<Begin Segment 17>

TI: Well, let's talk about hiking. You actually left camp sometimes to go hiking, and talk about that and where you would go.

SY: Well, the first area was just a walk around the premise, around the outside of the camp and maybe a little bit out away, and some of the older people said well, we got a route, a hiking trail. And I remember I was so embarrassed wearing longjohns, because you have buttons on the back, and, no matter how hot it was, I didn't want to take off my sweatshirt or whatever because, to let them know that I had longjohns on. But our parents were so worried at being in Wyoming, it was so cold because there was snow out there, but the sun warms up. So we were searching for arrowheads, they told us be careful of rattlesnakes, scorpions, black widows, ticks, and we all had to take tick shots, three of 'em, and I know the needle wasn't that long, the arm wasn't that long, but that was the most painful shot that we ever took, and, like I said, we took three of 'em. And we were concerned, or the officials, WRA was concerned about Rocky Mountain Fever. Now, nobody ever got that, but it was within range of half a mile, somebody found a little area called, dry riverbed, at times there'd be water trickling down. And, eventually, that became a nice place to go hiking to. Seeing the movies, cowboy movies was, slide down the hill, and when the sand was soft we would slide down. And the older guys would say, "How'd you do that?" And I'd tell 'em, I don't know why I had the nerve to do that, but when you're young you're pretty stupid, and then, next thing you know, everybody had to do it. Once you made a trail, everybody else did it. And with the Scouts, we had this practicing to go to Shoshone River, we made this Lipton soup. Oh, we thought that was the most delicious thing in the world.

TI: So you made this out in the, on this hike?

SY: Yeah, we took our own water, cooking utensils, and how we made our table, we made trenches. We'd look at the Scout's manual and, if you make two trenches, you got, your legs went into the trench, now you got an automatic table. And the big thing, this sounds terrible, but, at that age, passing gas was a big thing. You did it, you know, "Corks," you get to hit somebody, and if you don't wipe it the other guy get to hit you back, and if they don't wipe you, wipe after you get hit... so it was a game, but, you know, a normal human being wasn't supposed to pass gas. Well, at this campsite, I mean, this table that we made, we all sat down and had our soup and one scout had the loudest gas you ever heard. And everyone says, Scout's honor, mother's honor, you name it, nobody did it. Well, one guy walked all around us, and then he says, "Wait a minute, look here." There was, like, a powder puff, and so the guilty guy was because of the, the passing the gas, because the dirt was soft and it kind of made a marking, and so all the Scout's honor he did was all a lie. But that, ironically, it was such a big subject amongst the young kids, and it's a normal thing, and, even to this day, rarely people talk about it, but if that many people talked about it while in camp, it has to be mentioned. It just had to be mentioned because we, sometimes they had contests who could pass the most gas, or the loudest. I mean, it sounds a terrible thing to do, but that was that age era that we were involved with.

TI: That's a good story.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.