I Was the Traveler

One thing leads to another. I found this online and it triggered a memory from somewhere inside that must be the better part of sixty years old.

When I was a primary school student my parents had a house on Bloomfield Avenue in what became Franklin Township (it started out as New Brunswick but when the population burgeoned, the area was redesignated). It was a ranch-style house that proved to be too small for our ever-growing family and Mom and Dad were to add three bedrooms and a hallway to it in the ensuing years, but hadn't at this moment made that decision.

Just around the corner from us, a whole new set of houses, actually a different development from ours, were being constructed and I can recall one after-school day wandering the now-quiet sites where I and my chums would play soldiers for hours on end (or until the winter daylight abruptly stopped).

This was a day when no one was out playing and I traipsed around the sites some with framing, some with just excavated holes in the ground. I recall it was a cold day and one of the excavated holes had collected a great deal of water from the seasonal rains and snows we'd already had. I (seriously) misread the thickness of what I perceived to be the ice and the depth of the hole as I walked out on the frozen surface.

I was no more than three steps from the dirt wall on the far side when the crinkling and crackling that had dogged my steps became a roar as the ice broke and I crashed below the surface. I came up under the ice about a foot away from the hole I'd made crashing through. I had (and to this day still haven't) experienced anything quite like the sharp, sudden cold of the water. 

I struggled to get back to the hole and slowly maneuvered myself across the still-breaking ice on my way to the far wall, gasping both in fear and from the iciness of the water, and eventually pulled myself up and out of the hole. I was soaking wet and still numbed more by the closeness of the call I'd just had than by the chill I felt. I knew when I got home there would be a massive lecture from Mom that would conclude with the always dreaded 'wait until your father comes home,' followed by warm, dry clothes. In retrospect, a fair enough trade. 
-bill kenny