Tuesday Voice: Tadpole in winter

By Ed Rogers

[Sequel to “Tadpole Creek” and “The Mule Ride.”]

For Christmas I received a brand new B.F. Goodrich bicycle. It was red with white strips and the prettiest thing I had ever seen. I couldn’t wait to get it to my grandparents’ farm for Herbert and Willie to see. Nobody had plans to go out to the farm until that weekend. However, I became such a pain in the butt, my Aunt Thelma decided the farm would be good for her peace of mind. I loaded the bike in the trunk and off we went.
    Uncle Sam and his family had come for Christmas and would be at the farm until after New Year’s Day. It was always fun to have Uncle Sam around the farm. He made a good living and always had extra money to spend for fun.
    My mother and father had separated when I was nine and my mother, sister, and I lived hand to mouth. The bike was the only present I received for Christmas and I paid for part of it with money from selling papers. I guess we were poor but I didn’t know it and didn’t care. I didn’t live in the grown-up world, and the problems of that world were not mine. Life was a dream of things to do and adventures to have; everything else just got in the way.
    Aunt Thelma stopped the car in front of the large old farmhouse. There was a wide L-shaped porch covering the front and everybody sat huddled in a chair with their warm coats on, and my cousin Chuck was in the porch swing.
    My aunt went to the porch as I brought my new bike out of the trunk. I could see Herbert and Willie waiting on the hill outside of their house. Chuck came and gave me a hand with the bike so I invited him to go up the hill with me.
    We spent all day taking turns riding down the hill at break-neck speeds. Each one of us tried to outdo the other one. Herbert and I, because we were older and bigger, got more turns, but we all had a great time.
    That night Uncle Sam took us to the store to buy fireworks. He was paying so he picked what we could have. Sparklers and Roman candles were pretty much it. It was a shame because back then they had firecrackers that could take your arm off.
    When we came back to the farm, the grown-ups must have felt the fireworks were safe enough that they could leave us alone with them. It was very cold and we had on thick coats and gloves. We tired of the sparklers very fast, and the Roman candles were becoming boring. Suddenly, a ball of fire crossed in front of my body. I looked up the hill and Herbert was taking aim at me again. My candle fired first and a ball went zooming past his head. The war was on. Looking back on it, I’m not sure why no one got burned.

The next day it was cold, but Uncle Sam wanted to go for a walk down by the creek. We had found a new swimming hole that summer, so we wanted to show it off. It was a long way back in the woods, but it had a nice round shape with a tree root protruding out over the water for a diving board.
    In the summer we would have to wade out and kill one or two water moccasins. Someone had told Herbert that they couldn’t bite you under water as they would drown. Armed with this great wisdom, we would stand toe to toe with these intruders beating away until we were victorious. We would swim all day secure in the knowledge that we would be able to see any snakes before they could bite us. We never gave a thought about the fact that the snakes lived off fish and frogs.
    That day in December it was far too cold for any snakes. We used the log they would sun themselves on to cross the creek. Uncle Sam was impressed with the new swimming hole and wanted to know how deep it was by the root (our diving board). We told him it was well over our heads and cold as ice right now.
    Some talk went on about how cold the water was. Uncle Sam pointed out it was not all that cold or the water would have frozen. We jokingly asked him, If he didn’t think it was that cold why didn’t he jump in? We were having our little laugh.
    Uncle Sam said, “I’ll give you a half-dollar if you jump into the creek.”
    Herbert and I looked at each other, and then we looked at the cold creek. I said, “Herbert, what do you think?”
    Herbert said, “That is going to be some damn cold water. We will freeze to death.”
    I looked at Uncle Sam and said, “Make it a dollar each?”
    “Okay,” he said.
    We started coming out of our clothes. Then there I was standing on that root butt-naked with Herbert, and our teeth clicking together so hard we could barely talk—this still rates very high on the-stupidest-things-I-have-done list. As we threw our bodies out into space, we were holding our breath and our eyes closed with the dread of what that water was going to be like. No imagination could have prepared us for the cold shock of that water. We came out on the other side so fast, it’s hard to understand how we even got wet.
    We were standing on the bank so cold it was hard to breathe. We tried to talk, but it was out of the question. It was a good hour before Herbert or I spoke a word anyone could understand.
    Chuck and Willie gave us our clothes, and it was all we could do to get dressed. I just wanted to get into a warm bed, pull myself into a ball, and never get up.
    Uncle Sam couldn’t stop laughing. He handed us our dollar each, saying, “You two earned this money. I wouldn’t have jumped in there for a hundred dollars.”
    I never knew if Uncle Sam was impressed with how brave we were, or with how stupid we were. He told the story to anyone who would listen and laughed each time he told it. It was more than likely the latter that he was impressed with.

The next night was New Year’s Eve and Herbert wanted to go to the black church two hollows over from us. He said if we went to the church, we’d see the old year go out in a ball of fire across the sky. I thought that would really be worth the ride over two hills. My Aunt Gus, who took care of my great grandmother, gave me a knife as long as a sword. She said the bottoms we had to cross were full of wild pigs.
    At five o’clock the three of us got on my bike and we took off down the gravel road. Willie was on the handlebars, I was on the back, and Herbert, being the oldest and biggest, was on the seat. He and I peddled together. Going up the hills was hard, but we flew down the other side and we saved a lot of peddling starting up the rise. Luckily we saw no wild pigs on our journey, although I was prepared for them. Under Herbert’s butt rested the butcher knife, just waiting to go into action.
    It was fun at the church. There were hotdogs and soda drinks. Everybody was happy, singing, and a few of the men seemed to be drunk. They would slip into the woods to have a drink, but it didn’t seem like anybody cared. Everybody was there for a good time.
    Twelve o’clock came and everybody began to hoot and holler. Herbert, Willie, and I slipped away so we could see the sky. After all, we were there to see the ball of fire.
    At fifteen after twelve, we gave up on the ball of fire. A dark cloud had moved across the moon and small drops of rain began to come down. The three of us ran for my bike. Before we could get loaded and on our way, a cousin of Herbert’s, who they called Boo, asked if he could catch a ride with us.
    Willie went back onto the handlebars and I was on the back. Boo, who was bigger and older than us took the seat, while Herbert sat on the crossbar. I had the knife under Boo’s butt as the four of us took off down the hill.

Everything was going along fine. We topped the last hill and in the distance, I could see the lights of the farm. It was the tallest of the three hills, and at the bottom was an old wooden bridge.
    We gained so much speed that stopping the bike on the gravel wouldn’t be possible. We must have been going twenty miles per hour when we got to the bridge. The front wheel fell into a crack in the wood and stopped. We, however, did not. Willie flew forward, never touching the bridge, and left a goodly amount of skin on the gravel. Herbert became trapped in the bike; the rear tire came around and penned him between the body and handlebars. The front tire bent and let loose, and he and the bike skipped across the bridge together.
    Boo, me, and the knife went airborne and landed in the creek bed. The knife buried itself in the mud next to Boo.
    I had a great Christmas and a crappy New Year’s Eve. There was no ball of fire, we were all beat to hell and back, my brand new bike was a wreck, and I was going to have to face my mother.

[The fourth and last story in the set, “Farewell,” will appear next month.]
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Copyright © 2013 by Ed Rogers

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