Sometimes, back then, the summer was really hot. Even the dogs, normally running, barking, and protecting our house from who knows what, were laying in the cool shade of the back porch. It was one of those hot and muggy Maryland days when the temperature is nearly 100 degrees, and the humidity is over 90 percent. A blue haze hung in the air that obscured everything in the distance except for the occasional mirage that radiated off the surface of the road creating lakes full of water.
Anyway, it was hot, and I had to find something to do, or I would inevitably be put to work doing some tedium like mowing the grass or weeding the front walk or worse yet, cleaning up my room! All the choices were bad and no telling what treachery my mother had for me to do around the house. So, I decided to go to my buddy Bob’s house quickly as possible.
Going to Bob’s house was just up the street, about 100 yards away at the top of the hill. I called out to my mother that I was leaving then took off out the front door; screen door slamming behind me, not a hesitation on waiting for a response. I sprinted the 100 yards to his house, bound up his porch stairs, and knocked on the door.
Bob’s mother answered the door. She looked at me sweating in the heat and let me inside. “Are you okay,” she asked? “You’re gonna give yourself a heat stroke out there if you don’t slow down.” Everyone on the street knew I ran most of the time wherever I went.
Bob’s mom was a very nice lady and would always ask if I wanted a drink when I visited. I was hardly a visitor, I spent most of my time at Bob’s house tramping in and out.
She always had crates full of Shasta soda singletons that were strays from broken crates. She had grape, orange, cola, root beer, ginger ale, lemon-lime, and other sorts of sodas. Bob taught me how to mix sodas into what was called a “Graveyard.” I never knew if it was because it was my favorite mix or if it just sounded cool, but I loved them. I mixed one and took it up to Bob’s room.
Bob was lying on his bed. I sat at his desk and asked him what he wanted to do today. He said that he just wanted to melt and get it over with. His house had no air conditioning, like most at that time.
I said that I wanted to go to the creek and walk around. The creek is what we called Walker’s Branch, which flowed into the Patuxent River and went God-knows-where as far as we were concerned.
Bob thought that it was a great idea and got out of bed. Before we made it to the door Bob’s mom caught us and told us that she made peanut butter and jelly on toast sandwiches. Toast? PB&J on toast? She gave us a glass of milk and the sandwiches, and I took a bite. I think the toast was the best addition to a perfect sandwich that I had ever eaten. I found my new favorite sandwich that day and she always made me toasted PB&J sandwiches from then on.
After we had finished lunch, Bob and I ran out of the house slamming the screen door behind us. It was so quiet in those days. You would hear someone’s door slam from anywhere up and down my street and know whose door it was. We ran out of the house and headed to the creek with Bob’s mother calling out to Bob, not to get wet. Now, what was the fun in that? Going to the creek and not getting wet? Getting wet was the whole idea. Didn’t she know how hot it was? She must have misunderstood what we were going to do.
Normally, the run to the creek took about five minutes but we gave up the ghost in the heat pretty quickly, and the pace became a slow drag into the woods surrounding the creek. So, we walked to the creek, sat down on our favorite rock, took off our shoes, and put our feet into the cool, refreshing water.
The water was so clear that you could see the little minnows swimming below our feet. The rock, in contrast, was hot from being fricasseed in the sun, and there was no shade coming off a branchless old tree to protect the rock from the sun. The creek was a wonderous place; old and untouched, bordered by trees, some with roots hanging in the water and drinking up the colors of the woods. It was amazing in the fall when the leaves were changing colors to yellows, reds, and oranges; and ice would form in thin sheets along the cuts and curves of the creek bed. But today it was hot, even down in the creek’s little valley, but not as hot as the top of the hill.
We didn’t stay on that rock too much longer before we decided to go exploring along the creek. We would rock-hop along the creek to see how far we could go before we fell in or had to go to shore.
Bob, understandably, would be hesitant to get wet but staying dry was about as likely as not sweating in the summer sun. So, soaked, we carried on down the creek toward the Patuxent River.
The river was a different story than the creek. It could be deep or shallow, wide or narrow, and flowed fast enough to sweep you down river if you didn’t keep your footing. It was more exciting and wilder than the creek could ever be.
Where the creek emptied into the river was a small delta just big enough for the two of us to stand on and not get wet. The river ran slow and smooth and was perfect for skipping stones. That little delta always had the best skipping stones on the entirety of the river. We would spend hours finding perfect stones and skipping them along the river’s smooth surface.
Skipping stones inevitably leads to throwing larger stones. We would put the stones like a shotput as far out into the running water as we could and brag about how much stronger we were as the distance increased. Finally, the heat would hit us again and the water would sing its Siren’s song begging us in.
Sometimes swimming would sound so good that one of us would just jump in. You know what I found out? A pocket watch isn’t waterproof; at least mine wasn’t. It looked like a full fish tank through the crystal front and would never work again. I knew I would end up at Keller’s News Stand to buy another for $2.50. Nonetheless, we were in the water now and there was only one direction to go: upriver.
The dam was a couple of miles upriver. The dam (officially the Howard Duckett Dam) was maintained by the water agency, and they didn’t like young boys poking around the base of their dam, but there we were.
It was huge. I have no idea how much water it held back, but it was a lot. It looked ominous when we stood at the base of it. The cool thing about the dam was that sometimes the dam releases water out of a two-foot pipe, shoots across the base of the behemoth, hits a concrete wall on the opposite side of the river, and sprays up into the air from 50 to 100 feet, causing the most beautiful rainbows imaginable. It was truly a magic place for us.
But today we were on the hunt. We were looking for a fallen tree. Not just any old fallen tree but one that was older than the age of the forest itself, and along the river. It couldn’t be rotten or falling apart, or be too far up the bank to be rolled down into the water. You see, the trees would normally be about 1½ to 2 feet in diameter and any number of yards long, and were heavy having to be coaxed around the other trees as it rolled down the steep bank. We would use levers (saplings that had been cut for this job) to keep the log moving and circumnavigate obstacles. We would inevitably get the log launched and afloat.
The goal of this endeavor was to get the log into the river to use it as a raft and ride it to town around Laurel’s Main Street. The end of Ninth Street actually, at the swimming pool to be exact. None of that truly mattered to us, really; we just wanted an adventure and were going to make it happen.
Launching a log into a rocky river isn’t as easy as it seems. It was a job for applied physics and the use of leverage. The sapling poles worked great for this and then after the heavy work is done the levers turned into paddles for guiding the log raft through the rapids and the shallows. The launch is a very delicate matter. One false move while mounting the log, and you were swimming after it instead of riding it. We got the log into the water with a splash and pulled it close to the bank so it could receive its passengers: us.
We climbed aboard the newly launched vessel, pushed away from the shore, and off we went. The river ran slow during the first part of the journey. But we were moving, and the cool water felt so good while we rinsed our arms to get off the dirt and debris that clung to us from the launching ordeal.
We were just moseying along the river. The river was a peaceful place, we almost never saw another person along the bank, much less on a log in the river. There were deer, squirrels, foxes, rabbits, and birds to see along the banks. The quiet rippling of the water was hypnotizing as we floated down the river.
All good things must come to an end and the work was about to kick in. A shallow straight in the water, only ankle deep but wide, that was coming up. As you can imagine, a log raft drafts a bit too much in shallow water for holding onto the log with your legs, much like riding bareback on a horse. And most of the time horses aren’t trying to roll over on you. As you can guess, the shallow water doesn’t give enough room to stay on the log without crushing your leg, as proven by prior experiences. We slid off and walked behind the log raft as it came to rest on the sluice-box rock striations in the riverbed.
The levers helped the process move along, but not so much. Necessity is the mother of invention and we got smarter as we conquered the river tasks: we turned the log sideways and let hydraulics roll it down river. As simple as that. NO. Never—I said never—get in front of the log while it is rolling in the river! It will squash you like dough under a rolling pin. It’s very funny to see happen, but very dangerous and we knew it. But God protects fools and children, and luckily nothing bad happened when we found that out.
We walked upstream of the log, stumbling along the jagged rocky bottom until the log was afloat again. A little spurring and cussing would get it going again and off we went guiding the log straight down the river and not sideways anymore.
The next leg of the trip was a little trickier than the first part. There were giant boulders to avoid in the fast-moving water. We were old hands at this part of the journey and would only rub against the boulders without turning ourselves over and swimming for a bit. We guided the log raft through the boulders with the poles and nifty footwork. It was great fun and took a bit of teamwork in the faster current.
Further on, the river never slowed and became narrower and faster. It was so fast in places that if you fell into the water, which was only waist deep, you had to swim hard to get to your feet or you would just have to go with the flow until it slowed a bit, which was fun too.
The quiet serenity of the start of our trek wasn’t there anymore and the roar of rapids let us know that the “fun” was about to begin.
The rapids were only about 150 yards long and the water swelled then eddied around the boulders so much that it didn’t leave a straight path for a long log raft to go, and we were quickly approaching them. Luckily, we weren’t going backwards as we had done in the past.
The thing that was most exciting about this part of the ride wasn’t the speed or the whoopsie woos, it was the danger. The amount of adventure is directly proportional to the danger there is to your person, and this was not safe by any means.
So, we ventured on toward imminent doom if you played your hand wrong. As I was saying before, if you fell off, you weren’t getting back on and you weren’t going to get to your feet this time, meaning you had to swim faster than the log so you wouldn’t get smooshed between a rock and the log. So, we were in a tough spot once we entered the rapids.
As we entered the slot, the log immediately thumped against the first boulder, which was unavoidable because of how we had to navigate the log through. Bob cussed and almost fell off the back of the log, which would have left me alone on the front. The person in the front pulls the log along with the pole and the person in the back guides the log through, much like canoeing. Losing Bob would have left me in an unguidable dilemma.
Safety is important and technique is crucial. While in the rapids you keep from straddling the log, for pushing and pulling with your legs on the surface of the water is vital to avoid getting your leg caught between a rock and the log’s crushing potential. Yep, as it turns out a friend of mine came with us on a log raft and never quite got the hang of river log raft etiquette. We told him to keep his legs up in the rapids, but he must have missed that point. It only cost him a nifty bruise, eight stitches, and a rock imbedded in his leg that the hospital had to pull out. That must have hurt, but kids don’t notice these kinds of details when they are not the ones crying. Besides it was cool!
Meantime in the rapids, the log is bumping and grinding against the boulders and is nearly unguidable. When in the clutches of the rapids the log jammed, stuck in place, panic can set in quickly if you don’t figure out a solution for this type of event tout de suite. The water rises on the upstream side of the log and eddies form on the downstream side, which throws off your balance. Much less, the sudden jerk of the stop sends you lurching forward. I’ve always imagined that the bumping and jerking and spinning and swaying of the log must be like riding a rodeo bull, but I don’t know.
So, there we were, jammed up in the rapids. The log raft was a little longer than it should have been and couldn’t make the slide between three rocks. We were pushing for all our worth. The log had enough water pushing from behind it to move it over the boulders. The tricky part lay before us and that was not as exciting...it was scary.
In the direct path of the log was a small waterfall only about four feet wide and with two giant boulders on each side. Getting through this obstacle is like threading a giant needle. The falls were only about three or four feet high, but it might as well be Niagara Falls for us. Our log would surely pass halfway through and teeter-totter as it exited. We were goners this time! I was sure of it. We hit those falls and the log stopped between those boulders with such ferocity that it threw me like a diver from a diving-board straight into the river, head-first. Bob was left alone on the back of the log as it turned counterclockwise in the clutches of the falls. As luck would have it, Bob rode that log like a champion PBA rodeo rider right through the falls and to a personal favorite adventure story that lives on to this day.
After the falls there is really nothing to see as far as woods and nature go, just the backside of Main Street and slow running water that passes over old spillways for mills that used to make textiles and shoes for Civil War soldiers. I didn’t have much interest in all of that “old” stuff since I was so young and saw it every day. We passed it by without a single thought. We abandoned our high adventure at the bottom of 9th Street at nearly dusk and set off for the safety of our own living rooms and television sets.
Bob was worried about the trouble he would get in when he got home and was wet. He would blame it on me no doubt and that was okay.
It took some time to get back to our street. The cool of a summer evening was setting in, making our wet clothes feel chilly while they chafed us as we walked. Neither of us complained though, not a word. We didn’t say much on the way home anyway, each contemplating the day’s adventure.
I stepped onto the flagstone walk that led to my porch. We smiled at each other and gave a friendly wave. I reached into my pocket to pull out my watch. The hands hadn’t moved a second from when I jumped into the river. It struck me, as I looked at the watch, how time passes even without the permission of a watch. How miniscule hands on a pocket watch don’t really matter to a summertime log raft one hot summer day.
Jack Carr was born and raised in Laurel. He graduated from Goddard College in 2009 and has since been published as a short story writer and a poet in Crosstimbers, The Pitkin Review, and Open Minds Quarterly. He taught at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma and San Antonio College. He lives in San Antonio, TX with his wife and four children.