army was there. Then you should have heard the yells that
went up in that camp, and the language enough to drive Noah Webster to drinking
Montgomery County Tea. ‘Bang’ went a gun up in the tent; but it was only Dick
shooting a mosquito off his nose.
“We fought ‘em till nearly morning, when with covering our
heads with our blankets and because of sheer fatigue we managed to drop off to sleep.
"I was wakened about two hours later by Tom and B.S. going
out to set a trot line. It was then about daylight, and there was no more sleep
for us. We spent the day chopping wood, cooking, eating, washing dishes,
swimming, fishing, and lying around camp in clothes which were conspicuous by
their absence, until visitors from town in the afternoon forced us to assume
our civilized dress again.
“But it was some party, believe me; and if the ‘eats’ hadn’t
given out I reckon we’d be there yet, altho they do say that Mr. Tallassee, of
the Power Company, objects to so many of his young employees being off the job
at one time. And so maybe it was for this reason that we all returned Sunday
evening—perhaps not better, but certainly wiser men.”
--A.J.R.
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