The Raft By Linda Stowe
On the farm where I grew up, there was a creek that flowed into a pond. It wasn’t a very wide or deep creek, but it always flowed. When my dad put livestock in the field next to the creek, they often congregated along it to drink the water and cool off in the shade of the trees that grew there. My dad jerry-rigged a wire fence across the creek near where it entered the pond to keep cattle from roaming too far and getting into trouble. It was all very idyllic.
My brother and I often played along the creek when the cattle were grazing in another field. I had just read Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” and loved the idea of rafting along the Mississippi. I had never seen that river, but we had our own little version of the Mississippi. I told my brother we should build a raft to sail down the creek. My brother hadn’t read the book, but he was always open to an adventure and this one sounded perfect. There was a pile of lumber of varying sizes in the workshop and we knew where the hammer and nails were kept. We’d watched our dad and grandpa build things, so this would be an easy project. We had high hopes.
My brother and I went to the workshop, selected a few boards that looked suitable, and set to work. At that time, I was around ten and he was eight, so we were capable of making a raft. Not a good raft, but good enough. We pared down our plans for the size of the raft because we got tired of hammering, but the end product was large enough to hold us both if we sat in tandem.
Once the raft was built, we were ready to take it to the creek, which was a good distance away across a bumpy field. We tried carrying and dragging it, but that was slow going. Finally, we came up with the idea of transporting it on our little wagon. There were numerous spills along the way, but we finally got it down to the creek. We had intended to launch from the point where the creek entered our property, but that meant we’d have to transport the raft even farther. We decided to set sail from where we were. The trip would be much shorter, but we were running out of steam at this point.
This was in the spring, so the creek was flowing quickly as it did every spring. Launching the raft was a bit tricky and we’d both fallen into the water several times by the time we both managed to get onboard at the same time. Since the creek was moving rather swiftly, it didn’t take much for us to get going. And off we went on the verge of a great adventure.
Less than a minute later our adventure ended. We both succeeded in staying on the raft until we hit the fence our dad had erected across the creek. The raft went sailing on through under the fence, but my brother and I were knocked off into the water. The only injury was a scratch I got on my arm.
We climbed out of the creek and onto the bank. We weren’t sure what happened to the raft. As we caught our breath and let our clothes dry, we began to wonder if we might be in trouble. We weren’t sure but we agreed not to mention what we had done. Then we went back for the wagon and returned home. Our silence lasted until that evening at supper when all we talked about was our big adventure.
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Polly here.
I just love this story, this adventure.
The wonders and beauty of childhood.
The world was a great big place back then.
The world was also, at the same time, smaller.
In many ways, I think it still is.
