The Brilliantly Rainbowed Adventure

        That night at the Wildside Motel, as I blithely slipped into a soundless, seamless sleep, I dreamed that I was dreaming. And as I dreamed that I dreamt of spacious emerald vistas, of hills and hollows and fertile woods, I wandered far afield through the fabled fumbling-grounds of bygone days and lived again the hirsute agonies of youth.
        It all returned to me, as clear as an unstained spring of mountain water. It was as if I was carried imto the past, once again living in Guthchinville and beginning to form my little band. There was Frogstick, just like I had seen him then, pounding on an empty lard bucket with a pair of table spoons that he had borrowed from old Granny Guthchins herself.
        I was cutting across through the Guthchin's grove with a stringer of bluegills that I had just caught in Lake Gutchins. I wasn't planning on finding a drummer for the band that I had recently begun to daydream about. I was kind of hurrying along, you see, because I wasn't anxious to get caught around Lake Gutchins after dark.
        I knew Frogstick well, of course. He was in my first grade class, and sixth grade, and in the same nursery school, too. His family had an big orange grove on the shores of the lake, and their old wooden house was perched on the top of a hill that overlooked it all. Every schoolkid in the area knew the rumors about Lake Gutchins, but most of us fished there anyway. The rumors were thick, and they buzzed as they flew around, and they involved old Hermit Gutchins. You see, Hermit Gutchins was a glutton with the Fizzies; he overdid it, effervescing in a socially unnacceptable way until he became quite a pariah around Gutchinville.
        It was a sad day when Hermit's bloated body was found floating on the swampy side of Lake Gutchins; he reeked of Fizzies and he was floating on his back like an inflated statue of a fool. It was Hermit's cousin Lye-Hose Gutchins who first spied him, and he called up Sherriff Tub Gutchins, and he called up Judge Hiram Terwiliger Gutchins, and he alerted the National Weather Bureau just in case the body took off: up, up, and away into the sky, before they could get a boat in the water to fish him out. Fizzies gluttons have been known to do that at times; that's why Fizzies lounges have been banned around airports ever since I can remember.
        Well now, they all got out there on that lake, and they drove their boats all around that thing, but Hermit just couldn't be found. My friend Yip Farley said that Hermit might have woken up and drifted to shore and then maybe left the county, but nobody knew for sure just what exactly had happened to him.
        A rumor zoomed around that he had been sighted once up in the Yukon disguised as a Malamut, but old Hermit never could tell a mukluk from an igloo, so nobody lent any credentials to that report. Needless to say, the local kids had had a field day with this gloomy and mysterious event.
        Egghead's big brother said that Hermit had changed into something inhuman that lived under the mud in the swamp there by the lake: into a ghastly white wormy thing that was no longer recognizable as a human. He claimed that Hermit ate only cypress roots and children, when he could get them, especially trouble-making little brothers and their friends.
        I didn't believe him, of course, but I didn't necessarily not believe him, either, especially when I was fishing alone out there on Lake Gutchins right around dark. The scary stories about Hermit Gutchins eventually led to the discovery of Drumbo himself: Hermit's son Frogstick. I was hurrying away from the lake one evening, cutting through an orange grove as I tried to beat nightfall. That's when I first heard the racket.
        "Bang-Bang-Bang-bu-Bang-Bang-bu-Bang," it went, "Bang-bu-bu-Bang-Bang----Bang-BANG!" It was coming from the yard of the house, so I cut over a few rows until I got to the edge of the orange, right at the bottom of their big back yard.
        I looked towards the house and saw Frogstick up under a tree beside his back porch. I liked what I was hearing. The boy had rythym!
        As he sat there and pounded away on that tin lard bucket, bereft of cares as well as good sense, I saw the future, and it grinned like a possum. It was then that I decided to form The Incredible Hootenannies, which is now the world-famous assembly of pinheaded poltroons that you have all learned to know and snub.
        I watched in amazement as he drummed away at that lard bucket. Who'd have thought that Frogstick would be such a natural? I pinched myself to see if I was dreaming, and sure enough, I was.
        I awoke from my dream and lay in my room at the Wild Side Motel listening to the crickets through the open windows. Far away, a late train traversed the lonesome wilderness, carrying freight bound for Tampa or parts south. It thrummed and hummed and resonated richly as it ran, filling the night with sound and sending out the sonorous melody of the rails, a melody that seemed vast and tidal in its power and intensity, a melody that penetrated the stillness and triggered long-forgotten memories.
        Images returned to my mind: images of a past that I had long ago relegated to a silent sea of inchoate oblivion. The poignant, bittersweet recollections brought heart-wrung tears to my weary eyes. What fervent longings, what ardent passions had torn asunder the tender breast of my callow childhood! Ah, how brief, how fleeting, the victories gained, and how enduring the losses so dearly sustained!
        As I lay speculating thusly, I assayed the mettle of these diverse thoughts. What was I doing, dredging up the mud of these hoary, depressing memories, when all of the evidence seemed to indicate that I was merely a fantastic fictional character? As if in answer to my question a barking rumble filled the air.
        Sounding boldly forth into the nebulous ether, with all of the power of one-hundred kettle drums, Stink vented the high-pressure results of a night's imbibement of Fizzies through his face-mounted spout-hole. His tremendous eruption, lasting for at least four full minutes, was surely a new world's record, and with it our friend Stink demonstrated the stamina and lung capacity of a Samoan pearl diver.
        I was simply amazed, and delighted of course, and I promptly forgot any and all of my cares and woes, which were all in the past, anyway, so why was I letting them bother me now? I wasn't going to moan any more, that's all she wrote; I had plumb forgotten all about whatever it was that had made me whimper and whine like a pitiful puppy caught in a bear-trap, and it was just as well, because I had started to disgust myself, and to bore myself too, which is worse.
        "Four minutes and thirty-seven seconds," called out Egghead from the next room. All of our windows were open.
        "You awake, Egghead?" I asked him.
        "What do you think?" he retorted. "That blast is a new world's record, Hoot," he added.
        "I know," I said, stretching out on the bed. The clock declared that it was five A.M. "It's time to rise and shine," I told him. My door suddenly banged and rattled.
        "GET UP," a voice hollered, "GET UP!" It was Slug. I lay in bed and listened to him as he made his rounds, drumming on all of our doors. He wound up beating on the doors of a few tourists, too, but Egghead finally went out and stopped him before he caused a riot.
        We all got dressed and walked on over to the Forest-View Cafe for breakfast. Inside of the little cafe we planned out the day's trek. All of us did, that is, except for Slug. He just sort of dozed over in the corner, plumb tuckered out from doing his manly duty by rousting all of us out of a good night's sleep.
        "These sure are good biscuits," Billy opined enthusiastically through a mouthful of greasy chow.
        "This gravy sticks to your ribs, though," said Egghead, demonstrating his discovery with a barbequed rib that he had in his hand. Egghead always did eat funny. I think they teach you that in college.
        "Well, let's hit the road," I said, "Frogstick awaits."
        "Don't threaten us, Hoot," said Slug, briefly roused from his sleep, "we'll go peacefully."
        "Kaleide-tropic myriad deleriously delightful slices of gassed-back, knocked-out adventures await in the well-lit future," declared Zeb.
        I had to agree with the boy. Judging from our past experiences it looked as though we would now be jumping out of the frying pan and into a whole pot full of rancid, scalding grease that was probably loaded with cholesterol and saturated fats as well as hot enough to blister our redneck hides. But we couldn't be cowards. At least that is what we decided after a tough debate and a close vote. So, mustering up our courage, we held our noses and plunged into the fray