No Name City

My wife Cheryl is fond of saying, “Why do movie and television screenwriters put out so many clever plots for burglaries? Don’t they realize they are feeding criminal minds, ideas for robberies which they wouldn’t have thought up on their own?”

I will admit that Hollywood has come up with some amazing capers which I am sure no common thug could ever have imagined. Some plot lines are improbable and require a computer genius as part of the team to block closed circuit TV cameras and bypass secure firewalls. Other movies, like The Apple Dumpling Gang, with Don Knotts and Tim Conway, have opened the doors for even the most inept burglars to have hope that they could also realistically live a prosperous life of crime should they choose.

The thing is, though I have never considered myself as being dishonest, or in any way a burglar, I sometimes see opportunities as my mind flashes back to a movie which had the same scenario.

In 1969, Paramount Pictures released the box office flop, Paint Your Wagon. It starred Lee Marvin as the character Ben Rumson, and Clint Eastwood as Pardner.

As the plot goes, Ben, while digging a grave, finds gold. He stakes a claim. Very soon afterwards, the word gets out that there is gold in those hills and miners and prospectors from all over begin flooding in. They build a tent city which later transforms into a wooden structure town called No Name City.

The town now has a store, saloons, a brothel, and a hotel, all with boardwalks in-between so that the miners and the women can stay out of the mud.

Though the mining for gold is successful for most of the prospectors, Ben, who much prefers being drunk to working hard, notices one day as he drinks in the saloon, that a great deal of gold dust from the miner’s bags, spills onto the floor and disappears into the cracks.

Now, if this was happening on the boardwalks and the floors of all the buildings, he could become rich by digging under the floors to retrieve the spilled dust. With a few select friends, he undermines the whole town to reclaim the ore. Alas, a bull drops into one of the shafts, knocks down the support beams holding the buildings up, and No Name City collapses into the ground.

I had to sneak into the theater to watch Paint Your Wagon because for some reason my parents thought it was inappropriate. I thought it was filled with great songs, and who knew that Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood could sing. But the whole comical premise of them digging under the town for ill-gotten booty, or as Hawkeye Pierce would say, ill booten gotty, stuck in my mind to be remembered later.

Eight years passed; I was working on the maintenance summer crew at Lake Retreat Camp. The season had been well attended for the Family, middle and high school camps. I had befriended a guy two years younger than me named Ed Trent, aka Papercut, who also worked maintenance. His nickname came about from the fact that he couldn’t make it through a week of work without somehow getting a painful paper cut on one of his fingers.

One afternoon, Eddie and I were digging holes for vertical posts to build what would look like a hitching post/handrail. It ran alongside a split rail walkway. It was amazingly frustrating to dig holes on the Lake Retreat property. The ground is filled with glacial rock. To go down three feet meant you had to dig out at least a four-foot diameter hole to move all the boulders out of the way. The handrail was in front of the outside canteen where campers of all ages would come to buy soda pop, ice cream, and candy.

As we were taking a much-needed break from the hole digging, we watched as a group of middle schoolers bought their candy stash for the day. One by one they would grab a handful of coins from their pockets and almost to the person would drop a few on the plank walkway. Sometimes they would retrieve them, but quite often the coins would roll between the cracks and disappear.

“Eddie,” I whispered. “I am recognizing a possible gold mine under that walkway.”

At lunch, I had to fill him in on the backstory of Paint Your Wagon. He listened intently as he sucked on his right pointer finger which held the latest papercut.

“That walkway must have twenty years of lost coins under it and it’s elevated high enough that someone could slide underneath it.” I pointed out.

“I don’t think the camp manager would approve of your idea because it would be the camp’s money. What are you planning to do with it?” Eddie questioned.

I realized at this point that Eddie and I did not have the same entrepreneurial partnership as Ben Rumson and Pardner.

“Hmm, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Maybe the excitement I have, is wondering how much money is under the boardwalk.”

“This is just weird,” was Ed’s reply. “When do you want to do it?”

“Tonight, after dinner when the campers are in the chapel. The canteen will be closed and there shouldn’t be anyone around.”

That evening, Eddie and I crouched in the salal bushes across the road from the canteen. We watched for the last of the campers to enter the chapel for the evening meeting.

“Okay, the coast is clear,” I whispered. “Let’s . . .”

Crack!

We turned to look behind us. There was one of the 8-year-old campers walking his dachshund on a leash. He was staring at us.

“What are you guys doing?” he asked.

“Well, um,” was all Eddie could get out.

“We are watching for raccoons or rats. They have been getting into the canteen and making a mess. Very unsanitary,” I said.

“Can I watch too?” he asked. “My dog will kill both of them.”

“No, you need to be in the chapel right now. You run along,” Eddie ordered.

After the boy and his dog left, we ran across the road to the canteen and stood in the shadows.

“Okay, I’m going in. It’s tighter looking than I thought, but I think I can make it. Tell me if anyone is coming,” I told Ed.

Pulling a flashlight from my back pants pocket, I turned it on and began sliding on my stomach under the wood walkway. Moments later, I was under the canteen windows and sure enough, the beam of the flashlight flashed off coins. Pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, they were all there.

“Eddie, you won’t believe what’s down here,” I whispered. I rapidly gathered coins as far as I could reach and saw an even larger treasure beyond a main beam which looked like an impossibly tight fit.

Moving dirt aside with my fingers, I pulled and squirmed my shoulders under the beam. Just a few inches more and I could reach the mother lode of coins. My chest was so tightly wedged, it was difficult to breathe. It was then I realized that I wasn’t going forward anymore. It also appeared that I couldn’t move backwards either. I was stuck.

“Ed, Ed, I’m stuck!” My words were spoken with the wheeze from my half-inflated lungs

“Shh! Somebody’s coming,” Ed whispered.

Pulling with my toes and pushing with the palms of my hand, I worked to break my body free from the main beam.

“Hello Eddie.”

It was the booming voice of ex-fire chief, now camp manager, Jack Cooper, who had just stepped up onto the boardwalk.

Eddie stomped hard on the planks to alert me to be quiet. It also sent a cloud of dust down around my head which I snorted in. I sensed the beginning of a sneeze.

“What are you up to tonight and where is Mitchell?” Jack asked.

“Um, Marty. Hmm. Don’t know if I have seen him around lately,” Ed replied.

I knew I was going to sneeze, so I exhaled all my air first and buried my face in my sleeve. The result instead of being an Ah Choo! came out more of a snork.

“What was that?” Jack asked, walking over the planking, and looking down.

“Um, I think I saw a raccoon or maybe a rat run under there.”

“Good job Eddie. We finally have one trapped. I’ll get the hose and we’ll flush it out.”

He ran to the corner of the building, uncoiled a garden hose, and turned on the water. Running back, he sprayed water through the planks, flooding the ground below.

“Um, Jack,” was all Ed could utter. The blood was rapidly flushing from his face.

Just then, the 8-year-old boy with the dachshund, pulling hard on its leash and barking, came walking up.

“What’s going on Mr. Cooper?” he asked.

“We’re flooding out a rat from under the boardwalk,” Jack replied.

“Charlie will get him,” the boy said, and he unclipped the snarling dog.

$22.30 in dirty, tarnished, change. Not even enough money to replace my Levi 501 jeans with the chewed off legs. Oh well, I needed a pair of cutoffs anyway.

We didn’t get fired but Jack did take a photo of Eddie, sucking on his right pinky finger, standing next to the muddy with ripped pants Marty. He hung it in the canteen. It was labeled, The Apple Dumpling Gang.

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