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By Lloyd Albritton

Columnist

“How long are you boys planning on camping out there on that river?” Buckshot’s father asked as the boys tossed their camping gear and supplies into a couple of burlap sacks.

Buckshot glanced over at Ronnie, held his hands up, and shrugged.  Ronnie shrugged back.  The boys had not discussed precisely how long they would stay on their summer camping trip, but they had generally thought to stay for several weeks, maybe even to the end of summer, when they would have to return to start school.

Buckshot and Ronnie, both going on 15, were cousins, but they were also best friends.  They had been daydreaming, plotting and sharing adventures together since their pre-school years.  This latest idea had come about just a day or two earlier while the boys were watching a Davy Crockett episode on television.  Davy and his sidekick, Georgie Russell, had traveled down the Mississippi River on a log raft, fighting off Indians and river boat ruffians along the way.

“Why don’t we do that?” Buckshot had exclaimed.  “We could build us a raft and float down the Perdido River.  We’ll camp out along the river banks as we go.”

“Yeah,” Ronnie agreed enthusiastically.  “We can take our shotguns and kill us some bears to eat.”

And so, the idea was conceived that Sunday evening in 1960, not ten minutes after the conclusion of Walt Disney Presents.  By Tuesday morning Buckshot and Ronnie were packed and ready to be off.

Gibb, Buckshot’s father, stood waiting for his son’s reply. 

“Oh, just a few weeks.  Maybe longer,” Buckshot replied boisterously.

Gibb cleared his throat and lifted his eyes toward ceiling, his skepticism obvious.  “Well now, it don’t seem to me like you boys are taking near enough food with you,” he said, throwing a suspicious glance at the two bulging sacks sitting on the floor.  “And I’ll tell you something else too,  the skeeters are going to eat you boys up down on that river.  What are ya’ll going to do about that?”

Buckshot grinned and reached his arm down into his supply sack.  He lifted his chin as he rummaged deeply through the contents for a moment, searching for something.  He poked his tongue out the right side of his mouth and held it firmly in his teeth as he concentrated and moved his hand around in the sack.  Finally, he pulled out a pint jar filled with some kind of brown gook and held it up for his father to see.

“What the hell is that?”  Gibb asked, snorting a giggle as he tried to hide his amusement.

“Lard!”  Buckshot retorted.  “But don’t worry, I didn’t take it from Mama’s cupboard.  It’s already been cooked with.  Davy Crockett used bear fat to keep the skeeters away when he floated down the Missippi.  I read that in the book,” he added as an aside.  “It weren’t in the movie.”

“Buckshot, that’s about the craziest idea I ever heard,” Gibb snorted.  “Whoever heard of hog lard keeping skeeters away?  Fact is, if you boys put that stuff on your skin, it ain’t gonna be nothing but flavoring for them skeeters.”

Buckshot knew his father was a skilled and knowledgeable woodsman, but the father was not a reading man like the son, and Buckshot was quite confident that his superior book learning in this instance trumped his father’s hand-me-down education, which was tainted with a lot of old-fashioned superstition.

The boys trudged off down the dusty dirt road with their supply sacks slung over one shoulder and their shotguns resting on the other.  After a mile or so, they jumped across a narrow ditch and took a secret trail through the woods that led down to the river.  By the time they arrived in the mid-afternoon, they were tired, hungry and drenched with sweat.  It was a hot, muggy June day.  The first thing they did was to drop their gear, shed their clothes and dive into the cold, muddy river water to cool off.

Once they were refreshed from their swim, the boys set about getting their campsite organized, then searched through the woods for some fallen trees which they would use to construct a raft. As dusk closed around them, they slumped to the ground and sat cross-legged to rest a spell and confer over the scrawny pile of pine saplings they had gathered.

“Buckshot, this may be a stupid question…,” Ronnie mused.

“What is it?” Buckshot asked.

“How’re we gonna tie these logs together to make a raft?”

“Davy Crocket used leather strips from a bear hide to make his raft,” Buckshot replied.  “Maybe we could kill us a bear.”

“Hmmm,” Ronnie mumbled.  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bear in these woods.  In fact, I ain’t never seen a bear in my whole entire life.  Have you?”

“Nope, I don’t reckon I ever have, Buckshot said, adding,  “You didn’t think to bring no nails, did you?”

“Nope.”

“Well, I’m too tired to build a raft tonight anyways,” Buckshot said.  “Let’s just sleep on it and we’ll figure out how to build that raft tomorrow.”

They got a campfire going just before dark and reclined beside it to enjoy the first night of their adventure.   Dumping their sacks on the ground, they quickly found the peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches their mothers had made for them early that morning and commenced to eating them.  They had not eaten all day and as they took their first bites into the sandwiches, they realized how hungry they were.  Moments later, the total of eight sandwiches, their entire food supply, was gone.

“We got any more grub?”  Ronnie asked.

“Nope, we’ll kill us a deer to eat tomorrow.  Or maybe catch some fish and cook’em,” Buckshot replied confidently.

“Didn’t you bring no baloney or spam or weenies or nothing?”

“Nope, I thought you did.”

Slap!

Slap!  Slap!

Slap!

“My God, these are big skeeters out here!” Ronnie exclaimed, slapping at his neck and arms.  “Buckshot, we better rub ourselves down with that lard you brought.”

Buckshot dug out the jar of lard and the boys slathered all their exposed skin with it.  The smell of the lard, flavored by the fried chicken that Buckshot’s mother had fried in it, immediately drove the mosquitos into a frenzy.  Their initial attack quickly turned into an onslaught.  Once the word got out about the delicious lard feast mosquitos started flying in from miles upriver, following the aroma of fresh human meat smothered in brown gravy.

Both the boys were now flailing their arms wildly to fight them off.  They grabbed their sleeping blankets and threw them over their heads, but the mosquitos just wiggled in through the cracks and kept coming.

“BUCKSHOT, THIS LARD AIN’T WORKING!”  Ronnie shouted.  “WE GOTTA GIT OUTTA HERE.”

Leaving everything behind but their shotguns, the boys struck out blindly through the woods at a run, stumbling and falling in the darkness as they made their way back to the main road and from there to Buckshot’s house.  The following morning Gibb found them sprawled across the bed asleep.  Big black and blue welts covered their faces and arms.  Amused by the scene, Gibb sniggered as he quietly shut the door and left them to their recovery.

* * *

The long luxury motor coach rolled down the highway as smooth as silk, headed west on Interstate 70.  The slightly built gray-haired man driving the coach munched on a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich in his right hand.  His friend in the passenger seat sipped on the cup of coffee his wife had just handed him.  Both men were retired.  They had been close friends since childhood and had taken many vacations together throughout their lives.  Both loved their creature comforts. It was getting on toward dusk as they cruised into the outskirts of Topeka. 

“Well, what do you think?” the man on the passenger side asked.  “You want to camp tonight or stop at a motel?”

“I’m plumb wore out,” replied the man driving.  “I don’t feel like roughing it tonight.  There’s a Marriot up ahead.  Why don’t we stop there so we can get a good night’s rest?”

Ronnie rolled his eyes and burst out laughing.  Buckshot joined in.  Their wives looked at one another and wondered what these two old geezers were laughing about.