 |
Walking the Salt Chuck
.... by D. Grant DeMan
Listening to parents agonize over strategies to keep their offspring profitably occupied out of harm's way, gives me pause. With a plethora of devices, places, and helping hands galore, who could have predicted this would be a modern problem? Or "issue", as they now love to term it. Thank Providence my folks had few such worries, for growing up in Victoria kids found reams of didactic diversions of which one of the most challenging we liked to call "Walking the Chuck."
This outdoor adventure required absolutely no money, equipment nor extensive preparation. Certainly no adults need apply.
Of a morning we'd be gathered around the Jungle of Moo in Victoria West, having just booby-trapped our favorite cave from marauding dinosaurs, as an idea surfaces: "So, should we go climb the bridge?" Wayne Morgan might ask. The Morgan boys were my very best special friends. Tiny Nina and Pinta, the Columbo twins, whose momma claimed they should have been triplets -- the third Santa Maria, failing to arrive -- would sometimes tag along. "That bridge is the second to span the inlet...blah blah blah," Turnip was the genius of our little gang. We learned to appreciate his vivid imagination -- what he didn't know he conjured. -- better than a movie, I expect.
Graphic by Glenn Brucker "We could dig into Sidney Roofing for more comics," Halfpint was a reader and collector of literature. "So watcha wanna do? Play Baby Austins?" He also had an eagle's eye and could find more little English cars than anyone else.
Smiling Bob Morgan was always the leader, "Okay, let's walk the salt chuck to the Dock Yard," and away we'd go.
Our rules dictated we meander close as possible to the water's edge; no excursions allowed. This may seem easy at first, but remember, much of the shore disappears under overhanging forested cliffs and rocks. There were high fences too, some ominously signed with wartime "Trespassers Will Be Fired Upon." For sure, everything was likely to be wet, so we really needed our ninety-eight cents per pair Fleetwoods for a sure grip. The degree of the challenge, then, largely rested upon tides.
"Sure is a whole lot of slippery kelp," Wayne complained. He'd gashed his knees on barnacles.
"This is not kelp, its bottle-nosed sea weed," Turnip pipes up from his buzz saw brain. Crawling along a wind-swept cliff side, we were perilously grasping roots and brush when he let out, "This damn bird's trying to eat me!" And sure enough Turnip had come between some brand of flapping feathered monster and its eggs crammed there in the rocks. While beating off the raptor and hanging on for life, he calmly identified the animal: "This is a bald eagle. The female of the species you notice does not display the vivid plumage nor the white crown feathers of the male. Hand me that stick, will ya!"
Between some rocks, just beneath the foam we discovered a giant yellow poached egg. "OOOeeee! Looka that jellyfish! Big as a manhole cover. Must have fifty feet of testicles there!" Turnip was really amazed, as were we all. Better not go near that beast. "They say they can throw poison darts right into ya."
Later Bob was pushing an enormous old barnacled half-submerged log back out into the ocean, when suddenly the thing sprung to life and with wild splashing and thunder, dived and disappeared below the surf. We had to stop a spell then while he cleaned up his trousers. Whew!
"There's a sun fish eating bull heads." Nina might observe.
"Them's not seals, them's otters." Pinta loved mammals, it seemed.
"How come when you grab an octopus outa the water, it goes goey and slips and slides? It don't do that in the movies." I liked picture shows -- a great fan of Tarzan, Johnny Weissmuller.
"Looka here! This dead Mallard has his head stuck in a sea anemone. You figure it grabbed the duck right under the water, or did the bird die first?"
"Hey Captain. What all fish you catching today? Can we come aboard?"
Our sea of joy yielded a thousand visions of crabs, sea stars, sand dollars, fish, birds and mollusks. Gale-weathered and briny spray polished, warm in the companionship and love of our fellow boys and girls, like mighty sea sponges, we soaked up an ocean of education, exercise and raw adventure. Now of course we're all acutely aware of basking sharks and jellyfish and clams and such, but no movie or book can ever begin to equal being there when we, so long ago, walked the chuck.
And, once more with feeling: no adults need apply.
'Vox Populi', get started! Send in your comments and critique on
- - -
