Dredging up the old farm pond.
ã1998 David M. Loomis
When
we were young, we loved our pond. We
stocked it with bass and bluegill, fished it, skated and played hockey on it,
rowboated across it, swam in it, and picnicked beside it. Some days we just sat
and looked at it, or threw rocks from the driveway into it. We trapped mink and
muskrat in it, caught frogs near the banks, watched the tadpoles hatch in the
shallows. Once, we even tried to raise ducks on it. As I think on it, we spent more time around the pond than we
did in the woods or the barn. Especially
Saturdays.
“Mom!
We’re going down to the pond…!” My yell from the front door echoed for a
moment until its reverberations were drown out by mom’s shotgun blast
response. “You two be careful, and don’t go near the overflow, you’ll both
fall in.” My brother Mark and I knew that warning by heart, and by the time
she had finished, we were already racing down the long gravel drive to the quiet
little pond that sat between our house and the road.
Mom would be leaving for her Saturday hair appointment soon. That’s
when our fun was scheduled to begin.
Growing
bored with the same old pond fun, we had a plan. For the first time ever, we
would introduce motorized transportation to our private waterway. I had been
working for three full days on my best contraption ever, a homemade outboard
motor for our ten-foot aluminum boat.
Taking a ratty, green, Lawn Boy motor from its hopelessly rusted body, I
managed to drill through the shaft and slide a three-foot metal pipe over its
end. Finally, I added a propeller made from the bottom sprayer arm of mom’s
dishwasher. (She wouldn’t miss that) I enlisted my brother’s help, so that
if we were caught in this adventure, the punishment could be split two ways. He
dubbed my invention “The Green Monster”.
Mark
and I waved as mom’s car passed out of the drive and turned onto the road.
Hurriedly, we lifted our Green Monster out of the weeds in which we had hidden
it. We were absolutely giddy with excitement as we carried the motor to the
water’s edge. This would be the best time ever! From a large cache of bailing
twine and electric fence wire, we withdrew enough fastening hardware to attach
the Green Monster to the stern board. I held the motor in place while mark tied
strand after strand of wire and rope around its top and looped it through the
rear boat handles. “Hurry up, will you? This thing is heavy.” I encouraged.
Mark gave me his best “don’t
rush me” look, and kept wrapping. Feeling
secure in our tightly woven nest of half hitches and square knots, we edged the
boat off shore a few feet, and lowered the propeller shaft into the water. It
was Kitty Hawk all over again.
Mark
sat on the center seat while we drifted toward the middle of the pond. “OK”,
I warned from the back. “I’m going to start him up. Hold on.”
Then, with what could best be described as a simultaneous yell, whir,
splash, and the succeeding sound of bubbles, I pulled the starter cord…
wrenching the entire motor loose from its wraps, and watched as it slipped,
running, into the water, and sank piteously to the bottom of the pond. I looked
at my brother, and he looked at me. “Hmmm,” Mark sighed.
We left the Green Monster at the bottom of the pond, buried irretrievably
in the silt, and paddled back to shore to look for frogs.
At
our new farm, we have a little pond with a grassy shoreline on which I spend
nicer fall afternoons. Last
Saturday, we had planned a big day at a regional amusement park. It was supposed
to be the best time ever, but our budget just wouldn’t support the trip.
The kids were crushed, and I felt like a bit of a failure as a dad. That
afternoon, I stood quietly near our pond watching my children snoop around its
shoreline, poking sticks into the mud and sailing little walnut shell boats. It
felt good to hear the kids’ laughter skipping across that water.
Recovered from their temporary heartbreak, their happiness bore testimony
to an important truth which we mostly forget: We’re all working too hard and
spending too much money trying to have fun. We’ve become slaves to the Green
Monsters in our lives… when everything we really need to be happy, God has
already given us. Frogs at no extra charge.