In the early sixties, getting off the bus every day, the neighborhood kids changed out of school clothes to head up to the park where we worked on our water project. We propped open the bubbler water fountain with a forked stick. The water flowed down into lakes and canals behind dams of bricks, stones, and clay. We built, dug, rebuilt, and re-dug to expand the project down into the gulley. We got muddy and happy every day after school. One late spring day, two men drove up in a red panel truck with Municipal Utilities printed on the door. The driver, in khaki pants and gray jacket, put the propping stick in his pocket. The younger guy, in blue jeans and plaid shirt, pulled out a wrench and removed the fountain bubbler, then screwed a silver cap onto the pipe. They drove off without a word to us silently watching and some were crying. In those days, children didn’t challenge adults; the adults didn’t think they needed to explain themselves to kids.
Most families in the neighborhood lived paycheck to paycheck and some feared eviction. A mother left one night for her shift at the Rawlings plant and never returned; her daughter designed the layout of the water project and each expansion. A father laid off from the iron mines got drunk every night and would beat his wife; his son dug the canals deeper than anybody. One boy lost family members in a collision with a delivery truck on the highway; he figured out how to make a lock and dam work for toy boats. The kid next door could not play sports because he had heart problems from rheumatic fever; he monitored water flow and pulled leaves from the canals.
With all that going on in the neighborhood and more, the water project in the park had been our refuge, the one thing we constantly talked about and looked forward to doing every day, more so than anything else like riding bikes or playing football.
I drove by the old neighborhood after my mom’s funeral 60 years later. That water pipe is standing there at the top of the park and silver-capped just as it was that late spring day. Of course, all the kids are gone from that time, grown and moved away. Some did become civil engineers and construction managers; I became a psychologist.
Michael C. Roberts is a mostly retired pediatric psychologist. He now hikes in the Sonoran Desert with his dog, cleverly named “Buddy.” He tried painting inspirational rocks during the pandemic, but he cannot paint with any artistry, so maybe they were not very inspirational. He returned to photography. Several of his photographs have been published in literary magazines and on journal covers. A book is available on Amazon: “Imaging the World with Plastic Cameras: Diana and Holga.”
