And even now when I’m home in Bridgeboro, whenever I get to humming that song I think of Hervey Willetts. Even my sister Marjorie hums it and Margaret Ellison caught it from her and her sister caught it from her and if it ever gets into the school, good night, they’ll have to close it up.
If you once get those crazy verses in your head, goodby to history and geography, and physics and arithmetic. But I don’t know, kind of it doesn’t seem natural except when Hervey Willetts sings them. I don’t know where he ever got them nor all the other crazy stuff he knows.
There’s only one Temple Camp and there’s only one Hervey Willetts.
CHAPTER XXXVI
WE DEMOBILIZE
I guess I don’t have to tell you that it was all right about bringing those scouts back and a shack for them to bunk in. Uncle Jeb said he was only thankful that Hervey didn’t bring back the West Shore trains and the drawbridge. He said he was thankful Hervey came back at all.
When he heard that all Hervey brought back was a new troop and a portable garage and all the rest of us safe and sound including the animated Animal Cracker, he said, “That thar kid is losing his pep, he daon’t seem ter hev no gumption no more.” Because usually Hervey brings back tramps and organ-grinders and all people like that. Once he brought back a fat man from a circus. So gee whiz, a portable garage was nothing for him.
Now I’ll tell you what we did. We put that portable garage on the edge of camp, away up near the road. And we sold lemonade and scout tenderflops to auto parties until we made enough money to pay Mr. Goobenhoff. He said he wasn’t in a hurry and he’d trust us. And that’s where those Columbus scouts spent the rest of the summer and that’s better than Bear Mountain, I don’t care if all the bears hear me say so.
And one good thing, Pee-wee was up there most of the time so we had some peace down at camp, but we could often hear his voice.
The trustees wanted us to call the garage Good Turn Cabin, but we wouldn’t do it because we wanted to call it Funny-bone Shack. And it’s our shack, it belongs to the outlaws, or the vagabonds, or the funny-bone hikers, or whatever you want to call us—we don’t care. And every summer we let some poor troop go up there and stay in it. And it’s all on account of that crazy song.
So now I’m going to bed, because I’m going to play tennis to-morrow and I’ve got to mow the lawn early in the morning, because my sister’s going to have a lawn party in the afternoon and she’s going to have icing cake and I’m going to be there.