Stay in the Wagon

My older brother is an Eagle Scout. I think he really enjoyed being a Boy Scout. His younger brother did not, which I think disappointed my parents. The adult leaders in the troop who knew my brother seemed surprised that I wasn't like my brother. Before I was a Boy Scout though, my brother and I embarked on an adventure that lives on in our family lore to this day.

I don't know how old I was the day that he and I set out on a hike into the woods, but I was young enough that he was pulling me behind him in a red wagon. In those days, if you were to cross the road in front of our house and start walking into the brush, it would have been a straight 2-mile shot through the woods to where our grandparents lived. I'm not sure what his intent was, but after a while, I felt like we were lost. I think he would say that we were simply late in arriving, but I'm not sure we were even expected at our grandparents. And for a while on that hike, he was pulling me and the wagon through some fairly deep, muddy water, admonishing me to "stay in the wagon!".

Our front yard in the 1970s

I don't know how old I was, and it's quite likely that my memories of that adventure contain more than a few embellishments. I do know that our absence was noticed, causing quite a bit of concern on both sides of that wilderness. Maybe panic is a better word. We eventually popped out of the woods on the other side, only a few yards from our grandparents' house, who by this time were waiting anxiously. The ride home was probably pretty uncomfortable for one of us.