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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781575677392 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Moody Publishers |
| Publication date: | 06/01/1997 |
| Series: | Sugar Creek Gang Series , #5 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 112 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
| Age Range: | 9 - 12 Years |
About the Author
The late PAUL HUTCHENS, one of evangelical Christianity's most prolific authors, went to be with the Lord on January 23, 1977. Mr. Hutchens, an ordained Baptist minister, served as an evangelist and itinerant preacher for many years. Best known for his Sugar Creek Gang series, Hutchens was a 1927 graduate of Moody Bible Institute. He was the author of 19 adult novels, 36 books in the Sugar Creek Gang series, and several booklets for servicemen during World War II. Mr. Hutchens and his wife, Jane, were married 52 years. They had one child and five grandchildren.
Read an Excerpt
Sugar Creek Gang 5 The Chicago Adventure
By Paul Hutchens
Moody Press
Copyright © 1997 Pauline Hutchens WilsonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-57567-739-2
CHAPTER 1
Roaring along through the sky 5,000 feet high—which is almost a mile—and at 400 miles an hour was the most thrilling experience of my life up to that time.
Well, come to think of it, I guess riding on the waves of a mad lake, with nothing to hold me up except a life-preserver vest, was really the most thrilling as well as the craziest. As I told you in my last story about the Sugar Creek Gang, being tossed around by those big angry waves was like being scared half to death riding on a Tilt-A-Whirl at a county fair.
I had thought maybe an airplane ride would be even worse. It wasn't at all, but, boy, oh boy, was it different!
Of course none of us thought that Dragonfly, who is the balloon-eyed member of our gang, would get a bad case of vertigo and have to have the stewardess give him first aid to bring him back to normal again. In fact, the pilot actually had to come down to a lower altitude before Dragonfly was all right.
That's getting too far ahead of the story though, and I'll have to wait a chapter or two before I explain what vertigo means.
I'm going to be a doctor when I grow up, you know, and that's why I'm learning the names of all the medical terms I can while I'm little, which I'm not actually anymore. I'm already ten and three-fourths years old and have red hair and—but it wouldn't be fair to tell you about myself before introducing the rest of the gang.
The Sugar Creek Gang is the most important gang in the whole country, maybe. Anyway, we have more twisted-up adventures than most anybody else in the world, and so far they have all come out all right.
Maybe I'd better take time right now to introduce the members of the gang to you—and to explain why we were taking an airplane ride and where to.
You remember that Circus, who is our acrobat and who also has an acrobatic voice that can climb the musical scale even better than he can climb a tree, had been invited to a big Chicago church to sing over the radio on Thanksgiving Day. Well, the date was changed, and he was going to sing at what is called a youth rally on Labor Day weekend in September instead, and all the gang was going with him.
Little Jim, the littlest and the grandest guy in the gang, and maybe in the whole world, had to go with him to accompany him on the piano anyway, he being an expert pianist. So, of course, we all wanted to go along, and our parents had said we could—that is, they had finally said we could.
It took my brownish-gray-haired mom quite awhile to make up her mind to let me go, and I had to wash dishes every noon for all the rest of the summer just to show my appreciation. I even had to do them as if I liked to—while I didn't, although I was beginning to have sense enough not to say so.
The day Mom finally made up her mind was one of the hottest days we'd had that year. I actually never had felt such tired weather in all my life. You could lie right down after eating a dinner of fried chicken, noodles, buttered mashed potatoes, and raspberry shortcake, and go to sleep in less than a minute. You could stay asleep all the way through dishwashing time—that is, if Mom didn't get tired of waiting for you to come and help, and call you.
You could even sleep better if you knew that, after the dishes were done, there were potatoes to hoe and beans to pick. But if you happened to be going swimming, or if there was going to be a gang meeting, you weren't even sleepy.
That afternoon there were beans to be picked, so as soon as I had finished my shortcake, I asked to be excused. Dad said yes and let me get up and go into our living room, which was the coolest room in the house, and lie down on the floor until Mom had the dishes ready.
Mom's floor was always clean, but even at that she always made me lay a paper on it before I could put a pillow down to sleep on. I hadn't any more than lain down, it seemed, when her voice came sizzling in from the kitchen and woke me up.
I didn't like to wake up any more than I did any other time. I'd been dreaming the craziest dream. Anyway, it seemed crazy at the time, and anybody would have laughed at it. I never realized, while I was dreaming, that something was going to happen almost like that in real life after we got to Chicago.
I dreamed that I was already a doctor and that I was in a hospital with a lot of nurses in white all around. Also, all around and overhead, airplane engines were droning. One of the members of the Sugar Creek Gang had eaten too much raspberry shortcake and had a stomachache, and the only thing that would help him was for me, the doctor, to give him a blood transfusion. In my dream I was pouring raspberry juice into one of the veins of his arm through a little tin funnel, and he was crying and saying, "I don't like to wash dishes! I don't want to!"
That was when Mom called me to wake up and come to help her.
I woke up halfway at first, and I was as cross as anything, which any doctor will tell you is natural for anybody when he gets waked up without wanting to be.
But my dad, who is a Christian and knows the Bible from A to Z—and not only says he is a Christian, but actually acts like one at home as well as in church—he says the Bible says, "Be angry, and yet do not sin." And that means if somebody or something makes you angry, you ought to tie up your anger, the way people do a mad bull, and not let it run wild.
Dad says a boy's temper under control is like a fire in a stove, useful for many things. But when it isn't controlled, it's like a fire in a haymow or a forest. Some people actually die many years sooner than they ought to because they get mad so many times and stay mad so long it makes them sick.
Maybe my dad tells me these things especially because I'm red-haired and maybe am too quick-tempered. He says if I don't lose my temper all the time, but keep it under control, it'll help me do many important things while I'm growing up.
So, as angry as I was for being waked up and for having to do dishes, I tied up my anger as quick as I could. I didn't say a word or grumble or anything. I didn't even frown.
By the way, do you know how many muscles of your face have to work to make a fierce-looking frown? Maybe you wouldn't believe it, but it actually takes sixty-five, our teacher says. And it takes only thirteen muscles to make a smile. So it's a waste of energy to go around frowning when you're already tired and lazy.
While on the way from the living room to the kitchen to help Mom, I remembered something Dad had told me one day when I was going around our barnyard with a big scowl on my very freckled face. This is what he said: "Bill Collins, you're making the same face while you're a boy that you'll have to look at in the mirror all the rest of your life."
That had made me scowl deeper than ever, and I went toward the barn still scowling but not saying anything. The minute I got into the barn, though, I took out of my pocket a little round mirror that I was carrying and looked at myself. And because I was angry, I scowled and scowled and made a fierce face and stuck out my tongue at myself and hated myself for a while.
Then I saw a big, long brown rat dart across the barn floor, and in a flash I was chasing after it and calling old Mixy-cat to come and do her work and see to it that there weren't so many live rats around the Collins family's barn.
What Dad had said didn't soak in at all until one day Mom told me almost the same thing, only in different words.
My mom has the kindest face I ever saw, and her forehead is very smooth, without any deep creases in it—either going across it or running up and down. Just for fun one day I asked her if she'd been ironing it, it was so smooth, and do you know what she said?
She said, "I've been ironing it all my life. I've kept the frowns and wrinkles off ever since I was a little girl, so the muscles that make frowns and wrinkles won't have a chance to grow"—which they will if they get too much exercise.
So it would be better for even a girl to be cheerful while she's little enough to be still growing, so she'll have a face like my mom's when she gets big.
Well, I thought all those thoughts even before I was halfway to the kitchen. On the way, I stepped into our downstairs bedroom for a half jiffy to look at Charlotte Ann. She was my one-year-old baby sister and had pretty brownish-red curls and several small freckles on her nose. She was supposed to be sleeping and wasn't. She was lying there holding a toy in one hand and shaking it and trying to take it apart to see what made it rattle.
I stood looking down at her pretty pink cheeks, and her brownish-red hair, and her chubby little fists, and at the kind of disgusted pucker on her forehead because the toy wouldn't come apart.
"Listen, Charlotte Ann," I said, scowling at her, "you're making the same kind of face now you'll have to look at in the mirror all the rest of your life. You've got to think pretty thoughts if you want to have a pretty face."
Then I went out into the kitchen and washed my hands with soap, which is what you're supposed to do before you dry dishes, or else maybe Mom will have to wash the dishes over again and the drying towel too.
I still felt cranky, but I kept thinking about the airplane trip the gang was going to take to Chicago—all the gang except me, so far—so I kept my fire in the stove. I knew that pretty soon my parents would have to decide something, and I kept on hoping it would be "Yes."
My mom had been teaching me to sing tenor, and sometimes on Sunday nights, when she'd play the organ in our front room, she and Dad and I would sing trios, which helped to make us all like each other better. So while we were doing dishes that noon, Mom and I started singing different songs we used in school and also some of the gospel songs we used in church. And the next thing we knew, the dishes were done and put away, and I was free to go and pick beans if I wanted to, or if I didn't want to.
I was wishing I could run lickety-sizzle out across our yard, through the gate, across the dusty gravel road, and vault over the rail fence on the other side. I'd fly down the path through the woods, down the hill past the big birch tree to the spring, where the gang was supposed to meet at two o'clock, if they could. Sometimes we couldn't because most of us had to work some of the time. Today was one of the days I couldn't.
As soon as I'd finished the last dish, which was our big long platter that had had the fried chicken on it, I went back into our bathroom. I looked past my ordinary-looking face and saw my dad's reflection in the mirror. He was standing outside our bathroom window, which was closed tight to keep out some of the terrific heat that was outdoors. Standing right beside him was Old Man Paddler.
For those of you who've never heard of Old Man Paddler, I'd better say that he's one of the best friends the Sugar Creek Gang ever had or ever will have. He lives up in the hills above Sugar Creek and likes kids, and he has put us boys into his will, which he says he's already made.
He and my dad were standing there talking, and the old man's gnarled hands were gesturing around in a sort of circle, and he was moving them up and down and pointing toward the sky.
Right away I guessed he was talking about the airplane trip to Chicago. I could see his long white whiskers bobbing up and down the way a man's whiskers do when he's talking. All of a sudden, he and Dad reached out and shook hands and then started walking toward the porch.
All of another sudden a great thrill came running and jumped kersmack into the middle of my heart. I was so happy it began to hurt inside terribly, because somehow I knew that I was going to get to go with the rest of the gang.
And just that minute, as Dad was opening the screen door to our kitchen to let Old Man Paddler in first, Dad said, "All right, we'll let him go!"
My hands weren't even dry when I left that bathroom. In fact, I hardly saw the towel that slipped from the rack where I'd tossed it up in too big a hurry. I wanted to make a dive for that old man's whiskers and hug him. Instead, I just stood there trembling and seeing myself sailing along through the air with big white clouds all around our airplane and the earth away down below.
Pretty soon we were all in the living room, where it was cooler than in the kitchen, and were all sitting on different chairs. I had my bare feet twisted around and underneath my chair and fastened onto the rounds and was rocking back and forth, noticing that with every rock the chair crept sideways a little over the rug.
It was kind of like a meeting of some sort at first, with all of us sitting quiet. Then Dad cleared his throat and said in his big voice, "Well, Bill, Mr. Paddler has persuaded us to let him invest a little money in you. He wants to pay your way to Chicago by airplane. His nephew, Barry Boyland, has agreed to come and be chaperone to the whole Sugar Creek Gang."
There was a twinkle in the old man's eyes, several of them in Dad's, and also some in Mom's. Dad finished by saying that the beans could be picked later in the day when it was cooler, and that I really ought to meet with the gang today, if I wanted to, and—
As quick as I could, after I'd courteously thanked the kind, trembling-voiced old man, I was out of the house, running through the heat waves, toward our front gate. I frisked across the road, stirring up a lot of dust, and vaulted over the rail fence. Then I went like greased lightning toward the spring, imagining myself to be an airplane and trying to make a noise like one, wishing I was one, and almost bursting to tell the news to the rest of the gang.
My dad's last words were ringing in my ears as I flew through the woods, with my voice droning like an airplane. This is what he said while we were still in the living room: "Of course, Bill, we shall expect you to keep your eyes open and learn a lot of things while you're there. Make it an educational trip as well as a pleasure trip."
My own answer was very quick. "Sure," I said, already halfway across the room to the door.
I remembered my promise later, though—and kept it too, when I wrote a letter to my parents from Chicago.
Zzzzz-rrrrrr! On my way to the spring!
CHAPTER 2The minute I got to the top of the hill that is just above the spring where our gang nearly always meets, I looked down and saw nearly all the gang there, sprawled on the long, mashed-down green-and-brown grass, each one lying in a different direction. As usual, Circus was perched on a limb of a tree, chattering like a monkey, getting ready to do an acrobatic stunt of some kind.
I dashed past the old beech tree that has all our initials carved on its smooth gray bark and, after turning a somersault, was soon lying down beside everybody, panting and trying to stop breathing so hard. I tell you, it felt good to know I had good news for them, and it felt good to be with the gang again, after thinking all day that I'd have to pick beans instead of being allowed to go in swimming.
Good old gang! I thought, still panting.
There was Poetry, the barrel-shaped member of the gang, who has maybe the keenest mind of all of us, especially when it comes to arithmetic. We named him Poetry because he knows so many different poems, and any minute something might remind him of one. Then we'd either have to listen to it or else shush him up, if we could. He was my best friend most of the time. He and Circus were always in a good-natured argument with each other.
In fact, they were in one that very minute. Circus called down from the limb of the tree where he was and said, "Say, Poetry, do you know why I like you?"
"Why?" Poetry's squawky voice called up to him.
"'Cause," Circus called back down, "'cause in the winter I can use you for a windbreak to keep the cold wind off, and in the summertime I can lie down behind you in the shade to keep cool."
It was a very old joke, but we laughed anyway.
Circus came sliding down out of his tree right that minute to lie down beside Poetry on the shady side of him, which started a good-natured fight.
I told the gang my good news. Then I told them the crazy dream I'd had about the doctor, who was myself, giving a blood transfusion with raspberry juice.
That reminded Big Jim that one time, before he'd moved into Sugar Creek territory, he'd had to have a blood transfusion himself, because he had been hurt in a mowing machine accident. He rolled up his right trouser leg to show us a white scar with a lot of stitch scars from one end of it to the other, making it look like a long white worm with eight pairs of legs. We'd seen the scar before, but I just never told you about it.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Sugar Creek Gang 5 The Chicago Adventure by Paul Hutchens. Copyright © 1997 Pauline Hutchens Wilson. Excerpted by permission of Moody Press.
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