When I was young I used to hike through the English countryside as a member of the U.K. Youth Hostelling Association. After a good day's tramp, my friend Pam and I flung ourselves onto our cot beds in the hostel dormitory and, while English country mice steadily chomped their way through everything in our ruck-sacks, we vied with each other to think up the worst possible shaggy dog story.
Are you familiar with shaggy dog stories? They are very, very long tales. Indeed, the essence of telling them is to make them as long and detailed as you can before you finally reach the punch line. Well, not so much punch line, perhaps. More fizzle line, which makes them delightful for telling round the campfire.
Here, to give you the general idea, and in my own words (they should always be told in your own words), is the very first shaggy dog story. It explains how such stories received the name.
Once upon a time, way up in the very north of Canada, there lived a trapper named Sam. He was a poor man, but a great reader, who shared his hard and lonely life with several well-thumbed adventure yarns and a large shaggy dog called Rover.
Now Rover wasn't much of a dog as purebreds go, his pedigree having taken many a turn for the worse. You'd be hard put to say whether he was mostly terrier or wolfhound or huskie. But he was big and likable and, because of the cold climate, had a really exceptionally thick shaggy coat.
One day, as Sam tramped along his trap lines, he called in at another trapper's hut. The hut was empty but, on the table, was a newspaper. Not a very up-to-the-minute newspaper, but a lot more up-to-date than anything Sam had read lately. So he fell upon it eagerly and read it from cover to cover. And there, on the back page, an item caught his eye. It said that, way down in the southern part of the country, an eccentric millionaire was offering half his fortune if only someone would bring him his dying wish, a really shaggy dog.
This piece of news had a startling effect on Sam. Here at last was a way to make his fortune. It was obvious! No more struggling through bitter winters. No more loneliness and hardship. He would simply head south with big, oh-so-shaggy Rover and the ailing millionaire would be a happy man. And so, of course, would Sam.
Carefully he tore the item from the newspaper and placed it in his innermost pocket. Whistling for the dog, he hurried to his own cabin and there made preparations for his journey. It would be a long haul through some of the worst of the winter months, but he could do it!
And so, with packsack and snowshoes, and Rover on a makeshift lead, he headed south.
(At this point you should add your own horrific tales of icy crevasses, blizzards, starvation, polar bears, thin ice, thick snow- anything to make the journey as difficult and as courageous as possible.)
Weeks passed as Sam and Rover, footsore, frostbitten and fuddled from lack of food, fought their way nearer and nearer to the millionaire's deathbed. Would they find his house? Would he have found another dog? Would he still be alive? Urgently, Sam made inquiries at each trading post or small homestead he passed.
"My word, that's a shaggy dog you have there!" folks remarked whenever he stopped.
As he drew nearer to civilization, he learned with great relief that the search for a dog continued and that the millionaire's mansion lay at the top of a steep hill just visible on the horizon.
Up they climbed, tired and tattered, arriving eventually at the huge oak-studded front door. Raising a weatherbeaten hand, Sam tugged at the wrought iron bell-pull. Distantly the bell clanged. The door opened and a butler stood in the doorway.
"I've come about the shaggy dog story in this newspaper," said Sam, carefully drawing out the clipping from his innermost pocket and offering Rover's lead to the manservant.
Silently the butler withdrew with the dog. Sam listened to his footsteps cross the vast hall and ascend the massive circular staircase. He waited patiently on the doorstep, dreaming of the luxury soon to be his. At last the butler reappeared. Solemnly he handed back the dog.
"Not shaggy enough," he said, and shut the door.
Well, yes, that's it folks, and now you know what a shaggy dog story is. Here's a potted one for you to embellish before you toss the idea around among your boys one firelit night after a long day's hike...
A young Scout was traveling on a long train trip across Canada. Sitting across from him was an older man, very neatly and precisely dressed. Across his knees he carried a briefcase upon which he nervously drummed his fingers. Since he looked to be rather an angry sort of man, the boy didn't like to start a conversation.
Presently the man opened the briefcase and took out two paper napkins, a pocket knife and an apple. Carefully he peeled and cored the apple. He placed all the peelings on one of the two napkins and folded it into a neat parcel. Then he moved his briefcase to one side, stood up, and walked to the end of the coach. By craning his neck, the boy was able to watch him move out onto the little platform at the end of the car and throw the parcel of peel onto the tracks.
When the man returned he dusted his hands, sat down and lifted the briefcase back up across his knees. He picked up the peeled and cored apple, carefully cut it into thin slices, placed the slices onto the second napkin and made a similar neat parcel. To the boy's amazement he then repeated his routine. He moved to the end of the coach and threw the parcel on the line. When he returned, he picked up his briefcase, took out two more napkins and an orange which he began to peel... (Now you spin out the story, having the man take all kinds of fruit, one at a time, from his case, peel each piece and throw away first the peel and then the fruit itself )
At last the young Scout could contain himself no longer and simply had to ask the man what he was doing.
"I'm making a fruit salad," said the man.
"Then why do you keep throwing it away?" the boy asked.
"I should think that was obvious," snapped the man. "I'm throwing it away because I don't like fruit salad!"
Well, okay. Groan if you like, but Pam and I developed quite a reputation on the hostel circuit for the length, the detail, the sheer nerve of some of our shaggiest tales. Let me end with my personal favourite and, when you've finished throwing rocks in this direction, why not send us some of yours?
There once was a sailor returning to his ship. Just as he approached the edge of the dock, he slipped and fell into the water between ship and dockside. As he hit the water, the ship began to swing toward the harbour wall, and he would have been crushed to death had not a little man, with great presence of mind, thrown a rope and hauled him to safety.
"Whew, thanks!" said the sailor. "You saved my life. Tell me, is there anything I can do for you in return?"
"Well actually," said the man, "there is something. I'd dearly like to work aboard ship and, in fact, I was just on my way to look for a job when I saw you in the water. If you could put in a word for me. I'd be greatly obliged."
"Done!" said the sailor. He took the little man on board and tracked down his immediate superior. "This man saved my life just now, and he really would very much like to have a job on the ship."
"Well, I don't know," said the Petty Officer. "We have a full ship's complement, but I'll certainly put in a word on his behalf to my superior. What does he do?"
"I'm a Gloop Maker," said the little man eagerly.
Not wishing to appear ignorant in front of his subordinate, the Petty Officer didn't like to ask what exactly a Gloop Maker was, so he went to see the Chief Petty Officer.
"This man saved the life of one of my seamen," he told the Chief. "Do you think we could find him a job aboard? He's a Gloop Maker."
Not wishing to appear ignorant in front of his subordinate, the Chief asked the Warrant Officer, who asked the Sub-Lieutenant and so on, all the way through the chain of command until the request reached the Captain. After congratulating the little man, the Captain, not wanting to appear ignorant, named him ship's Gloop Maker and ordered the Supply Officer to provide whatever materials were necessary for work to commence.
The little man asked for a strong block and tackle fitted up on the afterdeck, a small stool, a hammer and chisel, a portable furnace, a lump of iron measuring four metres by four metres, several kilograms of copper and several more of silver.
As the ship sailed, the little man set his stool alongside the huge chunk of iron, lit the furnace and began to melt down the copper and silver. Then, with much hammering and chiseling, he began to add blobs of copper and curlicues of silver to the sides of the lump of iron.
Each day crew members stopped and stared at the wondrously strange thing taking shape at the ship's stern. But not wishing to appear ignorant, nobody asked the Gloop Maker what he actually was making.
"Coming along nicely," said the captain as he made his daily rounds.
"Any idea precisely when it will be-ah-ready?"
"Oh yes," said the man. "At 1400 hrs. on July 15 we shall sail through the centre of the Bermuda Triangle. That's when it'll be ready, and I'd like the crew assembled on deck at that hour, if you please, sir."
And so, the great day dawned, the men assembled and the Gloop Maker put down his hammer and chisel. Proudly he stood back and indicated that the block and tackle should be lowered onto his masterpiece, whose copper and silver curlicues gleamed in the sun. Carefully he directed it to be lifted from the deck and swung round until it hung over the sea at the ship's stern.
"Ready, steady, go!" he cried, and he cut it free. And, as it fell into the deep blue waters of the Atlantic, it went, "GLOOP!"
Last edited: February 22, 2004
The NetWoods Virtual Campsite, Steve Tobin, Campmaster