For Uncle Ken
This is what happened.
Back in 1978, a handsome man named Kenneth Robert, who managed a cotton mill in Janesville WI, wanted to go out and enjoy nature. So, he went into the deep woods in Northern Wisconsin and set up camp for a few nights. He didn’t take any luxury items except his cassette player with a few classical music recordings all set to play. More importantly, he also took a 12-pack of 
beer.
On the second night of his seclusion, Kenneth got sleepy early because of all the walleye fish he ate and the beer he drank. (Of course, being the outdoorsman, he already knew how to bait, catch, and scale his prized fish). So, after he sloshed down another cold can of beer he kept in the stream, Kenneth decided to unroll the sleeping bag and call it a night.
Minutes later his bladder told him ‘not yet’. So, Kenneth got out of the sleeping bag with his trusty source of light, whom he affectionately called Grace, and crunched his way to a not so nearby tree to remove the beer from his bladder. After breaking the silence with his breaking wind ( fart), he went back to his sleeping bag. To help Kenneth snooze he deftly pulled out a classical cassette recording and put it into his player.
He listened and softly closed his little Kenneth eyelids.
As the spooky music slowly began to play, it reminded Kenneth of old-time radio programs such as 
. He listened a bit more intensely as his imagination began to take hold. He heard something: a sound of snapping twigs in the distance out in the darkness.
Hmm, probably creatures of the night”, he muttered.
Nonetheless, he turned up the volume just a bit as the orchestra plays more eerily.
More snaps of twigs are heard….no, these are breaking branches out in the distance.
He listened more intently with a quickening heart. The snapping breaking sounds continued. Are they getting closer? Are they increasing in frequency? Maybe, maybe not. Certainly, the music is slowly building in intensity. Kenneth’s sleepiness was replaced by anxiety. What are mere minutes now seem everlasting. He turned the symphony volume up but to no avail. The stress increased for the time being. Eventually his eyelids got the better of him as they began to close again.
As if on cue, the beer bladder kicked in, but more urgently, the sounds of children laughing filled the distance.
Laughing children?
Kenneth glanced at his glow-in-the-dark clock. 2:20am. The sunrise was many miles away. Laughing children? Children laughing in the deep northern Wisconsin woods?
Nah.
As the symphony built to its crescendo, Kenneth heard footsteps coming closer to his tent. He was terrified to peek but somehow mustered up the nerve (or was it that his bladder really needed to be emptied?)
Suddenly, his tent began to shake violently as the laughing children taunted him while running past.
The laughter and running feet disappeared into the deep woods again. Kenneth’s breathing remained erratic.
What the PBR is going on? he wondered.
Of all the times to forget his hunting rifle.
Would he have fired his weapon at laughing children in the dark?
Eventually, his breathing relaxed. He slowly layed back down but there was no way he was going to fall asleep, so he turned the cassette over to begin the third movement of this never-ending symphony.
As the orchestra conductor tapped the podium (obviously a recorded live performance) the music began again with eerie strings.
The deep woods had a strong silence.
Kenneth’s tired body started its natural sleep cycle again. Minutes later after he begins his beer snore, Kenneth is startled awake again by the sounds of snapping twigs and breaking of branches echoing in the distance. (He must have slept longer than usual because the fourth and final movement of the symphonic orchestra was building to the final climax as if keeping to the rhythm of the snapping and breaking.) Then all sounds abruptly stopped giving way to nothing…
not even night creatures of the haunted forest.
Kenneth’s sense of hearing was now very acute. If he was under oath in a court of law Kenneth avows of hearing the whisper of butterfly wings in Brazil.
Hmm.
He slowly got into a seated position and began to unzip the sleeping bag. The sound of the unzipping zipper was akin to a locomotive rumbling through the countryside.
He then heard a very faint sound of a man talking. He listened sharply.
Nothing. Imagination.
The voice was heard once more. Was it coming from the outside?
Sshhh“, he whispered to nobody listening.
Dead silence again. He plugged his nose to quiet the inhale and exhale. The soft voice was followed by a
<snap> and a
Crap!
…from inside the tent.
Kenneth instinctively popped his upper body erect to detect the location of the voice. A mental image of a very frightened
with eyes the size of saucers came to his mind.
A moth bumped into the exterior of the tent causing Kenneth to scream like a little girl.
The voice inside the tent, however, spoke a bit louder as if trying to get the attention of Kenneth. He leaned towards the cassette player. Yes, it’s the player talking to him. The conductor? Yes, it’s the conductor talking to Kenneth.
Kenneth, Kenneth, he whispered,
Help me.
With what? Kenneth asked with an octave higher trembling voice (think Don Knotts again).
I broke my baton. Go tell one of the children snapping the twigs to get me another one.
Uh, ok?
A twig suddenly cracked; startling Kenneth awake.
It’s morning.
He peeked outside the tent opening only to see several empty cans of beer. He remembered leaving them out there because he didn’t want the smell of stale beer inside the tent.
A relaxed Kenneth exited the tent with a heavy sigh of relief. As he stretched his body towards heaven he turned around and saw a 10-year-old kid standing staring at him. The kid extended his arm holding a twig.
Hey Mr. Kenneth, here’s the baton the conductor was looking for.
The End…or was it!
Only
(Queue scary music)