The Day I Learned to Fly

The Day I Learned To Fly

By Bob Liddil

The summer I turned thirteen years old was a time of adventure and enlightenment. It got off to a pretty rocky start though. One day in early June, as school was winding down for the year, and during mid-day recess, Randy Rogers revealed a secret to our group of friends. He described a place to us, "a swimming hole," he told us excitedly. "It's just an unbelievable place. You have to see it to believe it."

We listened intently as he painted a truly marvelous picture of this secret place, hidden in plain sight, yet hidden nonetheless. To say that we were intrigued would be to understate our enthusiasm. By Randy's description, our own Garden of Eden stood undiscovered and awaiting us less than a mile from where we stood listening in unabashed appreciation of his discovery. As the next period class bell rang, we all hastily agreed to meet when school let out for the day to go with him to view this wonder first hand.

We made quite a procession, my friends and I, trooping down Devine Street in the mid-afternoon, laughing and punching each other, shouting and even singing sometimes, quieting down only when we reached the Dunbar Funeral Home, a stately place with 3 black Cadillac Hearses parked out front.

Randy led us down through the large funeral home parking lot to the tree and brush line at its farthest from the street boundary, then a dozen yards along a kudzu lined path to the edge of a small sandy bottomed creek trickling clear water. We followed the creek downstream for another 50 yards or so until the sand turned to clay, then up another path for just a few feet. Then we were there. And where we were was a sight.

Randy had not exaggerated even a little. The swimming hole was exactly as he had described. It was magnificent, a boy's paradise on earth.

The creek in which we had been wading noisily tumbled over a waterfall, a drop of more than fifteen feet, and down into a deep pool below. The source of the creek, we discovered later that summer was runoff from city street drains, but it didn't matter. Water fell crystal clear into that pool, which Randy swore was more than twenty feet deep. He had already been swimming there and had tried twice to swim down to touch the bottom. Both times he had failed, he said.

High walls surrounded the pool on three sides. Carved from hard clay they were overhung with pea vines that dropped nearly to the surface. Under the waterfall and behind it was a shallow cave, inside of which was a sandy island. At the opposite end from the waterfall leading the creek continued off down a sandy, tree lined ravine that disappeared after thirty yards or so. The pool was roughly circular, measuring not much more than forty feet from edge to edge. If we had designed on a piece of paper an ideal spot, we could not have done better than this swimming hole we now stood before in awe.

I stood on a wide log that bridged the waterfall, facing the pool and the creek below under and slightly to the front of me. To my left and much higher than my perch stood a very tall tree. It towered upward like a leafy skyscraper, to such heights as to make me dizzy. Some of its branches stretched outward over the swimming hole. Nailed into its trunk and leading skyward, a ladder of two by fours was nailed in place, probably by some unknown kids who found this place long before us.

Conversation among my friends turned to that tree and a challenge was issued to me to climb it. The dare came from the one friend who knew heights to be my greatest fear. We'd been to summer camp together. He believed I would back down or beg off and he would get a cheap laugh off me, but I fooled him. I accepted the challenge before I even gave it a thought. How could I not? All those guys were the friends with whom I spent most of my waking hours, be it winter, summer, school, vacation, camp or church. My friends were my life. How they saw me meant everything to me.

Sure, I would climb that tree, I told them, all the way to the top if that's how far the ladder goes. I laughed confidently, then moved off the log and made my way around the short path that led to the base of the tree. Grabbing the second lowest board of the ladder I pulled myself up and began to climb, desperately hoping that they couldn't see me shaking.

The bottom of the tree nudged up against the top edge of the left bank of the swimming hole. The drop from just there alone was a good fifteen feet. Each board of that ladder took me higher still and with every foot I grew more and more anxious. My breath came in jagged gasps as I tried to stay calm -- if only I could stay calm I would make it through this ordeal with my dignity intact. Then it would be Randy or Pete's turn to face some test. For that moment though all eyes were on me.

I was counting; the thirtieth board, the one just two boards above the first solid branch, pulled out of the trunk as I grabbed it. The thing just came out in my hand as I pulled myself up by it. It slid out, soundlessly, without warning or conscience. It caught me wholly by surprise and off balance, lending me at that instant in my life to gravity's purchase.

For five heartbeats I hung motionless in space, suspended in time, hanging in the arms of that invisible guardian angel that watches over foolish boys. Inside of those five heartbeats some instinct born in pure adrenaline caused me to kick away while my feet still touched something solid. I made a desperate leap, hands ready to grab, arms outstretched, ready, praying to grab that limb.

I missed.

That was the day I learned to fly.

The surface of the swimming hole was by virtue of my climb, some forty feet below me. There were smaller, thinner branches below me too, but I missed them because my kick away had pushed my fall into an arc rather than a straight drop. I knew as soon as I missed my grab that I was in for a fall. Though I'd never jumped into water at any kind of height, I had seen others do so from the "high tower" at YMCA Camp. I knew almost instinctively that I needed to be tucked into the tightest, roundest package possible when I finally touched down. I grabbed a deep, deep breath as the water rushed up to meet me.

I never got to see the splash I made. I was told later that I'd hit "The mother of all cannonballs" and that was a pretty all-telling description for me. I stayed underwater long enough to scare my friends into believing I'd died upon impact. Randy had his shirt halfway off to dive in when I surfaced. By then, the splash was gone, as was the subsequent tidal wave and all traces of what in stories subsequently told around my school became known as "Bobby's Bomb."

I dog-paddled across the swimming hole below my friends. I called up to them and called out, "Man! This water feels good!" I was of course lying.

I laughed out loud, and then invited them all to jump in, which they did, and cold water or not, we had a great afternoon of swimming in an almost magical place.

I never feared high places again. To my friends, I always swore that I jumped on purpose. To this day, no one has ever been the wiser about the day I learned to fly.