“I Want Some Of That Pot Roast!” (Part 4 of 6)

For dinner the next night we were going to have pot roast. It was to be cooked in a Dutch oven. Jack had the boys assigned to KP duty for that night dig a hole in the ground, build a fire, place the Dutch oven over the coals with a large pot roast inside, and then bury it. We then went on our hike for that morning. We hiked around the shore of the reservoir and then hiked up a road for a few miles. Then we hiked into the back woods into the most pristine wilderness I have ever seen. There was a stream and everywhere along it were beaver dams. We could see stumps of trees that had been cut down by beavers. And there were beaver lodges, too. We walked across beaver dams and we marveled at those little engineers that God had created. As good boy scouts we were careful not to disrupt the beavers or destroy their handiwork.
We hiked back to camp. Through it was drizzily weather, we noticed a fisherman down on the shore of the reservoir near our camp. He saw us coming back from our hike and said, “Hey that pot roast smells mighty good!” Apparently while we were gone he had inquired at our camp what was cooking that smelled so good. One of the adult leaders had told him it was pot roast.
We ate our lunch but the whole time this man yelled at the top of his lungs, “Hey, I want some of that pot roast!” As the afternoon wore on, he continued to yell as the smell was out of this world. “Let’s have some of that pot roast!” And then it was time to open it up. Boyd Wolsey yelled to the man, “We’re opening it up now.” Jack got the shovel and Kyle Hunter carefully removed the dirt from around it. With a wire, Lane Heaps lifted the Dutch oven out of the ground. The fisherman grew impatient and yelled once again, “HEY, LET’S HAVE SOME OF THAT POT ROAST!”
We opened up the Dutch oven, our own mouths watering. When the lid was off we all stood there gaping. Our drueling mouths hung open. There in the middle of the Dutch oven was a chard black bone! And everything else looked like a burned, black mess. In fact, there was really nothing there.
“HEY, LET’S HAVE SOME OF THAT POT ROAST!”
“It’s burned a little,” Lane yelled in fun.
“Bring it here and I’ll scrape it off so I can eat a piece.”
“Okay, you can have it all,” Lane yelled with a twinkle in his eye. “We aren’t going to eat any.”
Kyle and Boyd carried the pot down to the man on the shore. His mouth was watering, too. When he saw the pot, he stared for a moment in dis-belief and then he burst into laughter.