submarine

As the snow continued to melt that day, Tonoloway Creek filled with muddy water. The creek had been frozen until then, so the brown flood water flowed over the ice. Eventually the flood water started breaking up the ice and large slabs were floating down the creek, along with branches, tree trunks, and whatever else happened to be in the way. The creek had overflowed its banks and flooded the long field which was right below our house. I had never seen a flood like that, and it was a very impressive sight. Our house was high enough that we didn't have to worry about being flooded, but close enough to appreciate the power of the rushing water. When we went to bed that night, the creek had stopped rising, and had just begun to recede.
When we woke up the next morning, we saw something that seemed very strange to us. Way down at the other end of the field, at the tree line where it ended, there was a rather large whitish thing that seemed to be resting against the trees. It looked like it might have been about four or five feet high and fifteen or twenty feet long and cylindrical in shape, with something a few feet wide protruding a foot or two off the top. There seemed to be mud and other debris piled up in front of it.
It was too far away to see what it was, and there was still water in the field and it had gotten colder again so we weren't allowed to go investigate. My brother and I began to speculate about what it could be. We thought maybe it was a large propane tank that had been washed away from some creekside farmhouse and maybe it was leaking gas and would explode in a giant fireball. Another theory, less likely perhaps, but more appealing, was that it was a submarine. Sure, it was very unlikely that a submarine would be in a creek like Tonoloway Creek, where it would be lucky to find a place deep enough to fully submerge unless there was a flood, but maybe somewhere upstream there was a secret James Bond type laboratory base where they had been working on a submarine when the flood came suddenly and washed it down into the field by our house. We discussed how we might carefully approach the sub and see if we could open the hatch. We wondered if there might still be someone inside it, perhaps knocked unconscious, or even dead. Maybe there would be guns or money or cool secret radio transmitters.
I think there were some other theories as to what the giant white cylindrical object might be, but the propane tank and the submarine are the only two I remember.
The next day, the flood waters had receded completely from the field, except for large puddles, which were easily avoided. Our parents decided it was safe enough to let us go investigate (for some reason they didn't seem worried about the possibility of a gas explosion). We put our coats and hats and waterproof boots on and trudged through the muddy field which was beginning to refreeze. As we got closer and closer to the submarine, it started looking flatter and flatter. It was tough to walk through the mud, and it was deep enough in places to splash onto our legs and into our boots, and as we were getting colder and wetter, the object was looking less and less like a submarine, and not even like a propane tank. We could tell from twenty yards away what it was, it was a large slab of ice about a foot thick from the creek which had been pushed up on its side by the flood waters, with another piece behind it (which formed the sub's "hatch"). We kept going though, all the way to the slabs of ice, just to make sure there wasn't something interesting behind it.
It was mostly ice, mud, leaves and sticks. Nothing to do with James Bond at all.