drowned

About ten years ago I went up to the shack with Carl. By that time I was already deteriorating, but I could still walk and do a lot of things. Carl stayed there with me a few weeks, during which time Paul came for a few days for a visit. Then Carl left, so I was there alone for a while until Bruce came up for a few days, then he left, and a few days later Pat came and stayed for a few days, then Pat and I left.
It was great to be there alone, but it was difficult for me to do the things that need to be done to live alone in a cabin in the woods. By the end of each day I was dead tired and fell sound asleep despite the buzzing squadrons of mosquitos and scratching and scurrying mice.
Since there was no well, one of the things that needed to be done was to take the boat out onto the lake and get water. I would take several large aluminum pots and a couple of gallon jugs and fill them with the yellowish lake water. I'd use that water for washing dishes and watering the mustard greens, which was the only plant the deer and rabbits didn't eat from the little garden patch we'd made. The jugs weren't too hard to fill, I held them partially underwater as they filled up, then lifted them back into the boat. I still had strength enough to do that without too much trouble. Two of the aluminum pots were pretty big though, and instead of using a jug or small pan to gradually fill them, I'd lower them into the water, let them fill, then lift them up and over the edge of the boat. I could barely lift the filled pots, and sometimes had to let some water spill out to make them lighter so I could get them over the edge of the boat.
One day I went out to get water and as I was lifting the aluminum pot, I couldn't quite get it over the edge, so I tipped it over slightly to let some water out, but it suddenly shifted and threw my balance off and I started slowly falling over, towards the edge of the boat. Actually, it might not have been that slow, but it seemed like it. As my weight shifted, the boat started listing. At the same time that I noticed water was coming over the edge of the boat as it tipped over, I felt like I was about to fall into the lake. It couldn't have been more than half a second, but it felt like I had a long time to make a decision about whether to drop the pot, or swamp the boat and fall into the lake. I dropped the pot and was able to right myself and since there wasn't part of my weight and the weight of the water filled pot over the edge, the boat righted itself. I watched as the pot sank and disappeared into the murky lake water. I couldn't believe I'd just lost one of the big pots. Then I started thinking about what had just happened, and what had just almost happened. The last time I had been in water up to my chest, I could barely breathe, and I could barely swim. Had I not dropped the pot, I could have easily drowned.
It was slower, but from then on, I used a small pot to gradually fill the remaining large pot.

drown

When I was about ten years old, I decided to try to kill myself. I plugged the drain on the bathroom sink and filled it up with water. I put my head in the water and tried to inhale, thinking I'd be able to drown myself. I immediately started coughing and sputtering and jerked backwards and hit my head on the faucet. Water splashed onto the bathroom floor. I coughed for a while, and thought maybe I didn't inhale deeply enough. I exhaled as completely as I could, then put my head back into the water and held my breath a while, thinking that maybe the sudden inhalation after holding my breath would be more effective. It didn't work. I coughed a lot more and splashed more water onto the bathroom floor, but I didn't hit my head on the faucet the second time. I realized that if I was going to kill myself, I would have to figure out another way. I drained the sink and dried my hair and face and the bathroom floor, and hung the towel up to dry.

get lost

I used to like to walk in the woods when I was a kid. We lived pretty far out in the country, and there were no neighbors within view. I would usually head up the tree covered hill in front of our house, and wonder around for hours. I became very familiar with the woods around our house. Any time I had extra time, I would explore further and further for the small thrill of finding new and interesting places. I already knew the area around the house very well, the two large rocks half buried on the steep hillside, one with a bees nest under it, the fallen oak tree, the sunken area where a huge tree must have fallen then rotted away. Finding new things, like the steep ravine with a mountain stream at the bottom was refreshing and exciting. It was nice to know about these new places and I used to wonder if maybe I was the only person in the world who knew about them. It seemed unlikely that I had been the only person who had ever been to them, but maybe the others who had been there had long forgotten about them.
After some time, it seemed like I wasn't finding any new places in my wanderings. There would often be something new and interesting in the familiar places, like deer tracks, or a newly fallen tree, but it wasn't as exciting as finding a completely new place. So I decided that I would try to get lost.
I started out walking through the woods trying not to pay attention to where I was going, making random turns occasionally. When I'd gone what I thought was sufficiently far, I started looking around to see if I was lost. Nothing seemed very familiar, but when I went a little further, I realized I was near the hill which led down to the road which I could follow right to our driveway. So I walked down to the road and decided to try again the next day. I ended up a little further away the next day, but soon found myself at the top of the ravine with a stream that led down to the same road I'd been on the previous day. I thought I might just continue walking from there, but I was already tired from trying to get lost again, so I thought I'd try again some other day. I repeated the process a few more times, but each time, I realized where I was within a few minutes. I couldn't get lost. I thought maybe if I spent the night in the woods and got up early while it was still dark, I could walk really far and get lost for sure. But I knew my parents would be mad if I tried to do that, and probably wouldn't be too happy if they knew I was trying to get lost in the first place.
I was kind of proud that I knew the area so well that I could always find my way home, but a little disappointed that I couldn't get lost.

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.

creeping brown

When I was a kid we lived out in the country in southern Pennsylvania. It was a hilly area, and there were some small mountain streams, and a little river, or actually a creek. It was called Tonoloway Creek. One of the little streams ran next to the road and went under our driveway in a large metal culvert, then down into the creek. One winter in the mid to late seventies, there was a heavy snowfall, and the next day, it was fairly warm. On that day I was playing in the frozen stream bed at the end of the driveway. The snow was thick and heavy and perfect for making giant snowballs, so that is what I was doing. As I was pushing what seemed like a particularly large snowball, I noticed that there was a strange smell in the air. I stopped pushing the snowball and looked around. At first I didn't see anything out of the ordinary, but then I looked upstream and noticed something that seemed very strange. The pristine white snow in the stream bed was turning brown. The brown color was getting closer to me. It was almost magical, and a bit spooky, like some wood nymph had cast a spell on the snow and the spell was slowly spreading towards me. I watched it for a minute or two, almost hypnotized, as it approached. When it was a few yards away I decided I ought to move out of the way. I got out of the stream bed and up onto the culvert which went under the driveway and watched from there. The brown color started moving faster, and went into the culvert and came out the other side, and I noticed the snow seemed to be sinking where it had turned brown. Then there was a rushing sound, and a little wall of muddy brown water about two feet high came rushing down the stream bed. I got up onto the driveway and watched as my large snowballs disintegrated into the oncoming melt water. The water in the stream bed got higher and higher until it was nearly filling the culvert, which I had never seen before. It was fascinating, and kind of scary. It seemed so odd for there to be a flash flood in the quiet of a snow covered landscape. The snow was melting fast on the steep hillsides all at once and seemed to come out of nowhere. I was glad that I had smelled the muddy water and looked to see the creeping brown and gotten out of its way. If I hadn't been paying attention, I could have been washed down through the culvert into Tonoloway Creek, which had also turned a muddy brown and was quickly rising.

dead drop

When we were about eleven or twelve years old, there was this church youth event at St. Mark's Episcopal church. Those church youth events always seemed a bit creepy to me, and seemed to have more than their share of odd individuals. But there were often a few attractive girls which added to their appeal. More so than the Christian Love and Fellowship. For some reason, Brent and I told this one kid that my name was Carlos. I don't know why, but it seemed funny, probably because my name is not Carlos. But that doesn't have anything to do with this story.
There were periods of downtime when no prayers or hymn singing or christian themed skits were occurring, and Brent and I would often talk about miscellaneous crap to pass the time. He told me about how he would buy pot. I was pretty impressed that he was buying pot at our age. I had never bought or even smoked pot at that age.
There was a certain trash can near his house that he would go to and tape an envelope with money in it to the bottom of the lid. The next day, he would come back and find his pot taped to the bottom of the lid in place of the money.
Years later we were talking about those christian youth events at the church, and I reminded him about how he told me about buying pot. He had no memory of telling me that story, and he hadn't smoked or bought pot at that age either. He also insisted that I must be misremembering because not only had he never bought pot at that age, but he also wasn't smart enough to come up with a clever story like that.
I don't know, maybe he'd seen it in a movie or something. Or maybe I did.

short quarters

The short version of the previous:
When I was young I buried some quarters, then dug them up shortly afterwards. When I counted them, I was five quarters short. I was disappointed to lose that money and I thought I'd use a container if I ever buried money again. I never buried money again.