Mitchell Way
The slush pump, or more commonly known as the slide trombone. The instrument which has mystified children since the day it was created — “Mommy, where does that tube go when he slides it back and forth. Into his mouth?”
The instrument which mystified me for over 50 years — “Cripes, where do I position the slide so I don’t make the sound of a bellowing cow?”
It started as any of our other hunting trips — with high hopes and low expectations. Sturgis Fenton and I were going to spend three days hunting the hills of northeast Washington.
It was not unusual for mysterious events to take place around the Mitchell neighborhood in the 1970s. It appeared, to the untrained eye, to be just another group of normal homes with average families, but this was far from the case.
Poof! A chalk eraser ricocheted off the top of my head. Chalk dust settled in a cloud around my desk.
“I told you, Mitchell! I told the class that if I caught anyone looking at their keyboard, I would wing an eraser at them. There you were staring at your fingers.”
The rest of the class, afraid to look up from the test cards in front of them, nevertheless, giggled. It was after all, a timed typing test so every word counted.
It was a time in life that every boy either looked forward to or shuddered to think he must be a part of. It was a freshman class in high school that every boy had to participate in to graduate. It was a required class, and girls were not allowed. They called it Boys’ Health and, Sex Ed.
“Just another ripple on my lake of irritation,” I can almost hear custodian Luke muttering this as he hiked up the stairs to the third floor at Bellingham High School. For some reason the drinking fountain was plugged.
Ho, Ho, No! You ain’t getting me into that thing! And with that, Santa left his sleigh and drove off in his car.
Dad and I stared at each other. “Huh,” he said. “I guess we go with plan B.”
It was the yearly tradition of The Santa flights.
My best friend, Chuck, was sitting across from me in a booth at Bunks Drive-in. It was late in the afternoon and the sun was setting. A blonde woman’s wig lay in the center of the table between our two Cokes.
Once upon a time, before freeways, and Safeways. Before Thriftways and Haggens, Fred Meyers and Walmarts, when boys wore Brylcreem and girls wore skirts with Bobby socks and saddle shoes, there were neighborhood grocery stores.
Not all stories are embellished for a laugh. Some are 100 percent true.
When I think of a US Naval station or base, I think of battleships, destroyers and aircraft carriers moored on long piers. Jeeps shuttle sailors up and down streets lined with large warehouses filled with supplies while tugs escort submarines into the harbor. The Jim Creek Naval Radio Station shattered that stereotype.
“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for God is with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:9
Summertime on the Nooksack River, sitting in an inner tube, floating mile after mile in the warmth of the sun. On any hot weekend in July and August the river is spotted with hundreds of floaters drifting as singles or bunched together in groups. When you are young and haven’t many responsibilities, the river is the place to go.
A peanut sat on a railroad track; its heart was all aflutter. Along came a choo-choo train, choo-choo, peanut butter.
I really hate to use the term “band geek” but I guess that is exactly what I was. I think the term was conceived by the football players who hung out in the jock hall at high school. They had nothing better to do than to whistle at the girls and polish the pins on their Letterman jackets. They would huddle in groups like a band of jackals and label students as they walked by:
The flying insects were still active as we crouched in the tall grass. A horse fly circled my head and I swatted at it for the 30th time. My best friend, Chuck, was squatting next to me, a piece of field grass hanging from his mouth. We stared at the commissary building, two hundred yards away. I looked at my watch.
“9:30. No activity spotted at the building,” I whispered.
“Roger,” Chuck responded.
“It’s Marty. It’s Marty, I’ve told you. Sheesh!”
It was 1970 and Chuck and I, and the rest of Troop 23 were spending the week at Camp Bonaparte Boy Scout Camp on Bonaparte Lake in Eastern Washington. It was a rustic camp and lacked the amenities which many scout camps held.
For instance, instead of sleeping cabins, the boys put up tents in clearings in the woods. Instead of a dining hall, the troops received a cooking crate from the commissary each meal for the preparation of their own food. Instead of bathrooms, the scouts ran up single path trails to strategically placed pit-toilet latrines. Bathing was done in the lake. We shared the camp with mule deer, elk, black bears, and rattlesnakes. It was a wise idea to follow the Scout Motto to “Be Prepared” since you didn’t know what you would find behind the next tree or under the next bush.
Troop 23 brought ten kids and two adults 247 miles from Bellingham for a week of scout camping. In all my years of camping, this was the closest to what scout camp should look like, that is, boys covered in mosquito bites and legs torn from thorn bushes.
Quite out of the ordinary, we brought a senior scout who was trying to finish his Eagle rank. His name was Dave Blotto. He was two years older than Chuck and I and was given the job of keeping the younger scouts in order.
“All right Tenderfeet, line up at attention in front of the flagpole. Mitchell and Bland, raise the flag. . . Attention!”
Chuck, with his severely bent bugle, began playing Reveille. My mind immediately jumped to Corporal Randolf Agarn on F-Troop who would regularly get an arrow shot into the bell of his bugle, although the local tribe denied they would ever do such a disrespectful act.
As Bland and I raised the flag, the scouts began snickering. I thought I heard the scoutmaster mutter, “Oh brother!”
Looking up the flagpole, I noticed that pinned to the flag was a pair of very well used underpants. . . My underpants.
“Hey Mitchell, I got you,” Dave snickered.
You’d think an average guy would lower the flag and unpin his underwear, but that would require an extra-long rendition of Chuck’s Reveille, so we sent the underpants to the top of the pole to air for the day.
Big Dave Blotto was, by looks and definition, a hillbilly. He was a head taller and thirty pounds heavier than any of the rest of the boys. His pants were too short, and his toes peaked through his tennis shoes. The buttons on his shirt were stressed beyond the manufacturer’s recommended limits and his belly fat poked through the gaps between the buttons the way Pillsbury dough pushes out through the broken seal of its container. He rarely removed the felt, broad-brimmed black hat from his head, but he washed it every time he took a shower. Currently, the headband was stained gray from sweat.
I don’t think that he had anything against us, he just chose to be obnoxious so we would know who was boss. We were forced to put up with his pranks for the week, and his pranks did continue.
He swapped out the sugar and salt containers. This made for tasty eggs but awful coffee.
Strange coincidences also happened: plugs were removed from the row boats, and a large Sasquatch type beast suddenly appeared on the trail to the outhouse in the darkness of night and chased terrified scouts through the woods. After each encounter, with a cackling laugh we heard, “Gotcha!”
“This has gone far enough!” Chuck yelled as apple sauce dripped out of the bell of his bugle one morning during Reveille.
There was no question as to who had poured sauce into the instrument because he laughed uncontrollably from the base of the flagpole.
From that point on, the tables were to be turned on David Blotto. We waited for an opportunity.
It was decided, on a Thursday night, that Chuck and I and two other scouts would move our sleeping bags further out into the woods onto the archery trails. Unfortunately, big Dave insisted on joining us. Our reasoning for moving away from the rest of the troop was that we were planning a late-night raid on the commissary.
The commissary was the building where all the food was stored, and the mess kits were put together for each meal. Inside the building was a chest freezer which held boxes of ice cream bars. There was a bunk room attached to the storage area for the adult in charge of the commissary to sleep and guard the supplies. Strangely enough, the commissary must have never been raided before, because the main door was never locked.
We all took our sleeping bags out into the woods and laid them down on the trail. Big Dave, having had an unusually busy day of tormenting the boys, took off his hat, crawled in his sleeping bag, and fell asleep. This gave us the perfect opportunity to begin our raid, and the rest of us crept back through the woods to the commissary.
We crouched in the brush watching the building as the evening light grew darker. The lights inside had been turned off and the commissary supervisor had gone to bed.
Sneaking to the edge of the building, we listened for any movement inside but only heard the snore of the single occupant.
“Flashlights,” I whispered.
We each turned on our personal lights.
Chuck slowly turned the knob on the door. It wasn’t locked. A quarter inch at a time he pulled the door open, stopping each time the hinges squeaked. Once it was opened wide enough, we crept inside.
There was only one goal on our agenda, ice cream bars, so we slowly and quietly moved to the freezer. I tugged on the door which when opened turned on an interior light. Something we weren’t expecting. The snoring stopped and I heard a loud snort. I stuck my arm inside the door and depressed the light switch with my finger, shutting off the light.
“Cripes,” I spit out.
There was movement in the bed in the next room and the tinkling of liquid on the floor around our feet.
“Lights!” Chuck whispered. We each flipped off our light and waited in the darkness.
More rolling in the bed. All it would take to foil our evening would be for the man in the other room to stand up and flip on the commissary lights. The realization struck me that breaking, entering, and robbery added to our resumes was not going to help us get our Eagle ranks but of course, we were all now totally committed to completing the task.
Another roll in the bed and the snoring began again.
Letting my finger off the light switch, I found two boxes of the ice cream bars and I grabbed them both before quietly shutting the door. Holding up the two boxes of the ill-gotten booty, I pointed to the main door.
“Go!” I spoke.
“Roger,” Chuck whispered.
“Marty, it’s Marty, how many times?”
We began creeping back in the direction of the man-door. It was on the way back through the commissary shelves that we passed the dry goods. Chuck shined his light on the length of the shelves.
“Wait!” he whispered. We all froze.
He quietly crept to the shelf and grabbed a box of Chocolate Jello Instant Pudding.
“We need some milk,” he whispered to one of the boys, who crept to the milk cooler and carefully absconded with a half-gallon of 2%.
Getting out of the commissary was as terrifying as going in. There was the chance someone was passing by outside of the building and would catch us. Luckily, the snoring continued, and we all safely left the building and ran into the woods.
Once safely back at the sleeping bags, we found Big Dave snoring loudly, his hat lying on the ground next to his head. I broke open the ice cream bar boxes and we feasted ‘til we were sick. Chuck decided that before crawling into his sleeping bag he also needed to make his pudding, so he poured the powder in the container, added milk, and stirred it with a stick, leaving it to set up for the morning.
It was then thought to be in our best interests to move our sleeping bags back to the main camp to sleep the night.
It was 7:00 am, and the sleepy-eyed boys stood around the flagpole. Big Dave was nowhere in sight.
“Where is Blotto?” the Scout master asked.
“Must be sleeping in,” I answered.
“Blow Reveille, Chuck. Scouts . . . attention!”
It was an especially pleasant Reveille that day. The flag was nearly to the top of the pole when we heard a loud scream emanate from the depths of the forest.
“Sasquatch!” one of the boys yelled. And though that was as close to a Sasquatch that I have ever heard, what stumbled from the woods looked much worse.
Out into the clearing came big Dave. We shrieked from the horror of the sight. On his head he wore his black felt hat, but dripping down from the headband, running down his face, back, and all over his shirt was what looked to be Chocolate pudding.
“Gotcha,” Chuck smirked.
But the excitement didn’t end there. It was realized that the commissary had been raided. After a thorough search of the camp sites, the staff found Big Dave’s sleeping bag, the ice cream boxes and chocolate smeared sticks on the archery trail where he had spent the night by himself.
Paybacks are brutal.
Nine months later, Big Dave and I received our Eagle Scout ranks on the same night. The senior Scout Master called us both onto the platform: “I would like to introduce our new Eagle Scouts, Marty Mitchell, and our little puddin’ head, Dave Blotto.”
Faith Family Life Getting Older Growing Up Misadventures Music Patriotism Pets or Pests? Snips Tributes
I never wanted a horse. To the best of my knowledge, my mom, my brother and my sister never made mention of wanting one either, and yet we had a horse. He was an American Pony and his name was Starfire.