Dad says we look like Joe Louis and Tony Gallento after a prize fight.  It's the poison oak.  Yesterday we nearly itched to death.  Our eyes were closed, our faces were round, and our fists and arms were like clubs.  Mom spread on lots of beat-up egg white with baking soda and the swelling has gone down a lot.  But we're going to get rich!

Emily, let me tell you the story.  Day before yesterday we rode our bikes up from our school, Muttonhead College, to the Dunagan School to play baseball.  It's a little school with only one room that sits along Abiqua Creek up in the hills.  Our school is quite a bit more modern and has TWO classooms and a coatroom and janior's closet.

On our ball daimond we have regular sawdust in gunnysacks for the bases.  They have a stump for first base, a bush for second base, and a hole in the ground for third.  A piece of bark is home plate.  They did have the regular number of kids for the infield but the teacher and all of the other kids in the school played in the outfield.  Most of the bushes on the ball diamond are poison oak.  I know what it looks like!

After winning the ball game (I think the word is "vanquishing"), we got on our bikes and headed back for Muttonhead College and home.  My brother, Harold, put our family's ball mitt around his handlebars.  The bugs were bad and some got in my eyes.  But we are going to get rich!

Listen to what we discovered.  On the way home as we were riding along between puffs Harold said, "Do you remember that . . . great big rock . . . up in the thicket . . . on our hill?  . . . I'm positive it's the doorway...to a rich Indian cave...or pirate cave...When we get home, . . . let's take Dad's crowbar . . . and move it . . . from the doorway."

I, of course, agreed and we rode home as fast as we could.  We hardly had time to rub the bugs out of our eyes before going to look for a crowbar.  

Dad wasn't around to ask, but we were sure he wouldn't care if we borrowed it, especially when he heard what we were about to find.  Together we managed to carry it up the hill and through the hazelnut and poison oak brush and right up to the rock.  I pushed and Harold pried.  Then he pushed and I pried.  That rock wouldn't move!  The Indians or pirates that buried their treasures there must have sealed it down with a whole lot of airplane glue, or maybe it was pitch they used back in those days.  We didn't feel at all dizzy, like when we are working on our model airplanes, so it must have been pitch.

Finally, we decided we needed to do some more planning.  Harold said, "Maybe Lawrence McCracken will loan us a stick of his dynamite.  Let's leave the crowbar here and think about it a while.  Anyway, my eyes and face are getting a little itchy."

He was looking a little puffy around the eyes.  Sort of like mine felt.

Emmy, if you'd like to get rich too, you can go back with us in a few days.