In the early days before there was organized garbage pickup as well as a collective conscience on keeping garbage in one place, garbage was commonly thrown down a creek bank by the owner.
I knew of three families that dealt with their garbage in that way, the Smiths, the Jardines, and the Lundys. The creek bank was that of Park Rill. I will talk of Jardine’s dump which was easily accessible to me and is central to this story.
The dump was my delight for it gave me opportunity to find glass bottles which I would throw in the water and watch them float down to the beaver dam.
It wasn’t long though before I discovered how much fun it was to break the floating bottles with stones which I took from the Jardine’s disked orchard. The soil was turned over because the fruit trees were watered with ditches and the disc turned up many stones while preparing that ground.
When I had friends over, we would go to the dump and have competitions to see who could break the floating bottles first. It was a challenge because of the 10 meter distance from the top of the creek bank to the water’s edge. Sometimes the bottles would be 2 or 3 meters out into the water as well.
It was several years later when I decided to build my own raft. I carried boards, hammer and nails onto the beaver dam just down stream from the dump. I nailed everything together. When I was ready to launch I ran to Wally’s prop pile and picked a pole I thought would do the best job.
I took off my runners and laid them on the dam, pushed the raft into the water and stepped onto it. At the same time I pushed away from the dam with the pole and the vessel began to sink. I poled the craft into the shallower portion of the creek. At that point it had sunk completely and I abandoned ship.
I hadn’t gone more than two paces when I felt extreme pain in my bare foot. The raft floated to me and I sat on it and it started sinking again. Upon examining my foot I saw it was cut, sliced open by broken glass!
I didn’t dare walk on the creek bottom any more. I managed to get my raft back to the dam and put on my runners, bloody foot and all. I dragged the raft onto the dam and left it there to rot.
I learned two things that day. First that I was a lousy raft builder and the second was that I would never again walk on on the creek bottom in bare feet.