Waldo

When I was a kid in Los Alamos, NM I belonged to an Explorer Post (and yes I was an Eagle Scout). Explorer Post 20 specializes in running rivers like the Colorado in the Grand Canyon. In the early days we used army surplus rafts with homemade rowing platforms.

One of the real characters in the Post when I was a member was Waldo. Waldo wasn’t his real name, but he acted in such a way that the kids in the post decided he was a Waldo regardless of his given name. Waldo was perhaps a bit over 6 feet tall with extremely bright red curly hair. He was a bit on the large side, but he wasn’t fat or overweight. Waldo was a fun guy whose elevator didn’t go up to the top floor.

In 1967 (?) the post ran the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho. The trip took about 16 days. Late on the trip we found an ideal campsite for the night. The river took a sharp right hand turn. On the inside of the corner was a very large sand bar, ideal for a camp. The corner itself had a gentle rapid (cataract), which we could run in our life jackets. At the bottom of the rapid was a very deep pool ideal for swimming or bathing (which was sorely needed). On the outside of the corner was a small cliff (30 feet high or so). The kids used this cliff to dive into the pool. Sort of like a scene out of Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn.

At this time girls where not a part of the post and we were in the middle of nowhere. So most of the guys were in their “birthday suits”. So here we have 30 guys diving, swimming, and washing in the river buck-naked. Among the divers was Waldo.

On rivers like the Middle Fork of the Salmon professional oarsmen (in dories) take groups of people on trips down the river for a vacation experience. These trips can be anything from a day or two to a couple weeks. I suspect that the Middle Fork of the Salmon was/is a seven or eight day excursion.

Anyway, while we were goofing around a professional group approached. There were perhaps a half a dozen boats with three or four families with young children. So the guys who were bathing crouched low in the water and the kids on the cliff dove in the water. Except for Waldo.

Waldo panicked. Everyone in the water was screaming for Waldo to jump. Not knowing exactly what to do he did the first thing that came to his mind. He covered his face. So here is the rather big guy with flaming red hair (everywhere) standing in all his glory on a Cliffside covering his face. The adults in the excursion where busy covering up the eyes of their small children and everyone in the water was laughing.

Still Here

As I said, I will be posting infrequently. The new semester will start in a few weeks and I want to get many of the stories I tell in class posted for my online astronomy students. Look forward to Waldo (personal story), Isaac Newton (actually several), Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and the death of the Pythagorean number cult among others. But first I need to finish this neat dungeon crawl game I got for Christmas.