LIFE UP THE EDDY (12): ICEBREAK

THURSDAY

Towards the end of February, it was Thursday when Donnie and I jumped off the school bus up on the main road. We were eleven years old. We ran straight down the dirt road to the Eddy. We knew where we were going. We had planned it.

We had heard on the radio that a February thaw was coming our way. So, after school, we took an axe out on the Allegheny and chopped a hole through the thick ice. We then took scoop shovels and cleared the snow off a spot where we wanted to make a hockey rink and play hockey, one more time before winter ended.

We took a bucket and dipped river water from the hole and dumped it on our new rink. It was getting dark by then, and the temperature was falling well below freezing. Before we went home, we stood around on the ice for a while, talking about the Buffalo Bisons and if they could beat the Montreal Canadiens in the Saturday hockey game we were going to watch on TV. We rooted for the Bisons, but “Rocket” Richard and Jean Beliveau of the Canadiens were our heroes. While we talked, the temperature continued to fall, and the cooling ice was groaning and chuckling its “ice sounds” up and down the river.

FRIDAY

As soon as we got home from school Friday, we took our skates and hockey sticks down to the river and were out on the ice. Our new rink was frozen glassy-smooth. I took two sawhorses onto the ice for goals.

Across the river, the steep north slope was still in shadows and deep snow from the high ridge down to the ice. The sun wouldn’t shine there until later, in the spring. When we went onto the ice, the winter sun was lingering above the ridge, just high enough to shine down on the river. The air had warmed up during the day. It was a perfect hockey day.

Several of the boys in the Eddy showed up to play. We had enough boys to play two and a goalie on each team. To start the game, Donnie and I made one team, with Pudgey, from up on the main road, our goalie. We were going to play against three other boys from up on the main road.

I went to center ice and said, “OK, Donnie. You play defense and I’ll start forward.”

Pudgey’s older brother was on the other team. He skated up to me and said, “OK. I’ll drop the puck for our faceoff.”

“OK.”

“Ready?” He dropped the puck between us. Our wooden hockey sticks clacked together. The game was on.

We played until almost dark when my mother called me to supper, and we had to take off our skates and end the fun.

SATURDAY

It was even warmer on Saturday. The sun was bright on the snow-covered ice as far as we could see up and down the river. Some snow had started to melt on the hillsides. When we met up after lunch, it seemed like the Eddy was waking up. Up on the hills in the gulleys lined with hemlock trees, you could hear water rushing down the streams beneath. We had a couple of hours of great fun that afternoon. We were all warm from skating and took off our jackets and threw them aside on the snow.

The boys who lived on the river knew what to watch for. Right in the middle of our game, we all stopped suddenly and listened. Down the river, from more than a mile away, there came the sound of thunder. We stood silent for a few seconds. Then we heard the thunder again.

Donnie called out, “The ice is breaking. Get off!”

Just then, the thunder came up the river and went right past us as a thick crack in the ice zipped upstream, straight through our rink. We grabbed up the sawhorses and our jackets and sprinted off the ice with our sticks.

When we got up on the bank, I said to the other boys, “That’s it. The ice is going to go out.”

We were all stunned by the suddenness of it. We were quiet as we sat down in the snow to take off our skates and put on our boots. Then as we were standing up, the ice, as far as we could see up and down the river, groaned and started to move downstream.

At first, it moved in a smooth sheet of ice. But the ice flow had to negotiate curves and the big rocks along the shore. The ice started to break up along the shore. Then there was more thunder as the ice squeezed upon itself, forcing huge, thick slabs upward to fall again with loud, explosive cracks like thunderclaps. Then the ice started to creep up onto the shore. You could hear the giant slabs grinding up over the bank. Some crashed up against the cluster of four big water maples at the edge of our yard. The ice tore the bark off the upstream sides of their trunks.

The ice kept coming downstream, picking up speed as it rode on the current of the rising river. The thick ice was noisy, grinding itself into slabs and chunks. It was a fabulous sight, but kind of scary. All the other boys left for home.

By then, neighbors up and down the Eddy were coming out to watch the ice go out. They knew what might happen next. And it did.

*******

By late afternoon, the river was still choked with ice, tons and tons of it covering the water. The surface of the river was chaos, all ice, churning downstream.

My dad and I were standing in the snow out in the yard watching the spectacle. Old Gus, our neighbor in the cottage nearest us upriver, came out to watch the ice break. He had come to this country from Sweden as a young man. He had an anchor tattoo on his left forearm that he got when he was in the Swedish navy. He liked winter. He even went down to the river in winter, when it wasn’t frozen over, to take a bath. I thought it was kind of odd that, that day, he came out in just slippers on his feet.

There had been enough melting snow in the miles of forests upstream that the river rose quickly. It was already up over the bank. More ice was coming up into the yards.

As we stood there with Gus, we saw the water was rising even more. Gus suddenly raised one foot and shouted out, “Yayvool!” The water had risen rapidly, underneath the snow and given him wet feet. My dad laughed at the sight.

We knew then. There was an ice jam downstream somewhere.

When we went in for supper, the water was still rising. It was all the way up to our front porch. We heard on the radio that there was flooding all along the river downstream. There was an ice jam somewhere in town at a bridge. They were talking about dynamiting the ice dam.

When I went to bed, the water was up over the concrete slab that was our front porch. We didn’t know if the water was going to come into the house. Dad was going to stay up and keep watch.

SUNDAY

We didn’t go to church the next day. At mid-day, after dinner, Donnie called me and wanted to play. The water had suddenly gone down during the morning when the ice dam broke up downstream. He wanted to go up and down the Eddy and see what had happened.

There was thick ice up in everyone’s front yard. The river was still full of large chunks of ice, and even some of the big, thick slabs. But there was some open water now. There was a constant flow of ice moving down stream, all of it coming from somewhere way upstream.

When Donnie and I went out to play, we walked upriver to the Shulz place. They had an eight-foot concrete wall where their front yard met the river. It protected their place from erosion. The upstream end of the wall curved back away from the water, maybe ten feet. Even though the water had been falling all day, it was still high, about a foot from the top of the wall. The current was carrying big chunks of ice against the wall where it curved towards the land.

Donnie and I stood there for a few minutes watching the ice collide with the wall. Then we saw a large slab bump against the concrete. It made a quiet thump, rolled around the corner of the wall, and went on its way downstream.

Donnie and I looked at each other. He said, “Hey. We could ride on one of those big slabs of ice.”

I hadn’t thought of it. I was a little skeptical, but wondered out loud, “Do you think it would hold us?”

Donnie was quick to reply, “Let’s try it.”

We weren’t afraid of the river like most people would be. When the next big slab bumped up against the wall, we jumped on. It was about ten by twelve feet across. It didn’t rock even a little bit when we got on.

It was wonderful. We looked all around the Eddy and up into the hills as we passed by the cottages on shore. It was totally quiet.

When we went past one house, about a quarter mile downstream, old Mrs. Branch came out on her front porch and called to us, “You boys are crazy!”

We just looked at each other and went back to enjoying the ride. But then, we started to make a plan to get back on shore. We knew the river. We knew we had to get off before the next island and the rapids there. It didn’t occur to us that we might have to swim for it in the icy water. Just before we got to the rapids, the current moved the slab close to shore. We jumped off and ran a couple steps through shallow water to end our adventure.

That night at supper, my mom asked me what Donnie and I had done all afternoon.

I looked up and answered with a poker face, “Oh, we just played.”