The River

By DARRICK KELHEIN

     We lived in Northern Indiana and our home was situated on the banks of the Saint Mary’s river. When my family first moved there I was eight years old. It was nineteen sixty one. This was a time that our country was really growing. It was a time when industry in the mid-west towns was prospering. There were many factories in the city of Fort Wayne. Both of my parents worked in some of those factories. Back then the pay was meager compared to today’s standards. If someone worked for twenty years for a company they could plan on a retirement and go living a decent life.

     As children of that era we weren’t subjected to the type of violence that we have today. That’s not to say that crime didn’t exist, it did. But as a kid these were no matters to you. We played outside all day when we were not in school. We were able to roam the streets usually within a couple of blocks.

     Where we lived was a dead end street that became an alley. This was our everyday playground. We played in the street without worrying about cars flying at some stupid speed.

     Behind our house was the Saint Mary’s River. It was known as one of the three rivers in our town. The river was for a place where I learned to fish. All of my friends that lived close by would and I would go fishing almost every day in the summers. This river was our favorite playground. When we weren’t fishing we were playing war and cowboys and Indians.

     The river was a place for discovery. We would find odd things floating in the river. We would find a lot of things on the ends of our fishing lines too. There had been a few times we would find row boats just floating down the river. It was like striking gold. We would play in the boats that we found and then when my dad would get home we tell of our find and he would report it to the police.

     The great thing about that was that if no one claimed it in thirty days we could keep it. That didn’t happen very much at all. Some of the best things that we would find would be a bicycle. Sometimes there were ten speed Schwinn’s. I never really wanted to tell dad but then I would imagine what it would be like if someone had stolen by bike. I knew that I would like it back too.

     On the river we could go one direction and it would take us toward some of our friend’s homes. They too lived on the river. If we continued along that direction we would come to the Bluffton Road Bridge. This bridge was at the busiest intersection in town. We would play under the bridge. We could climb in between the columns that supported the bridge. If we crossed to the other side we were close to Hall’s, a local restaurant. In the same place was a great bowling alley where we all first learned to bowl. Also in this plaza was for time was the largest movie theater. Behind that was a super market and a store called Kings, it was very much like a K-Mart only without the Blue Light specials.

     If we had climbed straight through the bridge we would come out into Foster Park. Foster Park was one of the biggest parks in the city. It was beautiful with flowers always blooming and lots of trees. The park followed along the river. We would walk the trails and come to a playground with swings and monkey bars and a stone drinking fountain that we loved to play in.

    As we continued along the trail on the river bank we would pass pavilions with people sitting and having picnics. Sometimes there would be couples kissing and holding hands. There was a drive that followed parallel to the river and the trail. On the other side of the drive was an eighteen hole golf course. A few of us learned to play there. As we followed along the trail we came to a narrow foot bridge that would take us across the river. This would be one of our favorite spots to play. This was where the men were separated from the boys.

      We would climb up on the handrails, they were only about four inches wide, and walk across, balancing ourselves with no hands. We had got to be so good at this that it was the only way for us to cross the river.

     As we followed along the trail it would take us through a wooded area where we would play and try to hide from one another and then jump out scaring the wits out of each other. Then continuing along the trail we would come out at the back of the park where there were three baseball diamonds. Here to we learned to play organized baseball.

     Making this journey to the park and back following the river would usually take all day. We always knew how much time we had before our parents would get home.

     On other days we would go the other direction along the river. Within minutes we would be deep in a wooded area. Other than the park this would be our second favorite place to play.

     There would be vines hanging from the trees and one of the best ones was on a tree right next to the river. We would swing out across the water. Never meaning to fall in, the edge of the river bank was a murky black mud. It smelled nasty. Our mothers would have a fit if we came home as we sometimes did smelling and looking like we had been tarred. We would play like we were Tarzan trying to swing from tree to tree.

     Just past the woods was a set of railroad tracks. We would climb the high hill to the tracks and we would play there too. We would find half used flares and we would try to light them with matches. Once in a while we would get them to light.

     We would play chicken with the trains sometimes of course we thought we were invincible. A few times we all had the crap scared out of us. We would sometimes lay pennies on the rail and then try to find them after the trains would go by. We only ever found but a few that had been flatten and odd shaped.

     Times weren’t always fun along the river. Sometimes we would run into some kids older than we were. This almost always meant that they were bullies. The river taught us another lesson, how to fight. You could always count on a few of us ending up in the river.

     Sammy was the neighborhood dog. None of us owned him. Sammy could swim across the river and back and almost always came along with us when we were playing. Some of the times that we knew we were in trouble with these bullies, Sammy would show up out of nowhere and scare off some of the older kids.

     I think Sammy loved playing on the river as much as we did. He could play fetch and would chase a stick that one of us would throw half way across the river. Sammy was one of us.

     The river was the first place that I learned to skip stones. We would see who could skip the most skips as well as who could skip a stone furthest.

     When fall came we would rake the leaves in my yard and dump them over the river bank. The part of the river bank we lived on was high off the river. After we finished raking the leaves onto the river bank we would challenge each other as to who could jump the longest down the river bank.

     We would get a good running start and right as we got to the edge of the bank we would leap as high and with as much force as we could muster and fly through the air to land into the pillow like softness of the leaves.

     When winter came the river would freeze over and the scenery was a beautiful sight. Most of us had ice skates and we were warned of not to skate on the river. But still some of us would chance it. One time I went along and we were having a great time when suddenly a crack in the ice happened. We skated as fast as we could, trying to out run the crack just barely making it across to the edge of the river bank.

     In the spring the ice would melt and we would watch and pretend that the huge ice chunks were glaciers swiftly flowing by. Then almost every spring the river would rise and flood over the banks that were low to the river. With the arrival of spring meant that soon we would have our playground back and we would soon seek out the mysteries that the river had left behind for us to discover.