written in 2006
I’m 53. When I was about 12 I lived next door to three girls who surrounded me in age – one was a year older. They were the daughters of a kind and devout Baptist minister. They were best pals who laughed and chattered with the same ease then as now. We played together often.
One day, under a large Pepper tree in my large backyard – we lived in an area of ‘farmettes’ – they said, “Let’s dig here”. They began to dig with their hands, and I helped. Two inches down, we hit running water, right there beneath the hot dusty ground of summertime San Bernardino. It was only a small flow of water, as if one was running a garden hose into a two inch diameter tunnel. Where the water came from, and where it went I didn’t know. I pawed up about three more feet of the little tunnel with my hands, but I couldn’t find its secret, or any signs of ‘handiwork’ on the part of the girls.
I was amazed. “How did you do it?” What was the trick, I wondered to myself.
“Did what?”, they said, doing a poor job of concealing their delight at fooling me.
I was sure it was a trick! But … there had been no mark in the dust to betray any secret work before they began. The earth had been clean and unbroken. So I said, “Find more!”
“Where”, said the girls?
I walked thirty feet East from the mysterious water – which flowed mostly North to South – and pointed down at the unbroken earth.
The girls knelt down in their cotton dresses, which most little girls wore to play, and school in 1965. They held their hands over the ground, moving them slowly, doing their best I was convinced, to make things look difficult and mysterious. Within three feet of where I had pointed they began digging, at first with a short, stiff stick, and then with their hands. Again! There, to my disbelieving eyes, a small underground stream flowed North to South … on its way to where? From where? My curiosity was so aroused I almost hurt from the ‘not knowing’ of it all. I couldn’t stand it!
This was repeated twice before the girls were called home to supper. I grew more observant, demanding, and mystified each time. That night I dreamed of tracing down source and destination of the mysterious underground streams.
Perhaps I could merge the streams and thereby power a tiny generator and a flashlight bulb – an endless source of light and water for an underground fort! I barely slept that night.
The next afternoon the girls had to attend one of those inumerable weekday church functions that preacher’s kids have to attend. I couldn’t wait, and went directly to our large backyard. The little tunnels were nearly dry; where had the water gone? The ends of the tunnels – for now they had ends – were of undisturbed earth. It was confounding! I knew the water had flowed!
My father put an end to my digging that afternoon. I don’t think a 12 year old boy ever dug up more than I did that afternoon. To my father, I mumbled something about trying to track a gopher’s burrow to its nest. Even then, I knew ‘The Watergirls’ story would result in teasing.
The next afternoon I couldn’t wait to see the girls. They came over, and the hand waving began again. First one area, and then another, but I knew by their faces that the hand waving had lost it’s magic. I felt sorry for them. They wanted to explain, that was obvious, but all they could say was,
“Somehow we could just tell … in our hands.”
Now and again, years apart, I see the girls. They have their own comfortable grown-up worlds – kids, grandkids, neighbors long known. They don’t like to talk about the streams – but they remember.
Sometimes even now – four decades later – on a hot dusty San Bernardino day, I think about the water, the fort, and the giggling neighbor girls … it makes me happy.
copyright 2006 by Brent Farwick