Feb 6, 2011

Who were your best friends in your early years? Did you ever have sleepovers or campouts together?

Besides my siblings my other best friends were Max Wimmer, Don Hansen, Lee and Wendell Moon and the Weber's. For the most part Max was my best friend when I was in elementary school along with Chuck Wilkins and Russell Conn. Then when Hansen's moved to town I started playing with Doug and Don. Don eventually became my best friend in High School and we spent a lot of time together.
I never really had any sleepovers when I was young that I can remember. However Don and I did do some camping when we were in Scouts.

Here is what I have written about that experience.

Don and I and the garden tractor campout.

When I was new to scouting I had a den leader named Donna Hansen. Later her husband Ray became my scoutmaster. They had three sons. One who was my age and in my class during the school years, and one a year younger in Marie’s class. They became close friends during those years of scouting and Don became probably my closest friend of the two. So Don and I did a lot of rabbit hunting and scouting events together. When we were about 14 years old we needed more campouts to complete the required camping merit badge so Don and I struck onto a plan to take the small garden tractor that dad owned and pull the trailer that goes with it up onto the bench and find a place near the canal where we could easily set up a camp and spend the night. We had a great time after we set up camp and made and ate supper. We decided we needed and easier way to cross the canal (which we could easily jump) so that we could gather firewood and other things fo camp. So we set out to building a foot bridge over the canal. There were always a lot of cottonwood trees growing along the canal and always a lot of dead and downed ones that we could cut up for firewood. This time however we got a couple of the bigger trunks and cut them so that they would span the canal. We then added smaller ones and laid them crossways of the tow logs to make a crossing. After we had lashed the end ones to the two logs then we just laid the rest into place and then covered the logs with dirt taken form the sie s of the canal complete with the grass so that it would not just be a muddy mess. It didn’t take us long to build the bridge so then we also made some other camp gadgets like a tripod for our fire from which we could hang our water pots for heating.

We did a number of other small gadget as well. When we did finally go to bed it was fairly late but we had been able to have a great night. Well the canal was actually about 35 00r 40 feet below the level area where we had driven the tractor to before we commenced setting up camp. During the night we were awaken by the sound of the garden tractor being started and discovered our means of transportation of our equipment that we would be hauling back the next day was being stolen. We quickly got up and ran up the hill to find my brothers being the misfits who were thieving the tractor. It was quite fun and I don’t remember if they took it home that night or if we succeeded in stopping them but we must have stopped them because it wasn’t a traumatic enough of an event to set it deeply into my memory. It was always fun being the youngest brother however because of things like that which were always done by older and wiser brothers, well at least smarter (smartelic that is) ones than I. 

Just as a side note. That bridge remained there for a number of years . It was above the canal enough that it never caused junk to lodge and create a dam that would have made the canal wash out the side of the hill upon which it ran. It was eventually removed as the ditch company went through and dug out the canal to make it deeper.  It was a reminder for a lot of years that we were able to create a camp and make it useable and still be smart enough whether through dumb luck or actual planning of something that could be used for years to come. The grass continued to grow watered only by rain but still made it a very crossable bridge.

Of course these were all boys that were best friends but Marie Behrmann probably took the number one spot for the last several years of school. I was very blessed with good friends and enjoyed my experience while growing up with them. And growing old now with Marie.