-So, our good ol’ boy, Christopherson Salt Chuthers, has finally released his first book. It is called You Kids Quit Pooping on the Lawn!!!!. I have to tell you that I’ve read it and it is great! Several things that I need to share with you all:
1.) His real name is Chris Morton. In comparison, much more boring than his blog name.
2.) You can buy his book at here.
3.) He does have a website. www.christophermorton.net
4.) He looks like Mokie, from “Fraggle Rock”.
I’m even quoted on the back of the book as saying that the pages are soft and pliable – good for emergency toilet paper when I needed it. In addition, if you look at his site, he has search tags. As of now, I see Mike Oscar POOP. I like dat, me.
Please buy a copy of his book. You won’t regret it!
Until then, here’s a brand new blog post from the man himself, Christopherson Salt Chuthers.
How Not to Cook a Hotdog, by Chris Morton
I am not bushcrafty.
In fact, I am so un-bushcrafty that I’m not entirely sure it’s a word. I’ve been camping. It’s fun for an hour or two, but soon I get frustrated with the lack of places to plug in a microwave.
A lot of people blame the Internet or TV for hijacking kids’ attentions away from the Great Outdoors, and diverting their natural wanderlust into searching for new and exciting ways to slingshot angry virtual birds at virtual pigs. (Maybe this is a good thing. Do we really want the youth of our nation trying to figure out how to slingshot real birds at farm animals?) For me, though, irritated fowl are not the culprit behind my lack of woods savvy.
I blame my uncle Pete.
This is the tale of my first excursion into the wild.
“Aright, boys. Pile in the truck. Not in the front – what’s where Zeke sits. You’re a good boy, ain’tchu, Zeke? Whooosagoodboy? Whoosagoodboy?!? Yes! You are! You kids lie down in the back, just in case we pass a Statey. Watch out for that axe. What? What’s just a little mud. Or blood, maybe. You can wash it off later. That can’t be the only shirt you own. Quit whining.”
“Here. I’ll open the back window so you can hear me talk while we’re driving. Can you hear me? Good. Hold my beer. We’re going to drive down a road known only to us woodsmen. We call it the Old Indian Road. …What? No – no, it wasn’t built by Indians; I don’t think a bulldozer is a native tool. I think contractors from Prentiss and Carlisle cut it. It’s called the Old Indian Road because… uhhhhh… because… they found Micmac artifacts… there… once. Old Indian artifacts. What? No. No teepees, I don’t think. Well. Maybe. Keep an eye out; maybe you’ll see one on the side of the road. NO! Don’t sit up yet. We’re not off the main road yet. Pass me my beer.”
“Here we go… This is the road, boys. L-i-i-i-tt-t-l-e b-b-b-u-m-p-y, idnit? Did that firewood catch you? No kiddin’. You gotta watch that. You bleeding? No? All right. Zeke almost bumped his head on the dash. I’ll slow down a little. You’re a good boy, Zeke; sorry about that.”
“Now, we’re looking for a spot to build a good fire. Here’s what you want to look for: try to find a place near some dry wood. Flat, rocky ground. Lots of rocks. That’s what we’ll build our fire pit out of. You don’t want to build a campfire in a field or someplace where you can catch the woods on fire. You could go to jail for that. Hey, pass me a fresh beer, wouldju? No, don’t open it. You’re, what, six? You’ll probably spill it. Hey. What’d I tell you about minding that axe? Turn the blade so it’s facing away from the side of the truck, aright? I don’t want it getting dulled up.”
“There’s a good spot. See that old dead tree right there? No… no, that’s a telephone pole. Over there. That tree right there. It’s a…. uh… elm. An elm. Probably. Or beech! Yup. Beech. …Nut. Beechnut. The Indians used to eat those. The nuts. Not the trees. Made soup with ‘em. That, and wampum. Fact, I think ‘wampum’ might actually be the Micmac word for soup. Let’s pull over. Hang on! …What? What do you mean, there’s nothing to hold onto? I had eigh-… nine… twelve minus two… carry the one… I had ten cans left! What’d you boys, drink ‘em all? Hang on to the beer, you dunderheads! Geezum! OOP! Ditch! Goll-lleee! Who put that there? You boys all right? Catch that firewood with your knee, didja? Don’t worry. It’s good for ya. Builds character. Getting hit with a piece of firewood never hurt anybody.”
“All right. First thing we gotta do is, make a fire pit. Go find some big rocks. There’s a good one, right there. Now, when you build a fire pit, boys, you have to be careful about which kind of rocks you use. You want to find ignashous rocks. Those are the kind that look like somebody poured cement over a bunch of other rocks. Those were made by volcanoes that melted other rocks, so they can take the heat. …What? Where was the volcano? Uh… I think it’s back a ways, maybe a couple more miles, on the left. No. No, it hasn’t gone off in a long time. Two, three hundred years, probably. What? Yeah… could be, that’s what drove the Indians out. That would probably do it.”
“Now, grab me that axe out of the back of the truck and we’ll go cut some firewood. Huh? Oh, that firewood in the back of the truck I carry around all the time, just in case I need a fire when it’s wet out. Or a chair. Okay. See this tree? It’s dead. You can tell because it’s gray. There’s no green showing on it, even when I scrape it with the axe. …Yeah, it is kind of handy that somebody already cut it down and cut all the limbs off and left it lying on the side of the road, isn’t it? What? No, I don’t… well, maybe it was the Indians. Hard to say.”
“Here. Hold my beer. I’m going to cut a hunk offa this. Now, look, boys, if you dig into a tree at an angle, you get a better cut, see? Just bring the axe back an—coughcoughcough WHOA!!! …Well! This tree is apparently a little more rotten than I figured, boys. See how it kinda blew up when I hit it? Beech trees will do that to ya sometimes when they get real old. Makes it a lot easier to cut up. Here. Scoop up some of that, will you? There’s a shovel in the back of the truck. Okay. Take some of the bigger pieces and lay them in that pit, will you? There you go. …Now pour the rest of it right over the top.”
“Boys, listen up. There’s a right way and a wrong way to start a fire. Here’s the right way: go into the woods, gather up some moss and some birch bark and some old, dry twigs, and put ‘em all in a pile underneath your bigger pieces. Then light the edges on fire and you’re good to go. The wrong way is to use a propeller, like gas or kerosene or WD-40. Here. Hand me that bottle of dry gas and I’ll show you why. See, if you pour it all over the wood like this and then lean down to light it on fire like this, you might—HOOO!!! TABERNAC!! Geezum crow!!! Quick! Run around for a minute! That’ll put your jacket out. How are your eyebrows? Mine too. Your hair looks a little crispy. Maybe we’ll swing by the barber on the way home. Your mom can pay me back later. Run to the truck and get me a fresh beer, will you? Your sleeve’s still burnin’. Got it? Good. All right.”
“Now, it’s important when you cut a stick for cooking a hot dog that you don’t kill the tree. Here’s what you do. Find a small tree that’s dead first. How do you tell? Well, snap a branch off like this. If it’s dead, you won’t see any green. It’ll snap right off, ‘cause it’s brittle. Right. That one didn’t snap right off, did it? See how you kinda had to yank on the branch to get it to come off? See the green? Yup. That one’s still alive. Yup. So is that one too. We won’t take any branches off that one. Or that one, either. Yup, that’s green. …What, are there no dead trees around here? Oh – there, in the swamp? …Right… Well, boys, sometimes it’s important to help Mother Nature out by doing something I like to call, ‘Thinning The Herd.’ There are a lot of little trees around here that aren’t dead. Too many. We’re going to kill one so the others can have more… uh… worms, and dirt, and sunlight. Yup. Here’s my pocketknife. Cut that into three sticks, would you? I would, but there must’ve been something in that last beer. I seem to have two to three times my normal amount of fingers. I probably shouldn’t be handling a knife. One of you boys might have to steer on the way home. Don’t tell your mother.”
“Now, slide your hot dog onto the stick kind of careful so you don’t stab your fingerOW!like that. Listen. There’s an art to cooking a hot dog. You want to cook the middle, right? I hate a cold hot dog. Now, the hottest part of the fire is the blue part of the flame down at the bottom. If ours hadn’t gone out, you could see it right there in the middle of the yellow part. Just stick your hot dog in the ashes for now. They’re still hot. Whup! Scare ya, did it? Guess not all of the dry gas got burned up the first time around. By the way, plastic jackets probably aren’t a good idea around campfires. Want me to make the other sleeve match, or…? …I can cut ‘em both off, if you… no? Whatever.
“How’s your hot dog? See how it’s black like that? That might be ready to eat. Could be the ashes too. No way to know for sure. Just try a bite, there, off the end. Yep. How’s it taste? …Crunchy? What do you mean, crun—oh, that’s just the ashes. That’s fiber. It’s good for ya. Indians used to eat charcoal. It helps… mash up the other food in your stomach. That’s why cows like to eat rocks.”
“Here, I’m gonna light that fire again. Bring me that piece of wood out the back of the truck and there’s a Cheez Whiz jar in the glove compartment, all right? …No, that definitely ain’t Cheez Whiz in there, you’re right. It’s Girl Scout Juice. …What? No – no, they don’t sell it; I think they stick to cookies. This here is kerosene. Here. Splash that on the firewood, a little. …Little more. …Little more. There you go. Now, kerosene doesn’t blow up like dry gas, so you don’t have to stand back. You’re fine. Here, I’ll just— WHUP!! Nope! That wasn’t kerosene, was it? That might have been paint thinner. No… no, Curly gave that to me, seems like… I think that might have been corn liquor! Dammit!! Well, at least your other sleeve matches the first one. Did that melt right onto your arm, there? I think baby oil will take that off. Or maybe kerosene. I might still have some in the back of the tr—no? You want to wait until you get home? Maybe. We’ll talk to the barber. Maybe he can cut that out of there. Arm hair ain’t much different than head hair, I guess. Shame about your eyelashes, though.”
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