A Fine & Pleasant Misery Read online

  If this person isn't afraid of associating with a madman, he will probably show you the way home.

  Similarly, you can try your hand at catching some large fish. If you're successful, three anglers will immediately emerge from the brush and ask you what bait you're using. In case you don't have a valid fishing license, one of the three will be a game warden who will place you under arrest as soon as he has caught his own limit. But at least you'll be found.

  When everything else fails and you are really desperate, you can always resort to taking off all your clothes. Even when lost, I've never known this technique to fail in attracting a large crowd of people, no matter how far back in the wilderness I happened to be. Here's an example: My friend Retch and I had been fishing a high mountain stream at least three miles from the nearest road. We hadn't seen a sign of human life all day. The fish had stopped biting and we were hot and sticky and decided to take a dip in a pool beneath a small waterfall.

  We took off our clothes and dove into the water, the temperature of which instantly proved to be somewhere between damn cold and ice. As we popped to the surface, and started flailing wildly toward the ledge from which we had dived, approximately twelve members of a mushroom club rounded a bend in the trail and headed straight for us. I would like to be able to tell you that modesty forced us to remain submerged in that liquid ice until they had passed, their pleasant outing unblemished by nothing more lascivious than a patch of morel mushrooms.

  Unfortunately, that would not be the truth. The startling spectacle of two grown men lunging out of the water, snatching up their clothes and racing off through a thicket of devil's club was at least mitigated by the fact that most of the ladies in the group apparently thought we were wearing blue leotards. I was also relieved that a particularly bad twelve-letter word had frozen on Retch's lower lip and didn't thaw out until we were in the car driving home.

  Perhaps the most important thing to remember when lost is to accept the experience in a philosophical manner. Whenever I start becoming slightly confused over which is my elbow and which the way home and night is tightening its noose upon me in some primordial swamp, I never fail to recall the folksy wisdom spoken to me under similar circumstances by the old woodsman Rancid Crabtree. Rancid spat out his chaw of tobacco and in that comical, bug-eyed way of his said, "JUMPIN' GOSH ALMIGHTY, WHERE IN HELL IS WE?!" Somehow those words always seem a fitting introduction to a lively folk dance and a rousing rendition of an Austrian drinking song.

  Grogan's War Surplus

  My old camping buddy retch, his eyes dreamy and wet with nostalgia, leaned forward and stirred the fire under our sizzling pan of trout with a stick. I could tell he was getting deep into his cups because that's the only time he turns sloppily sentimental. Also, we were cooking on a propane camp stove.

  "You know," he said, "it seems like only yesterday that you and me was crouched in the mud in some Godforsaken place using our bayonets to roast a couple hunks of Spam over some canned heat."

  "Yeah, and heatin' our water in a steel helmet," I said, sinking suddenly into the morass of reminiscence. "And lyin' awake night after night in a pup tent, listenin' for the first sound of attack ..."

  "And half our gear riddled with bullet holes," Retch put in, shaking a tear off the end of his mustache.

  "Yep," I said, "we really had some great campin' when we were kids.

  It's just too damn bad kids nowadays don't have some of those old-time war surplus stores around to sell them their campin' gear."

  Retch forked a small, crisp trout out of the pan and munched it down tail first. "Say, what was it that was always attackin' us in those days?"

  "I'm not sure what they were called," I said, glancing out into the surrounding darkness, "but they were always big and hairy and had red eyes, and teeth the size of railroad spikes. I haven't seen one of them since I was twelve years old." I leaned over and stopped Retch from throwing a log on the fire. "Not when I was sober, anyway."

  "Say," Retch said suddenly. "You remember ol' Grogan's War Surplus store?"

  Did I remember Grogan's War Surplus store! Why, the mere sound of that melodious name made my heart dance the Light Fantastic. Grogan's War Surplus.

  Ah, how could I ever forget!

  Immediately after World War II, Grogan had remodeled an old livery stable and feed store in the style now referred to in architectural textbooks as "war surplus modern," a decor that attempts to emulate the aesthetic effects of a direct hit on an army ordnance depot.

  The store front itself was elegantly festooned with gerry cans, yellow life rafts, landing nets, ammo boxes, and other assorted residue of recent history. On the lot behind the store, the plundered wreckage of a dozen or so military vehicles had been cleverly arranged in such a manner as to conceal what had once been an unsightly patch of wild flowers. But all the really precious stuff was kept inside the store itself, illuminated by a few naked light bulbs and the watchful eyes of Henry P. Grogan.

  The great thing about Grogan's War Surplus was not only did it sell every conceivable thing that might possibly be used for camping, but it was cheap.

  With a few dollars and a sharp eye for a bargain, you could go into Grogan's and outfit yourself with at least the bare essentials for the routine overnight camping trip--a sleeping bag, PUP tent, canteen, cook kit, entrenching shovel, paratrooper jump boots, leggings, packboard, packsack, web belt, ammo pouches, medic kit, machete, bayonet, steel helmet, fiber helmet liner, .45 automatic holster (empty), G.I. can opener, and the other basic necessities.

  Then if you had any change left, you might pick up a few luxury items, things you had no idea what they might be used for but were reasonably sure you would think of something--ammo box, camouflage net, G.I. soap, parachute harness, and the like.

  Naturally, you never took all of this gear with you on a simple overnight trip. Nine times out of ten you forgot the soap and probably the can opener, too.

  Since one of the rules of backpacking requires that all nonessentials be omitted from the pack, we strained our imaginations to bring every last piece of beloved war surplus into the realm of our necessities.

  Take the bayonet, for example. It was needed for cutting and spearing things. Frequently, it cut and speared things we didn't want cut and speared, but this drawback was more than made up for by its otherwise benign service as a cooking spit, paring knife, or even use as a tent stake.

  The machete was needed anytime you had to slash out your own trail.

  This necessity arose more often than a person who is not a kid with a machete might think. Sometimes you had to walk several miles out of your way in order for that particular necessity to arise but time was of no consequence when you were in search of necessity. Over the years we slashed out literally hundreds of trails through the wilderness.

  The longest of these was The Great Rocky Mountain Divide Trail. It was never used much by backpackers, but the mother of a friend of mine, who lived at the jumping-off point, later put up a post at each end of the trail and strung a clothesline between them. The other trails we built, of course, were not nearly so impressive as this one.

  We had learned from war movies that steel helmets could be used for boiling things in. On hot summer days, we found out what--our heads.

  The helmets could also be used for pillows. If you went to sleep, your head would slip off the helmet and bonk on the ground. Bonking your boiled head on the ground kept you awake all night, which was one of the reasons for using a helmet for a pillow in the first place.

  Filling up a .45 automatic holster was always a challenge, particularly since our parents had indicated they would just as soon we didn't buy any .45 automatics. About the only thing you could do with the holster was stuff a sardine-cheese-pickle-onion sandwich in it to be quick-drawn anytime you got hungry. Actually, a .45 automatic probably would have been safer than some of our sandwiches.

  You had to be a shrewd shopper not to get taken by Henry P. Grogan. We realized that some of the
war surplus was brand-spanking-new. Other merchandise had obviously seen combat; it was cracked, tarnished, stained, ripped, riddled, rotten, rusty, and moldy. Frequently, Henry P. would try to pawn off some of the new stuff on us but we weren't to be fooled. We held out for the authentic war surplus. Ah, you can't imagine how old Henry P. would roll his eyes and gnash his teeth every time one of us kids outwitted him like that. He'd get very angry.

  The real treasure, of course, was any item with a bullet hole in it.

  For a long time you practically never came across anything with a bullet hole in it, and then one day Larry Swartze found a canteen with what looked like an honest-to-goodness bullet hole drilled through it.

  Henry P. himself had to break up the fight to see who was going to get the perforated canteen.

  Immediately after that incident, all sorts of war surplus turned up with bullet holes in it, and we kept ourselves broke trying to buy it all. Then it occurred to us that maybe old Henry P. was going around at night with a hammer and large spike, counterfeiting bullet holes.

  The bottom subsequently dropped out of the bullet-hole market at Henry P's.

  Shrewd as I was, Henry P. managed to take even me a few times. One of the worst things he did was to sell me what he called "one of the down bags used by Arctic troops to keep them comfortable in 70-below weather." The bags turned out to be a secret weapon of the War Department, designed to be dropped behind the lines in hopes that enemy troops would attempt to sleep in them and either freeze or break out in an itch that would occupy both hands scratching for the duration of the war. The stuffing consisted not of down but chicken feathers with, if the size of the lumps in the bag was any indication, several of the chickens still attached. But the worst feature of the bag was triggered by its getting even slightly wet. Any time it rained on one of our camping trips, I went home smelling like high tide at the local chicken and turkey farm.

  Another time, Henry P. induced me to buy a two-man mountain tent, so called, I later discovered, because it was heavy as a mountain and took two men to set it up. The roof of the tent looked like it had been made out of dried batskin, and was impervious to everything but wind, rain, and heavy dew.

  A tubular air vent extended from each end of the tent, an effect which, combined with the batskin roof, gave it the appearance of a creature dropped in from outer space. It frequently gave us quite a start when we returned to camp late in the evening and glimpsed the pterodactylous wings of the roof flapping in the breeze and the vent tubes bobbing about. I remember one occasion when a brave kid named Kenny stood at a distance and threw rocks, trying to drive our tent out of camp.

  The tent was designed to sleep two grown men, providing they were both Pygmies and on exceptionally good terms with each other. We managed to crowd four of us into it, after drawing straws to see who got to have their heads by the air vents. The losers had to suck their air through bullet holes. If a loud sound suddenly reminded us of unfinished business at home, there was always a big traffic jam at the exit.

  Sometimes we would be about halfway home and still not out of the tent yet.

  As a result of these drawbacks to the mountain tent, I was constantly on the lookout for some kind of portable shelter that would afford me a bit more comfort and protection. One day, poking around Grogan's War Surplus, I found it. After sorting through the ever-present snarl of nylon rope, I discovered a canvas tube attached to dried batskin and mosquito netting. The mosquito netting on one side had a zipper running the full length of it.

  "What is it?" I asked Grogan.

  "That, my boy, is a jungle hammock," he said. "This canvas is the hammock part, the mosquito netting is the walls, and then this tough and very attractive fabric here is the roof."

  Not having any jungles readily available, I inquired as to how it would work in our part of the world.

  "Just fine," he said. "For example, there's some folks who don't much care for slimy, crawly ol' snakes sneakin' into their nice, cozy 70-below down sleepin' bags to get warm, and they like this here jungle hammock because it keeps 'em outta reach of the poisonous critters."

  I didn't let on in the slightest to Grogan that he had just made reference to my kind of people. He nevertheless came to that conclusion because he scooped up the jungle hammock and carried it toward the checkout counter.

  "How is it for bears?" I asked in a tone of complete indifference, following along behind him.

  "Bears? Oh, it's fine on bears. In bear country you just pitch it a little higher in the trees--say, about fifteen feet."

  The roof of the jungle hammock had some bad cracks in it, several of the ropes were frayed, the mosquito netting had small tears in it, and the canvas looked as if it were being attacked by at least four varieties of exotic mold.

  Grogan didn't seem to notice though and let me have it for not much more than he would have charged for a new one.

  I lost no time in getting the jungle hammock home and suspended between two trees in our backyard for a trial run. It looked so secure suspended up there in the ain-a modest ten feet from the ground--that I decided I would spend the night there.

  The family came out that evening to cheer me on as I climbed the stepladder to launch myself on my maiden voyage in the hammock. After they had retreated back into the house, muttering enviously I thought, I zipped up the mosquito netting, wiggled into my chicken-down sleeping bag, and lay back to contemplate the closing in of my ancient enemy, darkness.

  After four or five hours of this contemplation, an unnerving thought occurred to me. I had not remembered to have the stepladder removed!

  It continued to connect ground and hammock like a boarding ramp for any ravenous beast that happened along. I leaned over to kick the ladder.

  As I did so the hammock flipped on its side, sending me like a shot through the mosquito netting, still encased in my sleeping bag.

  As bad luck would have it, my crotchety old dog, Strange, had a short while before staggered in from a night of carousing and collapsed on the target area. Nothing in his experience, of course, had taught him to expect me even to be out at night let alone suspended in the air ten feet above him.

  Consequently, when a large, screeching shape wrapped in chicken feathers plummeted down on him out of the darkness, it was certainly reasonable for him to assume that he had fallen prey to some huge, carnivorous bird of the night.

  I, for my part, fully expected to be greeted by a hairy beast with fast, snapping jaws, an expectation that did not go unfulfilled.

  Within ten seconds we had fought ourselves to a state of total exhaustion, perhaps not surprising when you consider the fact that we had gone fully around the yard three times, failed in our attempts to climb several trees and a lilac bush, battered open the door to the house, and finally collapsed in a single panting heap on the kitchen floor. Both of us smelled of wet chicken feathers for days afterwards, and it was a full week before I could brush the taste of dog off my teeth.

  After I had recovered from that night though, I couldn't help chuckling over how I had put one over on ol' Grogan. If Henry P. had known the mosquito netting on that jungle hammock was eaten plumb through with jungle rot he would have charged me twice the price that he did.

  "Do I remember Henry P. Grogan's War Surplus store?" I said to Retch.

  "Wasn't his that high-class place with the sign that said SHIRTS AND SHOES MUST BE WORN ON THESE PREMISES?"

  But he didn't hear me. He was too busy blowing on the fire.

  The Big Trip

  When I WAS VERY YOUNG and the strange wild passion for mountains was first upon me, I wrote, produced, and directed for myself a magnificent, colossal, 3-D, Technicolor, Wide-Screen, Stereophonic fantasy--the fantasy of the Big Trip.

  Whenever the jaws of tedium gnawed too harshly on my bones, I simply turned down the lights on the murk and grind of the world outside and projected the fantasy on the backsides of my eyeballs, each of which was equipped with a Silver Screen.

  The fantasy
was primarily an adventure story set in the vast wilderness of the Selkirk mountains. It starred You Know Whom, who bore a striking resemblance to a four-foot-eight-inch Gregory Peck. The basic plot was that the hero, a pack on his back, hiked far back into these beautiful mountains, endured great hardships, overcame terrible obstacles, and occasionally even rescued from perilous distress a beautiful red-haired lady. It was strictly a G-rated fantasy. (The Rand X-rated fantasies came later.) But I enjoyed it. In fact, with time, the Big Trip began to gain a strange sort of dominance over my life.

  Several times the fantasy prevented my perishing from a loathsome childhood affliction: school. Once in a seventh-grade English class I stumbled into a nest of dangling participles. Had I not been able to get my fantasy going in time, those slimy, leech-like creatures would have drained me dry as a puffball in five minutes.

  On occasion, Mr. Rumsdale, our seventh-grade English teacher, would unexpectedly break through the thick and buttressed walls of our indifference and start throwing parts of speech in all directions.