Some memories....

Good times, all too long ago.....

When I was 9 years old we, my family, lived in Northern Indiana; our home was in the middle of a twenty-four acre wooded area, complete with a small pond and large swampy area that became the breeding ground for millions of mosquitoes during the summer. I would often play in the large sandbox out behind the house by myself and during the summer I would come back inside in the evening covered with mosquito bites. However, the bits somehow constituted a trophy of sorts to my young mind “I have more mosquito bites than you!” sort of philosophy, the attention and pity I got sometimes was rewarding too I suppose.
I’ve always loved the woods, a place to escape and enjoy nature’s sights and sounds. I loved to sing in the woods, no one to laugh at the lyrics I would make up.
One day I was out in the woods, near one of my favorite places; an old tree had blown down during a past windstorm, its roots were pulled out of the ground leaving a large pit with one wall, the roots still clinging to the soil it used to be nourished by. It was far enough away from the house to be safe, or so I thought. After singing my made up songs for a few minutes, enjoy the freedom, then all at once one of my older sisters jumped out from behind a tree she had been hiding behind the whole time. Not only was I scared but I was immensely embarrassed that she had heard me singing the songs I held sacred, those I made up and sang from the heart with every once of my emotion completely transparent. Though I can’t recall what triumphant words she uttered or if she even laughed at me I still regarded it as a blatant attempt to ruin me entirely. After that incident I regarded her with even more dislike than normal, she deserved some as she was constantly trying to hurt me, in my eyes, but that incident had breached some line of conduct I had drawn and it was a very long time before I could forgive her and I always would search behind all the nearby trees afterwards to ward of any other attempts to embarrass me she might attempt, which she did many times in many ways over the years regardless of my defenses.

One chilly winter day my older brother and I were tramping around out in the swamp, the swamp would ice very nicely during the winter and was fun to play on. It would often freeze all the way through then would partly thaw and refreeze leaving thick “rotten ice” that was perfect for breaking and dragging to an island in the swamp to build a fort with foot thick ice walls. To keep us dry in the swamp we would wear fire boots passed on by our fireman uncles. They came up to our thighs and worked out great for keeping us semi-dry even though they were way too large for us.
Anyway, I decided to go walking over to a deeper part of the swamp, the ice was thick so I figured I would be fine walking on it, except I didn’t realize that the ice I was walking on was very rotten and was just waiting to break. It finally broke in at a place that was nearly 6 feet deep, far above my head back then, but I managed to cling to a tree that was nearby and stay out of the water. After yelling for a while I was thrilled to see that my older brother had heard me. We tried to decide what to do, he from the shore and me from clinging to the tree. The idea was that is we got something to lie across the ice and distribute the weight I would be able to make my way out over the yet unbroken ice. This theory, in its ingenuity, was probably the result of seeing many times Amy March rescued from the ice via a long fence post used to keep the ice from breaking further.
We didn’t have any fence posts too use and we needed something longer to get me to shore anyway so my brother dragged a 30 foot wood ladder down from the barn, about a tenth of a mile away, and laid it out on the ice. It worked perfectly and I was able to escape my icy prison clinging to the tree. I have never figured out how my 11 year old brother managed to drag the heavy wooden ladder all the way too the swamp. The next spring the ladder was still sitting in the water of the swamp, floating there and annoying my father every time we drove by” You guys need to get that ladder out of there and put it back in the barn” But I can’t recall we ever did, it’s probably still there today.