Pee-Wee Harris in Camp

Pee-Wee Harris in Camp by Percy Keese Fitzhugh

Pee-Wee Harris in Camp*, by Percy Keese Fitzhugh, follows the adventures of Walter "Pee-Wee" Harris, a small but irrepressible Boy Scout from Bridgeboro, New Jersey, whose boundless enthusiasm, constant hunger, and talent for grand schemes propel him through a summer full of misadventures, triumphs, and moments of unexpected heart. The story opens with Pee-Wee earning ten dollars by briefly appearing on stage with a traveling theater company, branding a horse with a cold iron painted red. This acting career is nearly as short as he is, lasting about thirty seconds, but it earns him a treat for his entire troop at Bennett's confectionery. More significantly, having won his tenth merit badge in animal first aid, Pee-Wee is now eligible for the rank of star scout, an honor to be formally conferred at Temple Camp. Before heading to camp, Pee-Wee is summoned to the staid village of North Deadham to receive the Black Beauty Cross of Mercy from a Girl Scout humane committee organized under the influence of his deaf, rheumatic, and formidably proper Aunt Sophia Primshock. The visit produces considerable comedy, as the girls have imagined Pee-Wee to be a tall, noble, forestry-loving Daniel Boone type, only to encounter a diminutive boy festooned with scout paraphernalia and sucking a stick of lemon candy. Two of his patrol mates, Artie Van Arlen and Grove Bronson, hike to North Deadham to intercept him, producing a scene of mock accusation when they produce a photograph of Pee-Wee branding the horse. Pee-Wee, bound by a promise to his mother never to tell Aunt Sophia about his theatrical appearance, heroically refuses to explain himself, until his patrol mates spoil his martyrdom by explaining it for him. The three scouts then hike together toward Temple Camp. On the way, Artie raises the matter that has been weighing on him: there is no room in the eight-member Raven Patrol for both Pee-Wee and a new scout, Billy Simpson, whom Artie wants to bring in from Bridgeboro. Pee-Wee cheerfully volunteers to resign from the Ravens and form a new patrol, partly because he has colossal plans for an extensible, franchise-like patrol to be called the Hop-Toads. He receives his star scout badge at the camp awards ceremony with characteristic uproar and departs the Ravens in a blaze of noise and generosity, while Billy Simpson is quietly inducted. Pee-Wee's Hop-Toad Patrol initially consists of himself and two admiring tenderfeet, Willie Rivers and Howard Delekson. He installs the patrol on an old mooring float in the middle of Black Lake, launching what he calls a sea-scouting enterprise. His great inspiration is that Chocolate Drop, the beloved camp cook, once jokingly offered three helpings of dessert for the rest of the season to any scout who could hike around the lake in under an hour — an impossible feat because Goldenrod Cove, an outlet of the lake, interrupts the trail. Pee-Wee's engineering solution is to wedge the float into the cove, bridging the gap and completing the trail. He charges five cents a crossing as a toll, writes an announcement in invisible onion juice on a slip of paper, corked into a bottle and sent floating across the lake attached to a balloon advertising the Catskill Garage. The message is received at the camp-fire, decoded over the flames, and causes a stampede of nickel-bearing scouts to the cove, with Pee-Wee presiding over the ticket office in full carnival-barker mode. The enterprise is a commercial and scouting success, earning each Hop-Toad two dollars, while Chocolate Drop cheerfully honors his promise and is cleaned out of provisions. The Hop-Toad Patrol's glory is short-lived. The float's journey along the shore involves a catastrophic battle with burs, wild rose thorns, and a lost keg of provisions. The patrol subsequently runs aground in the middle of the lake and spends a miserable afternoon stranded and starving while Pee-Wee attempts resourcefully but unsuccessfully to extract nourishment from shoe leather and ground-up buttons. They are eventually rescued. Shortly afterward, Willie and Howard both leave camp for other reasons, leaving Pee-Wee a free lance with no patrol. Meanwhile, Billy Simpson emerges as the book's secondary and in some ways more complex protagonist. He is a skilled canoeist and rower, a passionate new scout, and deeply ambitious about earning badges, but he is cripplingly shy in small groups even as he fantasizes about performing before great crowds. He cannot mix in, cannot show off his real talents to the very fellows whose respect he craves. Guided by the philosophically drawling, whimsical Brent Gaylong, Billy begins to understand the difference between genuine scouting and performing scouting, but his shyness and pride create friction. He secures the coveted place in Connie Bennett's racing canoe, refusing to yield it to Pee-Wee despite quiet pressure from Gaylong, and becomes quietly unpopular for it. The climax arrives with the annual regatta and the defense of the Mary Temple Cup, held by the Bridgeboro troop. Connie Bennett, the Elk Patrol leader designated as defender, is a capable but erratic paddler who relies on spasmodic bursts rather than steady technique. His red-headed Ohio challenger is polished and dismissive. During the race, Connie falls apart physically and psychologically, clutching his side with a cramp as the green canoe pulls ahead. Billy Simpson, sitting in the bow as ballast, pleads with him to change his stroke, is sharply rebuffed, and then, when Connie nearly faints and releases the paddle, takes it from him. Paddling one-handed while holding his hat aloft in his other hand as a visible handicap to silence protests, he drives the white canoe from behind to victory with mechanical, devastating efficiency, winning the cup for the Bridgeboro troop to the hysterical delight of the entire camp. In the aftermath of this triumph, Billy Simpson does not stay to receive the adulation of the crowd. He slips away through the woods, goes to the Ravens' cabin, and leaves a note on a stump. In it he tells his patrol mates that his place is open, that Pee-Wee should have it back, and that Pee-Wee Harris is his idea of a real scout. He boards the bus and leaves camp, his arm nearly numb from the race, watching the Catskill countryside recede as the whole episode fades behind him like a dream.

By Percy Keese Fitzhugh · First published 1916 · Genre: Children's Literature, Adventure, Coming of Age · 33 chapters · 40,993 words

First lines

"I'm going to brand a horse with a hot iron! I'm going to brand a double cross on him! I'm going to brand it on his hip! I'm going to get ten dollars!"

These were strange words to issue from the lips of a boy scout. Yet they were uttered by no less a scout than Pee-Wee Harris, the scout of scouts, the scout who made scouting famous, the only original scout, the scout who put the rave in Raven Patrol. They were uttered by Scout Harris who was so humane that he loved butterflies because they reminded him of butter and who would not harm a piece of pudding-stone because it aroused his tender recollections of pudding.

What this Textopian page supports

Pee-Wee Harris in Camp is listed on Textopian as a novel by Percy Keese Fitzhugh, dated 1916 CE.

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Genres

Tags

juvenile fiction · boys' adventure · camping · Boy Scouts · summer camp · outdoor adventure · friendship · teamwork · humor · coming of age · mystery · wilderness

Contents

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