I’ve lived between these two rivers two other times in my life, once, before my marriage, and twenty years later, after it. During the first time, in 1982, when I was in the apartment at Franklin and Gilman, we had a cold spell nearly as extreme as the one this week. I was on the concrete crew for the construction of the Farm Credit Bank at 2d and Waco, and I walked to the job site every day. As I circled along the Little River to the bridge, each day I dreamed about the river freezing solid enough that I could take the shortcut right across the river. I started edging up to the the bank each morning and testing the thickness of the ice. That part of the river is dammed up, so there’s not much flow. One day, I decided it was time to walk across the river. It was a simple joy, a tiny landmark, a quaint obsession, a neighborhood milestone. That was on a Friday, the weather broke that weekend, and I never took that particular shortcut again.
I walked tonight with the temperature at 13 degrees. This is Monday, highs during the week predicted in the teens, with the high on Saturday at 6 with a low of -6. I’ve been walking along the Big River, there’s too much movement for it to freeze solid, but I might just recreate my old path on the Little River for my walk on Saturday, see if those dreams from almost 40 years ago can be revealed at the edge of the water, see if I can predict the timbre of the ice in the middle of the river from the safety of the bank, see if that youthful construction worker still haunts those shores, listen carefully to see if he’s still humming that old Jimmy Cliff song, Many Rivers To Cross.
These are the things I am searching for – the truth about memories that lie in wait along these grassy banks, and the memories of that which has proved over and over again, to be profoundly true.