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    The Chicago Adventure
    The Chicago Adventure
    The Chicago Adventure
    Ebook96 pages2 hours

    The Chicago Adventure

    By Paul Hutchens

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The tales and travels of the Sugar Creek Gang have passed the test of time, delighting young readers for more than fifty years. Great mysteries for kids with a message, The Sugar Creek Gang series chronicles the faith-building adventures of a group of fun-loving, courageous Christian boys. Your kids will be thrilled, chilled, and inspired to grow as they follow the legendary escapades of Bill Collins, Dragonfly, and the rest of the gang as they struggle with the application of their Christian faith to the adventure of life. The Sugar Creek Gang's adventure to Chicago is full of ups and downs. It starts with an airplane ride over a storm. The adventure includes museum visits, rescue mission ministry, performing on the radio at Moody Bible Institute, and an elevated train ride. A fight between Jim and Bob Till lands one of them in the hospital in critical condition. Join the Gang as they learn again that the only way to heaven is through Jesus.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMoody Publishers
    Release dateJun 1, 1997
    ISBN9781575677392
    The Chicago Adventure
    Author

    Paul Hutchens

    The late PAUL HUTCHENS, one of evangelical Christianity's most prolific authors, went to be with the Lord on January 23, 1977. Mr. Hutchens, an ordained Baptist minister, served as an evangelist and itinerant preacher for many years. Best known for his Sugar Creek Gang series, Hutchens was a 1927 graduate of Moody Bible Institute. He was the author of 19 adult novels, 36 books in the Sugar Creek Gang series, and several booklets for servicemen during World War II. Mr. Hutchens and his wife, Jane, were married 52 years. They had two children and four grandchildren.

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    • 5/5
      The Sugar Creek Gang gets to go on an airplane ride for their very 1st time. Their destination: Chicago! Problem is, Dragonfly gets air sick or something and ended up swallowing his lunch backwards. Then, when the Gang tries to tell him what he did he says he did nothing like that. Thankfully we have better airplanes now. Anyway, the Gang gets to go through museum, ride an escalator, preform on the radio, and go to a rescue mission ministry. Only, they soon realize they aren't alone at the mission and trouble begins. Big Jim and his worst enemy get into a fight and one of them are sent to the hospital with little chance of living.I always think this book is really neat. I like life and death situations like this one, and I like how it ended.

    Book preview

    The Chicago Adventure - Paul Hutchens

    WILSON

    1

    Roaring along through the sky 5,000 feet high—which is almost a mile—and at 400 miles an hour was the most thrilling experience of my life up to that time.

    Well, come to think of it, I guess riding on the waves of a mad lake, with nothing to hold me up except a life-preserver vest, was really the most thrilling as well as the craziest. As I told you in my last story about the Sugar Creek Gang, being tossed around by those big angry waves was like being scared half to death riding on a Tilt-A-Whirl at a county fair.

    I had thought maybe an airplane ride would be even worse. It wasn’t at all, but, boy, oh boy, was it different!

    Of course none of us thought that Dragonfly, who is the balloon-eyed member of our gang, would get a bad case of vertigo and have to have the stewardess give him first aid to bring him back to normal again. In fact, the pilot actually had to come down to a lower altitude before Dragonfly was all right.

    That’s getting too far ahead of the story though, and I’ll have to wait a chapter or two before I explain what vertigo means.

    I’m going to be a doctor when I grow up, you know, and that’s why I’m learning the names of all the medical terms I can while I’m little, which I’m not actually anymore. I’m already ten and three-fourths years old and have red hair and—but it wouldn’t be fair to tell you about myself before introducing the rest of the gang.

    The Sugar Creek Gang is the most important gang in the whole country, maybe. Anyway, we have more twisted-up adventures than most anybody else in the world, and so far they have all come out all right.

    Maybe I’d better take time right now to introduce the members of the gang to you—and to explain why we were taking an airplane ride and where to.

    You remember that Circus, who is our acrobat and who also has an acrobatic voice that can climb the musical scale even better than he can climb a tree, had been invited to a big Chicago church to sing over the radio on Thanksgiving Day. Well, the date was changed, and he was going to sing at what is called a youth rally on Labor Day weekend in September instead, and all the gang was going with him.

    Little Jim, the littlest and the grandest guy in the gang, and maybe in the whole world, had to go with him to accompany him on the piano anyway, he being an expert pianist. So, of course, we all wanted to go along, and our parents had said we could—that is, they had finally said we could.

    It took my brownish-gray-haired mom quite awhile to make up her mind to let me go, and I had to wash dishes every noon for all the rest of the summer just to show my appreciation. I even had to do them as if I liked to—while I didn’t, although I was beginning to have sense enough not to say so.

    The day Mom finally made up her mind was one of the hottest days we’d had that year. I actually never had felt such tired weather in all my life. You could lie right down after eating a dinner of fried chicken, noodles, buttered mashed potatoes, and raspberry shortcake, and go to sleep in less than a minute. You could stay asleep all the way through dishwashing time—that is, if Mom didn’t get tired of waiting for you to come and help, and call you.

    You could even sleep better if you knew that, after the dishes were done, there were potatoes to hoe and beans to pick. But if you happened to be going swimming, or if there was going to be a gang meeting, you weren’t even sleepy.

    That afternoon there were beans to be picked, so as soon as I had finished my shortcake, I asked to be excused. Dad said yes and let me get up and go into our living room, which was the coolest room in the house, and lie down on the floor until Mom had the dishes ready.

    Mom’s floor was always clean, but even at that she always made me lay a paper on it before I could put a pillow down to sleep on. I hadn’t any more than lain down, it seemed, when her voice came sizzling in from the kitchen and woke me up.

    I didn’t like to wake up any more than I did any other time. I’d been dreaming the craziest dream. Anyway, it seemed crazy at the time, and anybody would have laughed at it. I never realized, while I was dreaming, that something was going to happen almost like that in real life after we got to Chicago.

    I dreamed that I was already a doctor and that I was in a hospital with a lot of nurses in white all around. Also, all around and overhead, airplane engines were droning. One of the members of the Sugar Creek Gang had eaten too much raspberry shortcake and had a stomachache, and the only thing that would help him was for me, the doctor, to give him a blood transfusion. In my dream I was pouring raspberry juice into one of the veins of his arm through a little tin funnel, and he was crying and saying, I don’t like to wash dishes! I don’t want to!

    That was when Mom called me to wake up and come to help her.

    I woke up halfway at first, and I was as cross as anything, which any doctor will tell you is natural for anybody when he gets waked up without wanting to be.

    But my dad, who is a Christian and knows the Bible from A to Z—and not only says he is a Christian, but actually acts like one at home as well as in church—he says the Bible says, Be angry, and yet do not sin. And that means if somebody or something makes you angry, you ought to tie up your anger, the way people do a mad bull, and not let it run wild.

    Dad says a boy’s temper under control is like a fire in a stove, useful for many things. But when it isn’t controlled, it’s like a fire in a haymow or a forest. Some people actually die many years sooner than they ought to because they get mad so many times and stay mad so long it makes them sick.

    Maybe my dad tells me these things especially because I’m red-haired and maybe am too quick-tempered. He says if I don’t lose my temper all the time, but keep it under control, it’ll help me do many important things while I’m growing up.

    So, as angry as I was for being waked up and for having to do dishes, I tied up my anger as quick as I could. I didn’t say a word or grumble or anything. I didn’t even frown.

    By the way, do you know how many muscles of your face have to work to make a fierce-looking frown? Maybe you wouldn’t believe it, but it actually takes sixty-five, our teacher says. And it takes only thirteen muscles to make a smile. So it’s a waste of energy to go around frowning when you’re already tired and lazy.

    While on the way from the living room to the kitchen to help Mom, I remembered something Dad had told me one day when I was going around our barnyard with a big scowl on my very freckled face. This is what he said: "Bill Collins, you’re making the same face while you’re a

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