A walk in the snow...

Sometimes my memory is like a view along a country road,that is enjoying a quiet evening snowfall.I think I can see what I left down there in the valley,so very long ago, but the images are fading more as each moment is spent.

I think my eleventh birthday was hardly past, so my level of awareness of responsibility was not strong. What was strong was my desire for adventurous excursions,as I had begun to read about in The Glenside Free Library.

Just last summer, Blake an older boy(maybe twelve)in the neighborhood, had shown Michael Dooley,Allen Wade,and myself how to walk along a hardly used rail line to get to "Allen's Pond".

That may have been the summer of 1950, or around there...It's cloudy. But no matter,Allen's Pond was a boy's wonderland!The area consisted of about one hundred acres of a naturalists dream scape.We would enter off of Church Road,just past Paper Mill. A hint of a drive way was the entry through a clump of Mulberry trees opening up onto a field of waist high grass in mid-summer.This was a sure fire area to bring home some wood ticks from, especially in the fall months...

Then gleeful hearts racing on would arrive at another who knows what kind of tree line which almost hid a small, slow flowing brook.Just across the stream was a gently rising mound of earth, sprinkled with older trees, which were few in number but very tall. Most leaned at a slight angle towards the large expanse of dark green water known as Allen's Pond.

The lake was similar in shape to a raggedy figure eight. It was fed by a very small rill that entered on the far left top side from the upland that may have been called Rockledge...In that summer I learned that the lake had only one area that was more than six feet deep. And that was at the right hand waist of the Eight. The greater part was only three to five feet deep...

Now it was almost February and although I did not have a sled of my own,I had managed to take advantage of the frequent white blessings of that winter by sharing the Christmas presents of a couple of playmates.On that Saturday morning I had gotten Allen to come out of his nice warm house; with his new sled to try the days old snow up on Enfield's Kingston Road hill.Now Allen was a couple of years younger than me and on the thin side,so looking back with a parent's eyes I know now that coming out with me was not in his best interest...

At the top of Kingston we met up with Ten year old Tommy Myers. His father was a college graduate who was in sales for a big paint company.Although Tommy's family was obviously better off than mine, I was never jealous of him because his father was such a strict disciplinarian with his belt.And Tommy was always doing something to arouse has Daddy's Virginian anger.Where as my father did not know the meaning of corporal punishment...

Boring was not a familiar word to any of us,albeit Kingston soon was too routine.As I had been to Allen's Pond some days ago, before the current fall of six inches had come down,I remembered an Idea that had occurred then.

About five of us had marveled at the thick ice we could slide around on our shoes with. And then there was the ashes of bonfires on the shores,we imagined the older kids had left from ice skating parties(I don't think the term " Teen Anger " was extant yet?).The ashes fired our imaginations, mine any way... At the upper right of the Eight,a steep hill of perhaps fifty feet ran down to the waters edge,or in this case the ice.It entered my mind that one could sail down the hill and continue far across the ice!Wow! How great would that be!

So the plan was easy to sell to Tommy,Allen just said "We are?" As we were already in Enfield, we slogged over to Papermill and then took a right on Church.As our boots mushed on to the high grass field,fat flakes began to drift slowly down on to us...As we crossed the gray white expanse,Allen allowed as how it wasn't too cold? Tommy and I didn't really hear him,we were just impatient to see the ice...

Struggling over the rise, we found ourselves in a fog of disappointment.The ice was covered by six inches of mushy snow.The kind that left foot prints right down to the surface of the ice.The full realization of how useless it would be for our plans did not occur until we reached the waist of the eight. However being kids we thought we would try it anyway.We found it was too hard to clime straight up the steep hill, so we thought we would use the low ground to the left of the Eight to circle around the more gradual slope.As we started for the left, we were surprised to hear muffled cracking sounds racing away towards the middle of the lake...

Now the snow flakes had grown tiny and they were flying along out of the North West, Allen said in a fairly loud voice "I'm going home now!" And Tommy was right behind him, as they pulled their sleds to the close upper left of the Eight. Allen was smart already, and by the time he was seventeen I enjoyed being out smarted by him all of the time.But now I was in the middle of the Eight, and I thought I'll just shoot off to the right here ...

At about thirteen feet from shore, the deepest part of the lake, I stepped off into a shockingly cold abyss!In the time it takes to read "What?!!",I found myself submerged in a nether world.Then my head was in the growing wind again. I breathed it in,and as I doggy paddled towards the bank I felt the strangest sensation.It was heat flowing out of my body, like electric current...I felt ice under the snow in front of me and I tried to climb up on it. When it collapsed somehow I knew that was my avenue of escape from the ever increasing numbness of mind and body.Tommy and Allen tried to get help, but just let me say it wasn't in the cards.They were true friends and did not abandon me as fear would have some children do.In stead they encouraged me from the shore, as I through myself up onto the thin ice again and again, until I could clutch the earth once more.

The three of us were almost mute, as I emptied the water out of my boots.Then Tommy said something about making a fire,but I instinctively wanted to go home when injured in any serious way.Now that I was out of the water I didn't feel to terribly cold, and we started off towards warmth in the wind and the snow.When we reached Paper Mill Road Allen complained about how tired and cold he was, So I said
"Sit on your sled " and I pulled him the rest of the way to our Lyster Road.

I snuck in the back door, thinking it's lucky Mom is upstairs,as she called out to me "Is that you Raymond?"I can't remember if I replied...But I slipped down into the basement and took my clothes off.It seemed so odd how my leather jacket and my dungarees sort of stood up by themselves like an igloo... Next I sneaked up to the bathroom with a nice hot bath in mind.But before I could run the water I heard my mothers screams reverberating from the basement!

In those days the local Doctor would actually come to your house, and give you lot's of needles and a tongue lashing for being so stupid for walking in the snow like that!


***** Epilogue *****

Allen Wade grew up to be a handsome,tall blond young man who raced winning Hot Rods. He was clever enough to serve in The united States Navy Atomic Submarine Service.He married, and mustered out of the Navy in California.He bought himself a new Chevy and forgot new car tires weren't designed for speed...Allen was another friend that I still mourn.

Tommy Myers shared some crazy teenage adventures with me,however we took divergent paths in adult life and I kind of lost track of him.I think he did marry,after at least one near fatal auto accident in his early twenty's.And knowing his Dad , I'm sure he was a college graduate by the time I got my Honorable Discharge from the U.S.Air Force.

The above was not my last walk in the snow, and to this day, I make every effort to avoid being cold.....