Wading along Douglas Street

For the second time in the past few days, I was awakened by booming thunder and the steady cadence of rain showers pounding on the roof and windows. My lifelong affinity for thunderstorms made sleeping a delightful experience. As a kid I loved rain storms, as they allowed me to accomplish one of my favorite activities: wading.

I have written many stories about the old neighborhood of my youth. It was a magical place of memories; a location that gave kids from my generation, a way of life that has passed by, not likely to be witnessed again.

My grandmother's house was located on the northwest corner of the intersection of Cedar and Douglas streets. Douglas Street was an east to west venue that ran steeply downhill from Cedar to the next intersection at Main.

There, on the northeast corner, was the legendary Cox's Market. This small store was one of many from that era that represented so much of the fabric of our lives. Every kid within a half dozen blocks of Cox's Market, considered it their own special hangout.

Douglas Street today is paved and has curb and gutter. In my youth, it was an infrequently maintained gravel thoroughfare. Because there was a steep incline between Cedar and Main, Douglas had deep ditches to carry the torrents of water incurred during a heavy rain.

The rock the city used in those days was a collection of many sizes of very smooth-sided brown stones that are generally referred to today, as river rock. When I say infrequently maintained, I am serious. A couple of times a year, the street maintenance crews would use a road grader to smooth out the roadway and redistribute the gravel back towards the center.

The street was usually in sad shape by the time the grader made a visit. There was supposed to be room for two vehicles to meet and pass safely, but in reality, there was only a one lane pattern available for drivers. The tire tracks in this path were worn down and packed. If you did meet a car on the road, both drivers had to carefully slow down and each maneuver to the right, to safely pass.

There is something that happens to a gravel road on a hill, when cars use their brakes to stop or slow down. The result is a series of little ridges that run perpendicular across the street. As the wear increases, so does the size of these naturally occurring speed bumps.

Cars were forced to go slow or face a series of violent vibrations as they ran over these furrows. Every other kid and I in the neighborhood thought they were wonderful. On a bike or riding in one of our Red Flyer wagons, we would sail down that hill time after time, reveling in the jolts as we flew over the bumps. They were a lot like moguls one finds today on a ski slope

The ditches of Douglas were not a pretty site to anyone but kids. Because the hill was so steep, the ditches became roaring torrents of muddy water during a thunderstorm. Besides being very deep, they resembled miniature Grand Canyons.

The sides were uneven and there were crevices where water rushed in from various locations as the ditch descended. At the very bottom of the ditch was a layer of solid rock that prevented the ditch from growing deeper. It also gave kids a solid platform for one of our wading excursions.

I don't know if kids today have the same weather gear that we did back then. We played outside so much of the time regardless of the weather. Every kid in my neighborhood had a pair of rubber waterproof boots of some kind.

When a rainstorm came along, we were all allowed to play in the rain, as long as there was no lightning in the area. Once the all clear was announced, we were in our boots and headed for the Douglas Street river canyon.

We would enter the ditch not far from the Cedar Street corner. It was quite shallow there and easy to get in and out. It was fairly smooth going for about a hundred feet or so until we came to the driveway whistle that supported the entrance to my grandparents backyard drive.

In our boots and raincoats, we had to help each other carefully climb over and back into the ditch on the other side. From there to the bottom of hill, the ditch and the gushing water gradually deepened.

I am sure that in today's world the adults in our families would probably be charged with child neglect for letting us play in that ditch. I guess it was just a time when we didn't take things quite so seriously. Our parents and grandparents seemed to be willing to let us be kids, even if that meant a few scrapes and bruises.

After a time, the water would slow and eventually become a mere trickle in the bed of the gully. Having enjoyed our wade, we were more than ready to move on to whatever new and exciting experience lay ahead.

Our boots would be placed in safekeeping for the next big rain, but for now we turned our attention once again to bikes, wagons, toys, sand boxes, swings and simple games like hide and seek.

Yes, I still love a good old-fashioned Missouri thunderstorm. I relish the flash of lightning, the trees as they sway in the wind, the pounding rain drops and that special smell that only a spring rain brings.

Most of all, I love to close my eyes during a good storm and gaze back to those days when we waded in the Douglas Street Canyon. Why don't you put your boots on and come join me?