The Creek

Directly behind the house I grew up in was “the creek”, a large ditch that was roughly 20 feet across and 10 feet deep (just a guess). During the summer, the kids of Sun Valley (my old neighborhood) played a lot of “Army” back there. It was full of weeds and trees and all kinds of cool things to climb and play on. In the spring and fall there would almost always be water standing in the bottom of the creek. With a plastic cup and a quick hand you could catch crawdads, and if you were lucky, with a hook on a string and some bacon you could catch a fish — usually catfish or perch. The creek was full of red dirt, which made for red mud and red water. You always put your old clothes on before going down to play in the creek, as your white underwear, socks and shoes would surely come home stained red.

In the winter, whatever water was left standing in the creek would freeze, giving the neighborhood kids our own ice skating rink. Rumor had it that, if you followed it far enough, the creek led all the way from Sara Road to Lake Overholser, about two miles away. I never personally made it that far. Usually around the one mile mark the ice would break, someone would go knee-deep into the water and we would turn tail and head home in fear of frostbite. I don’t know if you could really get frostbite in those conditions, but it seemed like a real enough threat at the time.

At the other end of the creek (just one backyard away from my own) was the Sara Road bridge. Before they rebuilt it back in the early 90s, the bridge was barely wide enough for two cars to cross at the same time — and, if you knew how rickety the thing was, you wouldn’t try. One game the bigger kids used to play was to hang from the underside of the bridge as cars passed overhead. The whole thing shook and rattled with each passing car while kids hanging underneath clung for dear life. It was so loud that just standing under the bridge displayed a certain amount of bravery.

One winter while a dozen or so of us were hanging out underneath the bridge, a few of the kids came up with the idea of pelting passing cars with snowballs. A few of the older kids made their snowballs and sat in wait by the side of the bridge. No motorist had any chance of catching us. By the time a car could stop, we would already be scurrying through the creek like the rats we were. There were plenty of places to hide in the creek, but really all one had to do was make it up into the neighborhood where we would be home free.

As the first car approached the bridge, kids ducked just out of sight behind bushes and piles of brush. When the car whizzed by — POW — it was pelted by handfuls of snowy spheres. As expected, the driver hit the brakes and slowed, but didn’t stop. We heard the horn honk and saw a middle finger wag, but that was it. Hey, this could turn out to be fun! (Unless, of course, somebody got killed.)

This continued a couple of times. Each time, butterflies ripped through our stomach as we prepared to flee.

Now as we were doing this, one of the kids came up with an idea of his own: ice balls. While we were up by the bridge watching cars zip by and tossing snowballs at them, this kid was amassing an army of frozen snowballs by dunking them into creek water and freezing them until they were rock solid. With a couple of these frozen weapons in town, this kid worked his way up to where we were hiding and took his spot among us.

At the end of Sara Road, a car turned toward us. We couldn’t really make out the details of the car … just the headlights. Waiting in anticipation, I smoothed my own snowball to perfection, waiting for just the right moment to release it.

As the car reached the bridge, we all jumped out of our spots and let them have it. POW. POW. POW.

CRACK.

The sound of the ice ball hitting the windshield. The driver hit the brakes — hard — the wheels screeched and the car came to a stop. The mood changed instantly from “hee hee hee” to “oh, SHIT.” An ice ball? Seriously?

No one dared to chance staying in their hiding spot; it was each kid for himself as we ran down the creek’s slope at full speed and hit the bottom of the creek running, a blur of gloves and mittens and scarves and hats. We splashed through the ice cold water, grabbing at trees to propel our bodies quickly through the brush.

It seemed too risky to lose the millisecond it would take to look over my shoulder and see if we were being pursued, but I did, and we were. The man was screaming for us to stop as he made his way down the creek’s slope toward us. We ran faster as if our lives depended on it — and it probably did.

There was a fork off of the creek that ran down beside my house. I made the turn and kept running all the way home. I think everyone else did too, and I don’t think anyone got caught.

And that was the last time we played “Pelt the Car from the Creek”.