Dear Mom,
Our new scoutmaster, Uncle Felix, told us all to write to our parents in case you saw the flood on TV and became worried. We are OK. Only 1 of our tents and 2 sleeping bags got washed away. Luckily, none of us got drowned because we were all up on the mountain looking for Todd when it happened. Oh yes, please
call aunt Gwen and tell her Todd is OK. He can’t write because of the cast. I got to ride in one of the search & rescue jeeps. It was neat. We never would have found Todd in the dark if it hadn’t been for the lightning. Uncle Felix got mad at Todd for going on a hike alone without telling anyone. Todd said he did tell him, but it was during the fire so he probably didn’t hear him. Did you know that if you pour gas on a fire, the gas can will blow up? The wet wood still didn’t burn, but one of our tents did, also some of our clothes. Casey is going to look weird until his hair grows back. We will be home on Saturday if Uncle Felix gets the station wagon fixed. It wasn’t his fault about the wreck. The brakes worked OK when we left. Uncle Felix said when a car is that old you have to expect something to break down; that’s probably why he can’t get insurance on it. We think it’s a neat old station wagon. And he doesn’t care if we get it dirty.
And if it’s hot, sometimes he lets us ride on the tailgate. It gets pretty hot with 10 people in a car. He let us take turns riding in the trailer until the highway patrolman stopped and talked to us. Uncle Felix is a neat
guy. Don’t worry, he is a good driver. In fact, he is teaching Bart how to drive. But he only lets him drive on the mountain roads where there ain’t any traffic. All we ever see up there are logging trucks. This morning all of the guys were diving off the rocks and swimming out in the lake. Uncle Felix wouldn’t let me because I can’t swim and Todd was afraid he would sink because of his cast, so he let us take the canoe across the lake and back. It was great. You can still see some of the trees under the water from the flood. Uncle Felix says he is kind of new at this scoutmaster stuff but he isn’t crabby like some scoutmasters. He didn’t even get mad because we forgot our life jackets. He has to spend a lot of time working on the car so we are trying not to cause him any trouble. Guess what? We have all passed our first aid test and got our merit badges. When Bart dove in the lake and cut his arm, we got to see how a tourniquet works. Also Casey and I threw up. Uncle Felix said it was probably just a little food poisoning from the leftover chicken. He said they got sick that way sometimes with the food they ate in the military. I’m so glad he got out and became our scoutmaster. He said he sure figured out how to get things done better while he was in there. I have to go now. We are going into town to mail our letters and buy some more bullets. Don’t worry about anything. We are fine.
Love, Bryan
P.S. How long has it been since I had a tetanus shot?