path, that would continue for a few hundred yards until it disappeared into underbrush.
Often there were men fishing on the creek bank beside the bridge. There might be two men, or there might be a solitary man; they were not likely to be residents of the area. You would see their cars parked on the grassy shoulder of the road by the bridge. My memory of these strangers is utterly blankâI canât think that I approached them, yet I donât recall turning back to avoid them. It is possible that, from time to time, one of the solitary men spoke to me, asked my name and where I livedâthat would not have been unusual, and it would not have been alarming. But beyond that, I have no memory.
Did my mother think to warn meâ -Joyce, donât go near the fishermen! Stay on our side of the bridge.
To recall the sight of an individual fishing on the creek bank is to feel a thrill of apprehension. The graceful arc of a fishing line cast outinto the creek, the sound of the hooked bait and sinker dropping into the waterâthese are exciting to me, somehow fascinating, suffused with a kind of dread.
In the fishermanâs plastic bucket near shore, live fish, rock bass, trapped and squirming in a few inches of bloody water.
Our side of the bridge was the safer side. The other side of the bridge was the âotherâ side.
On the safer side was a similar path along the creek bank but it was wider, more defined. This was an area in which as a young child I had played with other children amid a scattering of large boulders and rocks that extended well out into the creek. Close by was a makeshift dam of rocks built by a neighboring farmer across which, if we were very careful, we could make our way to the other side.
At any point where a path led up from the creek, usually up a very steep hill, I could ascend and explore fields, woods, stretches of land that seemed to belong to no one. Within a mileâs radius from our house on Transit Road was this other, deeply rural, uncultivated and âwildâ place containing abandoned houses, barns, silos, corncribs. There were badly rusted tractors, hulks of cars with broken windows and no tires, rotted hay wagons, piles of rotted lumber. A kind of dumping-ground, at the edge of an overgrown and no longer tended pear orchard. Why NO TREPASSING signs exerted such a powerful fascination, I donât know; even today such signs are complex signifiers that stir atavistic memories and cause my pulse to quicken. Yet more attractive because more forbidding was the sign WARNING â BRIDGE OUT . Or, DANGER â DO NOT TRESPASS . Everywhere were NO HUNTING NO FISHING NO TRESPASSING signs and many of these were riddled with buckshot, for adults too were contemptuous of such admonitions.
An early memory divorced of all context and explanation as a random snapshot discovered in a drawer is of trying to walk, thencrawling on hands and knees across the skeletal rusted girders of an ancient bridge across the creek, tasting fear, fear like the swirling foam-flecked water below, trying not to glance below where jagged rocks and boulders emerged from the water. A possibly fatal place to fall, a place that might have left me maimed, crippled for life, yet a kind of logic demanded that the girders had to be crossed and, more fearfully, recrossed. I could not have said why such a mad feat of daring had to be performed, as if it were a sacred ritual, unwitnessed.
In the company of other children, I was compelled to be the most reckless. Once, I jumped from the roof of a small, boarded-up shanty-house to land on hard, grassless ground fifteen feet below. What an impact! I remember the sledgehammer blow that reverberated through my legs, spine, neck, head. My companions changed their minds about jumping and I was left with a dazed, headachy elation.
The stupidity of childhood, that reverberates through decades.
The realizationâ How close you came to killing yourself,
Often there were men fishing on the creek bank beside the bridge. There might be two men, or there might be a solitary man; they were not likely to be residents of the area. You would see their cars parked on the grassy shoulder of the road by the bridge. My memory of these strangers is utterly blankâI canât think that I approached them, yet I donât recall turning back to avoid them. It is possible that, from time to time, one of the solitary men spoke to me, asked my name and where I livedâthat would not have been unusual, and it would not have been alarming. But beyond that, I have no memory.
Did my mother think to warn meâ -Joyce, donât go near the fishermen! Stay on our side of the bridge.
To recall the sight of an individual fishing on the creek bank is to feel a thrill of apprehension. The graceful arc of a fishing line cast outinto the creek, the sound of the hooked bait and sinker dropping into the waterâthese are exciting to me, somehow fascinating, suffused with a kind of dread.
In the fishermanâs plastic bucket near shore, live fish, rock bass, trapped and squirming in a few inches of bloody water.
Our side of the bridge was the safer side. The other side of the bridge was the âotherâ side.
On the safer side was a similar path along the creek bank but it was wider, more defined. This was an area in which as a young child I had played with other children amid a scattering of large boulders and rocks that extended well out into the creek. Close by was a makeshift dam of rocks built by a neighboring farmer across which, if we were very careful, we could make our way to the other side.
At any point where a path led up from the creek, usually up a very steep hill, I could ascend and explore fields, woods, stretches of land that seemed to belong to no one. Within a mileâs radius from our house on Transit Road was this other, deeply rural, uncultivated and âwildâ place containing abandoned houses, barns, silos, corncribs. There were badly rusted tractors, hulks of cars with broken windows and no tires, rotted hay wagons, piles of rotted lumber. A kind of dumping-ground, at the edge of an overgrown and no longer tended pear orchard. Why NO TREPASSING signs exerted such a powerful fascination, I donât know; even today such signs are complex signifiers that stir atavistic memories and cause my pulse to quicken. Yet more attractive because more forbidding was the sign WARNING â BRIDGE OUT . Or, DANGER â DO NOT TRESPASS . Everywhere were NO HUNTING NO FISHING NO TRESPASSING signs and many of these were riddled with buckshot, for adults too were contemptuous of such admonitions.
An early memory divorced of all context and explanation as a random snapshot discovered in a drawer is of trying to walk, thencrawling on hands and knees across the skeletal rusted girders of an ancient bridge across the creek, tasting fear, fear like the swirling foam-flecked water below, trying not to glance below where jagged rocks and boulders emerged from the water. A possibly fatal place to fall, a place that might have left me maimed, crippled for life, yet a kind of logic demanded that the girders had to be crossed and, more fearfully, recrossed. I could not have said why such a mad feat of daring had to be performed, as if it were a sacred ritual, unwitnessed.
In the company of other children, I was compelled to be the most reckless. Once, I jumped from the roof of a small, boarded-up shanty-house to land on hard, grassless ground fifteen feet below. What an impact! I remember the sledgehammer blow that reverberated through my legs, spine, neck, head. My companions changed their minds about jumping and I was left with a dazed, headachy elation.
The stupidity of childhood, that reverberates through decades.
The realizationâ How close you came to killing yourself,
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