Too Tall Tales
Unstuck
Campfire stories for the gullible
As the orange glow of sunset fades into the deep blue of evening, a few campers huddle by a fire and tell stories of wild adventure …
The problem with taking kids camping is they find too many ways to get into trouble. When my son was in the Boy Scouts, I’d occasionally get talked into going on camp-outs with them. I avoided it as much as possible, because I had no desire to spend my weekends herding the rascals, but I couldn’t always say no.
One such time, on an otherwise beautiful, warm, sunny afternoon when I could have been at home enjoying the day instead of camping with the little hoodlums, Bobby Connors took a dare and climbed a huge old oak tree. He got twenty feet up before, looking down, he turned stiff as a board and refused to go either higher or come back down. He hugged the trunk for dear life and whimpered while the other kids laughed and then got nervous and coaxed him to come down and finally got scared enough to call a leader over. Namely, me.
First, I sized up the situation. There was no sense sending another kid up after him, because he wasn’t about to move. I doubted even an adult could bring him down, and the last thing we needed was anyone falling out of that tree and killing themselves. We had no ladders, of course, and no…
