Fizzled Out

Fizzled Out

Noel Laflin

July 1, 2013

(Adapted from “Ahwahnee Hit Parade of ‘68”)

It was a spirited, rollicking and fairly patriotic campfire we put on that July 4^th night, back in 1968.  And, it was at the end of said festivities that our intrepid program director proposed that we all follow him up the Red Trail to Superstition Peak, grab a rock for a chair and await the splendid fireworks traditionally launched over Lake Arrowhead.  He assured us that the spectacular show would commence at precisely nine that evening.  And, like believing children following the pied piper, all of Camp Ahwahnee emptied and trailed the man out of the fire arena, crossed the highway and up the steep switchbacks, searching out red florescent trail markers from many an old tree stump and painted boulder.

It looked like a scene from an old Frankenstein movie - you know the part where the villagers are approaching the old castle with torches ablaze.  Well, our torches were merely flashlights and it was hardly a castle we were storming - just the top of old Superstition Peak, which loomed a good eight hundred feet above camp. But it would have the greatest view in the entire area of the fireworks, or so our guide said.  And so we continued up the dark, dusty trail - all two hundred of us.

We eventually made it to the top with a good twenty minutes to spare before the polytechnics would begin.  So, kids scrambled for a piece of granite, stared intently toward the arrowhead-shaped lake far off in the distance and waited impatiently for the show to start. 

Nine o’clock came and went - and we still waited. 

Maybe the time had been moved to nine-thirty or ten, the program director advised us. So we waited some more. 

Once ten o’clock had come and gone, so were we. There were no fireworks that evening.  Turned out, we were to learn later, that they had been shot off the night before – or perhaps it was to be the night after - who knows?  For whatever reason, Arrowhead was on a different schedule from the rest of the nation.  Meanwhile, two hundred disgruntled young men trudged down the mountain, leaving just one guy still staring in disbelief at the darkened lake far below.

That one guy sheepishly came to breakfast the next morning sporting a handmade fake mustache and bearing a new identity via his staff name badge.  He insisted that we call him Rudy Begonia – a visiting international Scout from Italy.  He deftly took a seat in the old mess hall, grabbed a bowl of Cheerios and nonchalantly asked, “Hey! How-a-bout-a those Dodgers, huh?”

Disguise, banal banter and name change aside, our intrepid leader was quietly encircled by a score of outstretched hands and unceremoniously carried to the pool – into which he was promptly tossed. 

When the cheering was done, two hundred Scouts triumphantly returned to their seats in the old mess hall in order to finish their breakfast.

The new guy from Italy, along with a limply floating fake mustache, and altered name badge, had the pool all to himself.

Echoing laughter from the mess hall rebounded off the old mountain peak looming high above.