2000-04-15 - 22:36:03

THE WONDERING JEW

Aitch Too Oh

Water, the magic compound that can alter all things, hard to refine into its pure state. Pure water will not conduct electricity.

Water is everywhere, even in a region of drought there is water moving through and under the ground surface, a continuous flow, sometimes very slow.

I have heard that the human body is ninety some percent water, the rest an assortment of chemicals and elements, dry that pitiful pile would blow away.

Humans seem to be always attracted to water, from babyhood to old age. Boys such as I was (and may still be) are fascinated by water. (Except for bathing).

Mud puddles are to stomp in, splatter everywhere and soak your shoes. Rivulets are to be observed and then tracked to their source so as to make a determination as to how long they would run and if they could get bigger or smaller. If the decision was that they would last a bit then boys, unconsciously instigated by the patron of boys - Saint Murphy, as engineers, will build a dam in an disadvantagious spot thereby causing a righteous uproar by the feared "Grownups."

Brooks are the invitation to a boy to follow it for ever, feeling the coolth, looking for life in and around the water, observing how green and lush the pretty undergrowth by the water. Sometimes lingering a bit and watching Dragon Flies and little water skaters. Brooks, twist and often have miniature waterfalls, stream worn rocks are to be found which will fill one dresser drawer about the time a kid leaves middle school. A brook leads to one different view after another. If he can, a boy will go to the source.

Streams are larger and deeper and sometimes have a population of fish of one sort or another. So, the curtain rod, string, safety pin come into play . Whether a catch is made or not we boys had the time of our lives in the attempt.

Somewhere in this area come the ponds, in our area most of which are man made by farmers as catchments to water their stock and irrigate. They are usually watched over by the adults pretty well.

Enter the rivers. Here in Denver, our river is the South Platte and until they changed things through town, the Platte was wide and shallow with little water through the summer. There were occasional holes. There were lakes in the Denver parks where we sailed our small craft and when someone had the money a paddle boat would be rented at City Park lake. The park lakes were ferociously guarded against accidents.

The huge danger consisted of irrigation ditches, some of which were deep enough to drown a teen age boy and many little tots through the summer escaped their care takers and fell in one and drowned.

The other big danger was the sandpits. Along the Platte, north of down town and some south of down town were the sand pits near the river where construction sand and gravel and road building material would be dredged up. As time went on the old ones would be worked out and more or less abandoned, left with a barbed wire fence around them. Those unattended pits were a lure for the adventurous, foolhardy boys who tried to do dangerous things like floating out on boards or in galvanized tubs. The banks were steep, it was difficult to get down to the water and even more difficult to get out of a sand pit. Every summer we would read periodically about drownings in the sandpits.

In our mountains were a few big lakes of icy water where boats put out. Sometimes a boat would overturn in a sudden windstorm and passengers would drown, but not too often.

The mountain lakes were gorgeous things of beauty and we boys would get close and skip rocks and do things like that.

If there was water near any where, a wager could be made that any boys in the area could be found at the waters edge.

When I was grown we lived by the Mississippi near where the Rock River joined it. One summer I spent a lot of time swimming in the Rock River, where I finally decided the main reason I would be so tired after swimming was that I kept sweating in the warm water. I spent many happy hours with people on the river, and the immensity of it made my head swim.

I was thirty when I first saw the sea. We moved to Florida and lived at the north end of Old Tampa Bay, of course this boy took to the water, fishing, crabbing, oystering and boating with people who owned one. When it came time to move back to Denver I dreaded coming back to the dry lands and hated to leave the friends we had made there. But to make up for that were all our relatives here to welcome us back. With our majestic mountains as a background. I still love the water, I even bathe in it occasionally.

Picky lab techs call it Aitch Too Oh . . . . . . .

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