It seems like the kids in our neighborhood were always building something. If they weren’t stilts, they were rubber band guns (probably a lost art). If they weren’t planes, they were scooters. If they weren’t karts, they were chicken coops. It never ended.
The supply of suitable materials was the main problem faced by the first builders. Trash is what things were built from. That often showed in the final product. But we always look with pride at our great creation until a disaster destroyed our masterpiece.
In pioneer days, the Jordan River that runs through the Salt Lake Valley was a clear stream filled with trout. We have never seen it like this. It was totally polluted in our days. Mr. Foster (who farmed trucks on a two or three acre parcel to feed his family) told us it was a clean, clear fishing stream. He had caught many trout in the river when he was a child.
Sometimes we also caught trout from the river, but we had to fish where the freshwater streams entered the dirty river water. State trout were sometimes dumped into the river on the fair grounds after their display at the State Fair, but that was rare, and the trout were quickly fished out or died in the mud.
Still, the river was our playground. They told us never to go in the water or we would die of bubonic plague or drown in a whirlpool. None of us died of the plague but some of us did drunk. One of my friends tried to rescue his brother while Grandpa was playing his accordion in the park just a few hundred yards away. Both boys got lost while we were enjoying the music, not knowing what was going on.
Things were difficult for children in those days. Two of our friends died when their bicycle was hit by a cement truck that was running down the street to deliver cement to the weapons plant.
A brother and sister we knew were killed by a truck carrying ammunition from the weapons plant to the railroad dock. The WAC driver fell asleep.
One of our friends fell to his death from a fence while he and his brothers stole a few pieces of charcoal from the coal shop.
A baby was lost when a brother closed the drawer where the mother kept the child.
Our widowed shoemaker lost two children when a son tried to save his sister from highway traffic. (Later, the cobbler, who did not trust banks, lost his life savings when the last survivor stole the money.)
There were also diseases. Polio scared us all, but children were dying from a host of other ailments because there was no penicillin or sulfonamides to help them.
Death surrounded us everywhere, but the scariest thing was when young mothers died giving birth.
We didn’t need to think too much about these things. So maybe that’s part of the reason we build such a wide range of gadgets.
The following is a poem about a boat that was built in my backyard.
The Square Ship That Wouldn’t Float by Taylor Jones
Saturday, April 19, 1999 (Modified November 3, 2005)
Aaron had the idea:
A boat in the Jordan to float.
So Dick and Aaron and all the greats
He built a ship before our eyes.
had the right shape
Like a coffin.
had square sides
And a flat bottom.
They nailed and tarred;
It weighed a ton.
It took forever to get to the river.
Where we could have fun.
Well all the kids in town
I saw the program.
We push the boat in the water
Let’s see if it went.
Aaron was in the middle
And Dick was in the stern.
Would the thing float or not?
that we would soon learn.
They rowed it to the middle
Of that muddy Jordan River.
At first things looked pretty good.
It was quite a clipper.
Then slowly, slowly, we saw,
Right before our eyes
That Aaron and the boys would be swimming;
It was the disappearance of the ship.
Yeah, it sank like that cement boat.
That’s off the coast of Cape May.
That sloppy concrete ship
Made just for war.
And just before “Abandon ship!”
There was our little war
Because there was a good supply of mud.
On the good bank of Old Jordan.
Thus began the mud fight
Until the ship sank.
They were covered in mud from head to toe.
Until they swallowed to drink
So all the work on that big ship
It was lost in the blink of an eye.
She sank so fast from bow to mast,
I could barely blink.
I miss those days of carefree youth,
Of ships, planes and cars.
But then all the boys left home.
To fight in a real war.
Orville and Virgil never came home.
They were not alone.
But the shipbuilders survived,
Thank God they came home.
Copyright©John T. Jones, Ph.D.1999-2005