Uncle Smiley Goes Planting (1972)

[Music] busy get up and butc [Music] around [Music] let me about time Uncle Smiley took us on a we took some and some baby trees each of us looking forward to planting driving through the mountains in the early morning you could feel the air was clean riveri for w burned looking for the place where hiy [Music] [Music] not with our trees and buckets in our hands we set out across the man who land hiking hip know what [Music] lame but [Music] what's and what we all went hey have you ever planted a tree well we have we went reforesting but that's just a big word for planting trees in the woods where they used to grow Uncle Smiley heard there had been a forest fire in the state park so we all got together to go back in the woods where the fire had been and plant some baby trees you know for somebody who knows a lot about hiking Uncle sure had a pile of catastrophes along the way what's a catastrophe well catastrophe is when something really horrible goes wrong that you don't expect oh yeah Uncle Smiley had plenty of those in fact he had his first catastrophe right after we started out you see Uncle found this thing Tony thought it was a hornet's nest but Uncle was sure it was a beehive and he wanted to get some honey uncle said he knew all about bees and it wouldn't hurt them any if he just took a tiny bit of honey while they weren't looking boy I don't know how uncle could get past a bunch of bees or Hornets without being noticed e [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] uncle was so sorry and ashamed of what he' done to the Hornets home he was more worried about the little Hornets than he was about the sting he had gotten on his backside I guess maybe he thought it served him right after being so careless and inconsiderate in the first place well anyway we were just sitting there in the field feeling sorry for the Hornet when all of a sudden there was a wrestling in the bush next to us everybody got really scared at first and Uncle jumped up to protect us in case it was something dangerous then We snuck over real carefully to see what it was it was just a poor little rabbit with its paw caught in the big steel trap the little rabbit could have never gotten out of the Trap and if we hadn't have come along he would have just stayed there and starved to death Uncle went over to his napsack to get a pair of thick gloves to open the trap with he had to be real careful and quiet not to scare the bunny traps are such mean things they don't seem fair Uncle Smiley said that they were against law in the park anyway I can't understand how some people can hurt animals like that sort of like they don't think animals have any feelings or anything anything yeah they don't seem to realize that animals and people should be friends while we were hiking along the river some of the kids noticed some pretty flowers growing beside the trail yeah and they went over and started picking them I guess they didn't realize what they were doing Uncle Smiley came back to stop them he reminded them that if everybody did that pretty soon there wouldn't be any flowers for anybody to look at when they were hiking and there wouldn't be any place for honeybees to get food from either bees need flowers just like people everybody needs flowersize animals and people we're all [Music] related and many people still don't realize every form of life they know is [Music] related they all come together in a speci way to make the world rabbits and trees and flowers and bees in the grass upon the ground each has a job to do and lives in a c way big or small they T us all and each in a different [Music] way uncle had a bad habit of reading while he was hiking and that got him into an awful lot of trouble sometimes actually though it wasn't always his fault uncle was really mad when he saw what made him slip How could somebody be so stupid and lazy to just throw all that trash right there on the trail I don't know but Uncle sure must have been bugged [Music] the thing that got him the most were all those papers and trash from camos how could anybody be so stupid to take a picture of something beautiful and then throw the trash all over it to make it ugly [Music] we had to hike for a long way before we finally got to the place where the fire had been it was already getting late in the afternoon yeah we were just hiking up to the top of the hill when we suddenly saw it all of us were really surprised because we'd never seen where a real forest fire had been before except in the movies and on TV but it didn't really look like the fires in the movies either it looked different uncle Smiley told us that forest fires in the movies were usually fires that burn everything above the ground and were called Crown fires but lots of fires like this one were underground fires fires which meant that the roots burnt under the ground and the fire spread from root to root of each tree and those are hard fires to put out sometimes because you can't always see where the fire is going Uncle Smiley told us how forest fires kill a lot more than just trees theyy animals and birds that can't get out of the way fast enough get burned up too and all because somebody had forgotten left the campfire burning that was what started the whole thing off well we just got our shovels and trees ready and got set to go to work Uncle I just read a book about planting trees so we planed the first one to show us how to do it it's not really hard at all it's fun I set out to plant my little tree with the shovel I had brought me [Music] tree a little in a good for AE to be planted a sun and Rain sea and space to grow up tall an earth in which to spread it roots and catch the rain that and plant it in the proper season in the proper way and plant it in the proper place to grow up strong someday [Music] trees are more than fry scenery there are many things The Greenery gives us a tree is something special and we take for granted all the things that it us from the trees we all receive the gift of air we breathe so much air that fills the Earth begins with tiny leaves and trees will help the land retain the soil in which we s and help retain the water from the rains and melting [Music] snow you know it'll be nice to come back someday and see how big the trees have gotten I wonder how big they'll get real real real bit I'll [Music] bet well now with all our trees planted it was time to go home uncle said he'd studied the map and knew a faster way back by taking another Trail it didn't turn out that way though on the way uncle had another tastrophy the first one happened when we stopped along the trail look at a beautiful waterfall [Music] Uncle wasn't looking at what he was doing again and knocked his hat off into the water yeah it all started when he went to climb down the Rocks after it you know how much he loved that hat but boy was that a dumb thing to do I'll say we tried to stop him but he said he'd be all right you know Uncle Smiley w [Music] [Music] what were Uncle Smiley kept having trouble all the way back to the car everything kept happening to him yeah by the time we got back he could hardly [Music] walk I guess we should have carried him but golly Uncle Smiley is awful heavy you know he's heavier than almost anybody but he's nicer than anybody too even if he does make a lot of [Music] mistakes now [Music] we we took some shov and babyes each of us looking forward to [Music] planting we walk to the in the early morning the air was fresh and clean in the field of the for deep GRE he found the place where the wood bur earthed inside we found the place where hiy campire had not died [Music] [Music] n a