What I Don't Remember

There‘s this little patch of land down the street from where I live. Technically, it belonged to the neighborhood adjacent to ours, but that five-foot tall, wooden-rail fence was like a ‘keep out’ sign on a door without any locks. It’s got a creek like a crooked spine down its middle, and the mud around it was full of crawdads if you dug deep enough.

Some kids from my neighborhood and I used to go down there and just screw around for a couple of hours before dinner. Throw rocks at the frogs, try to jump from one side of the creek to the other, or even try to climb from one end of the top of the sewage tunnel to the other while hanging on to the rails and inching our toes across. Sure it was only a twenty-foot stroll, but there was also a twenty-foot drop into the creek bed. The only time you couldn’t see the floor beneath the surface was after a big storm. Otherwise, it was just a spot under the jog path where the white kids like us would go. Every now and again, you would see a water moccasin or a harmless gardener searching for a frog for dinner. They usually left us alone in groups, but we recommended taking a BB gun or a good stick either way. This was our spot, but we had to play things at least a little safe.

Only a short walk away to the west was some playground and the part of the neighborhood with mostly young couples and toddlers. To the east was the area with houses that had been there since the age I couldn’t even leave my own street. And to the north where the creek could lead if one was going that way, was the Castle Hills Golf Course. Hole number fourteen. Here, the golfers would often be in a good spot to see us from a distance, and not do a damn thing. On the east side was the tiny hill of grass leading down to the water that had a nice flat spot that you could sit on and be closer to the six legged wildlife flying all around you in search of a good vein to poke. The other side was a concrete extension to the tunnel that was inclined but it was also just like sitting in old church pew.

In the middle of the spine was this growth filled with cattails and various weeds. When it wasn’t overgrown, I could take a BB gun and a shovel and dig around. I never quite knew why I was digging or what I was digging for, because most of the time I just found more bugs that dug themselves further down as soon as they saw me. I never harmed the creatures, and if I picked them up I always put them back. I usually did this alone whenever the others were elsewhere. They’d never notice anything I had done. Not even with most of the footprints being mine. Every now and then I’ll go back there during a walk. Of course the walk has to be longer than it once was what with the neighborhood replacing that ‘keep-out’ fence with the type of black metal fence that says ‘keep the hell out’. I even once took a turtle I rescued from the middle of the road to that spot. I don’t remember seeing any footprints.