Drowning in Mukai’s Pond

 I didn’t really drown. As I sank to the bottom, I could see the sky above and a trail of bubbles leading to the sun. I prayed the “Our Father” to myself and all went dark.

Sixty years later, all grown up, I was at a radio club picnic at Frankie Brown’s house.

I asked Frankie if he remembered dragging the unconscious kid off the bottom of Mukai’s pond. He had been 17 years old at the time and 81 the day of the picnic. That was the first time I had talked to Frankie since the infamous day at the pond.

It was 1948. Frankie had been hunting ducks off a log raft when George Hockley yelled that I had gone under. “I remember the little bastard lying on the bottom with his arms stretched out”, Frank said. “If I had known he was going to puke on my shotguns, I would have left him on the bottom of the lake”.

I was 8 years old; when George Hockley and I had biked into Mukai’s pond, a sunny and warm early summer day. George was older and taller and lived on the same road as Frankie and I couldn’t swim. Swimming lessons at Dockton park started later in the summer.

I never told Mom or Dad about the near tragedy at Mukai’s pond, knowing that I would have been grounded for a month. I didn’t want to worry them. Us kids were in trouble much of the time anyhow. Forgetting to do do manure patrol around the house or not coming straight home after school were lesser crimes.

Nobody had told me about the potholes in Mukai’s pond. The water was only chest deep when I walked off the edge. It was a drop off and I thrashed in the water trying to get out.

Frankie had draped me over the side of his log raft and towed me to the beach, where George laid me on my stomach and pummeled me in the small of the back to get the rest of the water out of my lungs.

Later in the summer, a school bus picked us up for swimming lessons at Dockton park. Dave Church was on the same bus and 60 years later could still be heard complaining that I had beat him up on the swimming lesson bus; though I don’t remember doing it.

We began lessons on the beach where the county life guard would have us crawl on the bottom in a dog paddle until we could do it in deeper water and not touch bottom. I cheated and let my feet sink to the bottom. When the lifeguard thought we were ready to swim in water that was over our heads, he marched us out to the float at the end of the county dock. We took turns kneeling on the edge of the float and rolling into the bay. The lifeguard carried an oar which he would extend to you if you were sinking and then it was my turn.

Memories of the bubbles and blue sky up above struck panic into me as I struggled to swim. To no avail. If you couldn’t swim back to the ladder, you were sent back to the beach to practice some more. I grabbed the oar.