I was about 10 years old when I met Bobby Morgan. He was a nice kid, not mean like some of the other neighborhood boys I had met. Bobby lived across Park Rill on a strip of land squeezed by Island Road and Park Rill.
There was a beaver dam right in front of his house and another one downstream 100 meters. The downstream one created a substantial widening of the creek up to where he lived.
Bobby was a builder. I don’t know if his dad had the wood or where else he would have got it but he built four sturdy rafts, three capable of supporting three boys and one capable of supporting two boys. The rafts were propelled with poles.
Some of Bobby’s friends were the mean boys, who I didn’t get along with, so I couldn’t join them in their creek rafting games. On occasion I would watch them from the safety of the bushes on my side of the creek.
There was a house on the west side of Highway 97 called the Brown-john’s house, it was always a rental. A new family moved in who had a son named Ron. Ron was a bit of a loose cannon but he and I hit it off because he wasn’t a mean kid. He always had some wild eyed idea and I usually would go along with it.
When Ron saw Bobby’s rafts he came up with a plan to steal one. At first I balked, “what if we get caught?” That was my first fear. But Ron’s explanation seemed reasonable, “we will take them when nobody is around,” he said, as if he knew what he was talking about.
I agreed. We kept an eye on the creek activities and watched for an opportunity to take action. We finally found an afternoon when the rafts were idle. Ron and I bounded across the beaver dam and scampered over to where the rafts were tied up. To our astonishment the three larger ones were chained to trees and locked up. The smaller one only had a rope on it, so we were stuck with that one.
We quickly and quietly untied our captive, seized our poles and headed down stream. We had done it! Gleefully we headed for the beaver dam where we would find a place to stash our prize!
Halfway there, green peaches started raining down around us. We had been discovered! That was demoralizing to me. One peach landed on the raft, another one bounced off my shoulder. It was then I abandoned ship with Ron following closely behind.
We dashed through the water and made our way up the creek bank and through the bush. We didn’t stop until we reached the safety of the orchard where we collapsed and laughed ourselves silly.
I was afraid that I’d made another enemy with Bobby but he wasn’t one to hold a grudge for long, and soon we were friends again.
After that raft acquiring failure, I decided if I was going to play on a raft I would build one.
That story will come next week.