CHAPTER XXXVI
A FRIEND IN NEED
Now I'll tell you about tenderflops, because I'm the only one that goes to Temple Camp who knows how to make them. I guess you know what a tenderfoot is; it's a new scout. He's supposed to be tender, see? So a tenderflop is a flip-flop that's named after a tenderfoot, because it's supposed to be tender. There are no such things as tough scouts, so of course, there can't be any such things as tough tenderflops. That's what you call logic.
Now the way that you make tenderflops is with flour and salt and water and cinnamon. You can use eggs if you want to, but you don't have to. Once I tried peanut butter in them, but they weren't much good. If you put a little maple syrup in, that makes them sweet. Once I made some at home when Charlie Danforth was there and I put wintergreen in, and my sister Marjorie said that was the reason he never came any more. Cinnamon is better; safety first.
Now the way I usually do is, just when they're frying and beginning to get kind of nice and toasted, sort of, I press my scout badge down on them and that makes a kind of a trade mark on them. It says BE PREPARED. That's our motto. It doesn't mean anything about the tenderflops.
In about an hour, back we came along the road with a big bag of flour and a bag of salt and a couple of big jugs of maple syrup and some cinnamon. We had on scout smiles, too.
"Down with profiteering," Connie shouted.
"Pee-wee forever!" I said. "Hurrah, for Hoover, Junior! Food will kill the profiteers, don't taste it—I mean waste it."
We had to pay admission fees to get in, but what did we care? We knew the government was on our side, because wasn't the government arresting profiteers?