Memories ~
From Falls Church to Kilmarnock
© 2007 Abilini's Computer Services
The Sky is
Falling
(circa. 1968-69) – Names not changed to protect anyone!
Every summer, my family would spend three to five weeks, at the
cottage. Since, it was on the water, we owned a skiff (12-14 foot, all wood
small boat), which had an Evinrude 9.5hp engine. I was allowed to fish the
creek, by myself, but never allowed to go past the number 7 marker, which marked
the beginning of the bay. On this particular day, Billy, Bobby and I, went out
to the number 8 marker (for those who don’t know, the lower the number, the
further out in the bay. Number 3, is the marker for our creek), and bottom
fished for whatever we could catch.
Around 4pm, we heard the sound of a small plane, and the sound was getting
louder and louder. We searched the skies and finally saw Mr. Brigg’s and his
crop duster (a bi-plane, two wings) heading towards us. Mr. Brigg’s was the
local crop duster and where we were fishing, was directly in line with his
runway, next to his house. We waved and he waved back by tilting the wings up
and down. Well on one of his upward tilts, we saw something that scared the
you-know-what out of us; one of his wheels came off of the plane and was heading
right at us, like a bomb. All three of us, jumped out of the boat and watched
as this wheel, hit the water not 15 feet in front of my boat. We scrambled back
into the boat, moved the boat over to where the wheel had hit the water and then
we watched a semi-perfect two-point landing. It was neat, until the plane came
down onto the area with the missing wheel and the propeller hit the ground, wow
that was loud! I handed the anchor rope to Billy and he jumped in and tied the
rope to the wheel, by the way, the water was only five or six feet deep.
Mr. Briggs, yelled to us, asking if we were all right and then told us, not to
worry, he would come out and get the wheel. Now, we weren’t very old, but we
weren’t stupid either, we hauled the wheel up to the water line, tied it off on
the boat, we couldn’t lift it any further, and started, very slowly towards his
house. What he was thinking, we will never know, but he came out in a dingy. A
dingy is a very small boat, 5 to 8 feet long, and doesn’t weight very much;
also, they can capsize very easily if you don’t sit in the boat properly. We
yelled to him and said, “We already had the wheel, tied on, and we can bring it
to him”. Well, he being an adult and we only being nine or ten, at the most, he
wouldn’t accept that proposal. He came out to us and told us to give him the
line. We did. Then we watched him flip the dingy. We laughed, semi-quietly and
he said a few choice words, righted the dingy, climbed back into the dingy, and
then proceeded to flip it, again. At this point, he stood up, in about three
feet of water, stated a few more choice words and walked the wheel to shore.
All of us were laughing so hard we couldn’t control ourselves. We moved over
and righted the dingy, that he had left out there and we pulled the dingy to
shore, we were still smirking. It was now close to 5 o’clock, so, we decided
that it was time to go home. I dropped Billy and Bobby off at their dock and
went home, myself. When I got there my mother saw my wet clothes and said,
“What in the world happened to you, get your butt out back.” (With seven kids,
my mother had an outside shower installed, on the back of the cottage, no hot
water and no curtain) I told her the story and she figured, since I was just
ten, I must have done something stupid and some how had fallen out of the boat.
About that time an old beat-up red pick-up truck came down the driveway. Mr.
Briggs got out, walked over to my mother and me, and handed me a ten-dollar bill
and said, “You three earned it.” He told my mother the same story and left. I
told the family, at dinner, what had happened and we all laughed together. And,
yes, my mother made me split the ten dollars with Billy and Bobby; Hey $3.34 was
a lot of money to a 10 year old!