Fortification Mountain


4 The Tall, the Short, the Skinny, the Fat, the Good and the Bad
This US Park Service picture was taken of Fortification
looking West, from the Nevada side. We hiked up the area on
the right side shown on the picture and then over to the other
side where the lake and dam are.
Fortification Mountain stands above Lake Mead and Hoover Dam. It is, as far as I can remember, a volcanic mountain. Our Scoutmaster decided to take us on a hike up the side of the mountain to the top. It was a very difficult hike. I had felt like the trail to the base of the mountain was probably far enough and difficult enough for me and possibly for the rest of the troop. As long as the Scoutmaster was staying ahead of us, we really had no choice but to follow. Up the steep mountain we went.
It was a difficult climb, but as we stopped to rest and look out at the lake and the road up to Boulder City, we could see a very beautiful sight. The lake was still; there was no wind. It looked like glass. It was smooth and beautiful. We hiked on up and at about the top of the very steep part of the trail someone started rolling rocks down on those of us still on the trail. Some rocks came down very close to me and to the Scout who had been bullied by the Scout who had been tormenting him. We quickly finished the little bit of the trail left. I caught my breath and took off after the perpetrator of the attempted massacre of the Scouts below.
The Scoutmaster stopped me as I was sitting on the perpetrator’s chest, ready to commence a pounding. The Scoutmaster had made sure to keep the boy with him on the way up hoping to keep him from trouble, but the Scoutmaster had turned his back for a moment, and the boy had slipped towards the edge and started rolling rocks down on the rest of the troop. I really wanted to hit him just a few times, maybe like a couple hundred.
Even after everyone was settled down, including the Scoutmaster, the rest of the Scouts wanted to get in a few licks themselves. Something that the rock roller didn’t realize was that the one Scout he had been harassing was timid and quiet, but the rest of us were quite used to settling things behind the house in the alley, and were not impressed with his parents who may have been doctors and willing to protect him no matter what mayhem he had been involved in. His parents weren’t there, only the Scoutmaster, who by this point was ready to give him a whack or two himself.
I’m not sure what happened to him, but I don’t remember going on any other activities. Even as hard to control young men, we did have our own sense of justice. I don’t think that we knew what it was called; it was just how we felt. We were able to get into enough trouble without planning something that would cause real damage to anyone else or to ourselves. 
Actually, the view from the top was magnificent. We were pretty much all in awe of the lake and the mountain. We were all safe on top of the mountain, and so we were pretty much required to roll rocks down the mountain and see if we could get them to reach the lake. Working together with the help of the Scoutmaster, we were able to position and roll some of the larger boulders down. It was great and probably illegal fun.
The trip back down the mountain went off without a lot of problems. Again, the Scoutmaster kept the aforementioned Scout with him and ahead of all of the rest of the troop. It ended with worn-out scouts and no deaths.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Some of My Testimony

Image
November 2019 Carl Stubbs As a young man, I wanted to follow in my father’s footsteps as far as the Church was concerned. He had a strong testimony of the gospel, and he instilled that belief into me by his example. There were many people in my life that helped me along the way. I soon learned that the Church was true, but that all of the people who were members were not always so, including myself. Some of the men that were influential in my life besides my father were Frosty Traasdahl, Karl Snow, Glenn Snow, Jake Williams, Bert Whitney, M J Christensen and Bishop Cheeseman. I’m sure there were others, but these are the ones that come quickly to memory. One that I met prior to my mission was Alma Sonne who was the one that called me on a mission. I have always believed that the Church was true and have known that all of us are not exempt from the temptations of the world. I believe that we are all attempting to do our very best with the abilities that we have been given. As I went...
Read more

Kansas

Image
Written on October 12, 2020 As a young man between eighth and ninth grade, I had the opportunity to go from Boulder City to Kansas to work on my uncle’s farm. I say given the opportunity, but I was really just shipped out. His farm was in the southwest corner of Kansas. Looking back after sixty-two years I realize that my parents, my dad, in particular, wanted me out of town. I’m not sure why, but I guess I was not all that enjoyable to have around. I can’t even remember the name of the little towns they lived by, but I remember the farm. I suspect that my uncle Harry and his wife Inez were not that excited to have me there, but they treated me ok. I was there for about three months. They had two sons who were older than me. Duane was eighteen and Manley was about twenty. An old wheat truck like the one on my uncle's farm I got to work on the family farm driving a tractor, a large wheat truck, and a 1947 Kaiser-Frazer car. After work and on the weekends, I was allowed to driv...
Read more

Watts Going On?

Image
When I returned from my mission, I applied for a job for 7-11. It was owned by Southland Food Corporation at the time, and that in turn was owned by Lady Bird Johnson, the wife of President Johnson. I was hired as an assistant manager of one of the stores on Boulder Highway near Las Vegas. After a little time, there was an opening in Las Vegas for a manager. I took the job. I really liked it. They sent an older man to the store to be trained as an assistant manager. He was a friendly man and was doing pretty well.   The company had a contest for all of the stores, and my store won. What I won was a keg of beer. I was not really interested in it, and so I gave it to the assistant manager. He had been looking for a car for transportation. I wanted to sell my 1958 Cadillac and he wanted to buy it, so after work one day he took the keg and drove the car home for his wife to look at it. I didn’t see him for a few days after that. He just didn’t show up for work. I think that the keg w...
Read more