THE FLIP SIDE

How to start campfire, cook breakfast and never leave your sleeping bag

It's an amazing feat to start a campfire and get coffee and breakfast going without ever crawling out of a sleeping bag.

That was a trick my buddy Hog Ears and I pulled off with regularity during overnight float trips on our beloved Ozark streams.

We were backwoods bachelors during our misspent youth, sharing a little cabin out in the boons in the middle of a thousand acres. The nearest neighbor was a mile away. A crystal clear creek flowed right through our front yard for swimming.

Rent was a whopping $50 a month. When I got Hog Ears to move in with me that cut it to $25.

We loved canoeing and so did Larry, Hog Ears' boss at the state fish hatchery. One weekend Larry and his wife invited us to come along on an overnight float trip with their regular group of river runner. They did overnight floats just about every weekend, mainly on streams in southwest Missouri.

The trip went well and we had a blast. After four or five expeditions with them we were part of the family -- all married couples except for Hog Ears and me, the token bachelors.

I always wondered why they liked having us along, but they did. We were the only ones who fished while the rest of the group enjoyed paddling and socializing. We were always a half-mile behind trying to get one last bite before we hit the gravel bar and set up camp with the group.

We might be slackers on the river, but in camp we were chief firewood gatherers and helped with the other camp chores.

Not only that, Hog Ears was always good for a laugh. One night around the campfire, Hog Ears told a joke that was of questionable taste. The men blushed and the women howled.

I figured that was the end of our float trips with this bunch, but they kept inviting us back. This is where we learned to work our morning magic.

Larry was your typical Type A. He had to be the first one up every morning. The fire had to be just so and the coffee just right. Bacon had to be crisp, but not burned. Larry was our expedition leader and liked being in charge.

Some of our floats were during winter. It was painful to crawl out of that sleeping bag when it's 20 degrees. Hog Ears and I would wake up in our frost covered tent, yawn and chat. That always woke Larry. He'd leap out of his tent like burnt toast and start the campfire.

It only took us a couple of trips to refine our little trick. We'd wake up in the morning and start chit-chatting in our tent, maybe a little louder than normal. That would roust out Larry, then Hog Ears and I would go back to sleep. Forty winks later when we were ready to get up, the campfire would be crackling, coffee perking, with eggs and hashbrowns sizzling right along.

Now Hog Ears lives in Alaska, but that's one of the stories we always tell when we get together. Not only were we backwoods bachelors, but magicians to boot.

Flip Putthoff can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @NWAFlip

Sports on 07/30/2015

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