From the chapter "Dirt Bomb Battles":
I passed the word down the line to the four other guys on our side, and we all stopped firing, except for the occasional high mortar shot to let the enemy know we were still fighting. We crouched down low in our foxholes, awaiting the assault we knew was only moments away. Sure enough, there was a dramatic call of "Charge!" from Mike Kennedy, who had taken command of his team. Upon hearing that order, the six of us rose as one and we all began firing at Mike, who was out in front of his attacking squad. Concentrating our fire on one target, Mike's physique was silhouetted against the pale sky as his white tee shirt exploded in about eight little puffs of dust as our ordnance found its mark. Hit by such massive firepower, Mike fell backward into a trench. His teammates, seeing such instant carnage, decided that discretion was the better part of valor and retreated back to their foxholes.
Filled with confidence in our dirt bomb prowess, our team charged across no man’s land toward the cowering enemy. When they saw our charge, they broke and ran. We stood in victory in their trenches and continued to lob shots into their backs as they reached for their bikes and a quick getaway. As the kids scattered into the surrounding yards and fields to find their individual paths to safety, I turned back the way I had come, and was surprised to see Mike Kennedy still lying where he had fallen, the front of his tee shirt riddled with no less than eight little dirt stains. Mike was staring at the sky, motionless, and for a split second I thought that our classic dirt bomb battles had claimed their first fatality.
Mike looked at me and struggled to verbalize “I’m… hit… bad. Can’t…move.”
Now Mike was known for melodrama, and I had heard all of this malarkey before. Still, his pockmarked tee shirt deserved some inspection.
I knelt down next to him and pulled up his shirt. There were eight little red bruises on Mike’s skin in the same pattern as the dirt stains on his shirt.
“Jesus, Kennedy, we nailed you good!” I exclaimed, “I mean, what were you thinking, chargin’ like that?”
“ I saw it in a movie today, All Quiet on the Western Front,” was his strained reply.
“Yeah, me too,” I said. I pulled his shirt down, shook my head at my vanquished foe, climbed out of the foxhole, and walked home to dinner.
From the chapter "Halloween":
In the late 60’s my mom made me a Halloween costume based on the Mexican folk hero Zorro. It included a black shirt and black pants, a black Spanish-looking hat, a nifty black cape, a contrasting red waist stash, and a store-bought black mask. A plastic sword completed the ensemble. That was the last costume Mom made me, and I was expected to wear it every Halloween until it wore out. As I grew over the next few years, the pants and the sleeves became shorter and shorter until I could barely walk in them, but Mom didn’t seem to care. “Who’s going to notice your short pants,” she would say, “They’re all black and it’s dark out anyway. Just make sure your wear dark socks. Now go out and have fun.” But when I ventured out as the masked swordsman for the third year in a row, things got old fast.
Ding-dong! (door opens)
“Trick or treat,” I politely said.
Some thirty-something mom opened the door with a bucket full of candy, smiled and said “Ahh! Zorro! Hi Pete, good to see you again this year. Honey, the Pellissier boy is here. Come look.” I felt like drawing my plastic sword and deftly slashing the letter Z across her polyester blouse. A voice shouted from somewhere in the house, “Is he in that Zorro costume again, same as last year? Or was it two years ago? No, I think it was last year.” I didn’t let on that he was right on both counts.
That scene was played out at door after door and year after year, and it definitely took some of the pizzazz out of Halloween. But I still got the same amount of candy as everyone else, and isn’t that the true metric of a successful Halloween?
By 1972, our last Halloween in Lewistown, I had grown so much that even my thrift-minded mother couldn’t force Zorro to ride again. She actually broke down and bought me a ready-made costume: a pirate, complete with one of those pressed plastic masks that you could never breathe through quite right, a silk-like shirt and striped silk-like pants. A cardboard parrot cut-out from the box sat on my shoulder to complete the look. It probably only cost a couple of dollars, but to me it was a priceless investment in my self-esteem. I hadn’t enjoyed Halloween that much in about four years. Zorro was dead! Long live the pirate!
From the chapter "Be Prepared":
After checking into our campsite and placing our gear in our 8x8 platform tents, a group of us headed down to the epicenter of camp life: the lake. As we got to the Aquatic Sports Center, we saw that the water was alive with activity. The lake was small, probably only five acres or so, and today it was crowded with every form of vessel available: rowboats, sailboats, kayaks, and canoes. My friend Brian Lacy and I decided to join in the fun, so we got in line to rent a canoe. As we got to the front of the line, the toothless old camp staff dude had disappointing news for us.
“All dem aluminum canoes is taken, but if y’ouns want, der’s dat com-pos-ite one over dere,” he said, motioning to this very old-looking vessel with printed-on imitation birch bark resting peacefully on the lake bank, the name “Iroquois” crudely painted on the bow.
“What’s a composite canoe?” I asked.
“Well, it’s some man-made stuff, kinda like dat der press board stuff, I reckon, but it has some leaks” he said, handing us two empty tuna fish cans for bailing.
“Uh….no thanks,” I said, “We’ll wait for one of the metal canoes to come back in.”
“Suit y’ounselves” he said, spitting a three-foot-long stream of tobacco juice into the lake.
The kids behind us in line weren’t so selective. They jumped at the chance to get into the vintage composite canoe and were quickly handed two life vests, two paddles, and the two tuna fish cans. We watched with some amusement as the two kids from a troop in Selinsgrove struggled against the floating dock to get into the vintage vessel; obviously, they had never been in a canoe before (neither had we), and were having a tough time. After the toothless wonder got them settled, they paddled precariously out onto the crowded lake. After maybe three minutes, they stopped paddling and began to bail the water that was streaming into their old composite canoe. Judging from the worried look on their faces, they now regretted their impatience and the bonehead decision to take old Iroquois out for a joy ride. Both scouts tightened the straps on their orange life vests.
It just so happened that two of the worst Hellraisers were also out on the lake in a brand- new, sleek silver aluminum canoe. We were very impressed with their canoeing skills.
“That thing must do thirty knots!” I said, having no idea of what a knot was.
“Yeah, those are two big kids from Troop 19, and they’re really pumping along. Look at the bow wake they’re throwing up!” Brian added.
Just about then, the two big Hellraisers spotted the hapless crew of the Iroquois bailing as fast as they could. They quickly and expertly turned their metal beauty around, and were about 100 feet from the two preoccupied novices. As we watched with growing excitement, the silver canoe cut a sleek path through the green lake water, directly for the floundering Iroquois. Faster and faster the two bullies paddled, with each stroke their sadistic smiles and their wild eyes getting bigger. “They’re going to ram them!” I shouted, immediately getting the attention of the camp staff and everyone else within earshot. All eyes were fixated on the unfolding drama on the lake, as the Hellraiser’s speed machine headed straight for their composite target.
The two kids from Selinsgrove looked up just in time to drop their tuna fish cans and scream. The silver bow sliced through the side of the old canoe like a hot knife through butter, passing completely through the target without stopping or even slowing down. The composite canoe was cut cleanly into two equal halves, each with a concerned Tenderfoot scout in it. The two halves drifted apart for maybe three seconds as water filled them, then the weight of the water became greater than the weight of the scouts and both pieces began to rise vertically out of the water, ala Titanic, spilling the scouts, the oars, and the tuna fish cans into the green water. As the two young scouts were flailing pathetically in their orange life vests, the bow and stern of Old Iroquois began their death plunge to the bottom of Seven Mountains Lake. The two Hellraisers triumphantly raised their oars over their heads, whooping it up while the two halves of the once-proud vessel slipped beneath the surface.
