Recalling a place

John Miller English 130 Richard Sisk 9-3-2007

Sights: Construction equipment rearing up like mechanical dinosaurs Scummy water in a dark hole in the ground Rusty rebar poking up like spears from the concrete Mud-caked faces grinning ear-to-ear Sounds: Cars passing on the 22 Splashing as we jump in the ditch The shlorp- of the mud as we slog through it The ringing of the bucket on the shovel when we jump The sounds from the high school-announcements, the bell, the throng of teenagers Smells: Rusty pipe and rebar Exhaust from the road and freeway Water, standing too long in the ditch Mud; stinking, wet mud Oil and diesel from the equipment Concrete dust Tastes: Mud mixed with occasional concrete The tang of rusting metal Dirty water getting in your mouth despite your best efforts Concrete dust

Feels: Cold, bitter cold in the back of the tunnel where the water got no sun Hard metal of the machinery Hard concrete of the ditch/tunnel Wetness of the water Thick, glutinous mud that tried to suck you in, and occasionally stole your shoes Warmth of the sun when you came out of the tunnel

We werent allowed to play at the construction site, and we all knew it. Our mothers warned us all of the dangers there; tetanus, drowning, arrest for trespassing, and perhaps worst of all, getting our asses beat when we got caught. We were ten and elevenyear olds, and had no fear of death, so we went anyway. To get there, I had to cross Trask Ave, a task made easier by the fact that a crossing signal controlled traffic there. The 22 freeway ran parallel to Trask, and to give access to Bolsa Grande High School, which lay beyond it, a tunnel burrowed under the 22 directly across from my street. The walkway to the tunnel cut right past the site, and teens from the high school had pierced the fence in a dozen places, so it was fairly easy to gain access.

I heard the cars zooming past on the freeway as I crossed, and the occasional blare of a truckers horn. When the site was active, the machines clanked away all day, but on weekends and holidays, they fell silent, and the site belonged to us. I slogged through the stinking, glutinous mud, which made a shlorp- each time I took a step. It felt like quicksand might, sucking my feet down to its depths, and occasionally someone would lose a shoe in it, and have to get and hands and knees, searching blindly through the muck. It happened to me once, and the taste of the mud permeated my mouth, a mix of water, dirt and concrete spilled by the men who worked there. Once through the fence, I saw the machinery rearing up like a herd of mechanical dinosaurs surrounding a watering hole, the smell of oil and diesel from them mixing with the ever-present stink of exhaust from the freeway. There, in the center of the ring they formed, waited the hole, fingers of rusty rebar poking up from its side like spears or punji stakes. The rust from the pipes and rebar permeated the air so thickly that not only could I smell it, the tang of it would be in my mouth for most of the time I was there, mixing with the tastes of mud and concrete. Garden Grove had long had problems with drainage, and so the city decided to put in new storm sewers. This one was still under construction; a huge concrete-lined hole in the ground that opened in the roof of a rectangular section of sewer tunnel half filled with scummy, stinking water. For my mother, it was a deathtrap waiting to claim her son, for us, it was the neighborhood swimming hole. Wed climb up the hard metal sides of the excavator, using the hydraulic lines and shafts as handholds. It was an odd trip, first up the arm, then back down to the bucket. Once there, the perch gave us a clear shot down to the hole. It was nerve-wracking there in the bucket, looking down into this hard concrete ditch surrounded by rusty spears and filled with black water. I heard the wind whistling by, carrying the sounds of students thronging to their classes, the occasional announcement, or the blare of the bell drifting across the freeway from the high school. The bucket hung high enough to allow me to see the cars speeding by on the 22, and high enough that a misstep would probably have resulted in the fatality that my mother was so worried about. I looked down to see if anyone floated in my way, and then wang!- I leapt from the now-reverberating bucket to the water below, the sound of my splash drowning out everything else as it echoed off the insides of the sewer tunnel. No matter how tight I thought Id closed it, I invariably came up with some of that vile stew in my mouth, sputtering and coughing. The water, cool and slightly slimy, tasted of oil and diesel and rust. The smell followed me everywhere after I got out. The braver kids, and I was proud to say I was one of them, swam back into the darkness of the roofed-over section of the tunnel. The water there chilled me to my bones, a bitter cold relieved only when I had climbed up the hard concrete side of the open end of the ditch and back into the sunlight. Maybe it was only the sun, but some of that warmth, I think now, may have come from the mud-caked faces, grinning from ear to ear, that greeted me when I came up the ladder of rebar that led out of the hole.