Hal Frink, who at the time was in the Sea Scouts, didn't have quite that much fun!

Okay, this didn't happen to me directly, but I witnessed it.

I'm sixteen years old and in the Boy Scouts. I'm spending two weeks, along with about 1,500 other scouts at Camp Parsons, out on the shores of Hood Canal, an off-shoot of Puget Sound. In the second week of the stay, the camp had all kinds of four-day hikes and such into the Olympic Mountains and the forests in the surrounding area. Since I had to lumber around on crutches, I wasn't up for the hikes, but the Sea Scout segment had a four day cruise up and down the canal, sight-seeing, camping on the beach and such.

They had two 26 foot lifeboats (CLICKY) that someone had donated to the camp. They had been fitted with masts and sails, but in case of lack of adequate wind, the boats were propelled by the scouts themselves, galley slave style, eight oarsmen per boat, four to a side. I had strong arms and lots of endurance, so the cruise was a good deal for me.

During the next couple of days we went into the south end of the canal, to Twanoh State Park, camped overnight, then headed back north again. But on the trip north, the wind and tide were against us most of the way, so by the end of the fourth day, we hadn't made it all the way back to Camp Parsons as planned. So we pulled into the beach at Camp Robbinswold—a Girl Scout camp similar to Camp Parsons. And our skipper, Hal Frink (18 year-old Eagle Scout), wanted to telephone Camp Parsons to let them know that, even though we were overdue, we were okay. And to check with the Robbinswold camp counselors to see if they would mind if we camped out on the beach there overnight.

The Girl Scout camp counselor agreed. But rather than the beach, she wanted us to stay on the camp's archery range (!!)—where they could keep an eye on us? With the stipulation that by 7:00 a.m. when the girls woke up and would be crossing the archery range to the camp's mess hall for breakfast, we be up and out of there.

Captain Frink had an alarm clock with him, which he set for 6:30 a.m.

But when about 7:00 a.m. came around, we were all still in our sleeping bags, groggily waking up—and still on the archery range! The alarm clock hadn't gone off!

We all started to get dressed quickly, get our sleeping bags rolled up, and get the heck out of there. But when the girls started streaming out of the dorms, most of us were barely up and dressed. We dove back into our sleeping bags and waited until the girls, all giving us the fish-eye, had gone past and were safely chowing down in the mess hall.

But the skipper! He'd made a major boo-boo. He climbed out of his sleeping bag and put on his tennis shoes and cap. Other than that, he was clad only in his jockey shorts and wrist watch. And next— he rolled up his sleeping bag! At which point, the girls started across the archery range! No sleeping bag he could quickly dive into!

The skipper looked to the right. He looked to the left. He made up his mind and made a mad dash for one of the archery targets, diving over it in a semi-naked ballistic arc, and landed with a crash in the underbrush behind the target.

The rest of us finished pulling on our clothes, rolled up our sleeping bags, and prepared to head down to the beach to fix breakfast. But some of us went over to the target to see what had become of Skipper Frink.

We found him wrestling with the shrubbery, particularly trying to extricate himself from a vine he had become entangled in. Most of us recognized the vine.

Poison ivy!!

Poor Skipper! For the next twenty or so miles back up the Canal, he alternated hands, one on the tiller and the other busily scratching, until he could make it to the Camp Parsons infirmary and hopefully get some relief from his misery.

I think if anyone had had the bad taste to laugh out loud, or even look like he was about to smirk, the Skipper would have hanged him from the yardarm.

If we'd had a yardarm.

Don Firth