Page 18 - Winterling's Chasing the Wind

Always loving to swim, I climbed over the railing of the bridge to get into the water.
But when I lowered myself over the railing by the sidewalk, I discovered the current
was flowing into a culvert under the road. I gripped the railing but was unable to pull
myself back to the sidewalk. Fortunately, a driver spotted my dilemma, stopped, and
lifted me up to safety. I then recalled that I had heard flood warnings on the radio and
thought they were just for the mountains in northern New Jersey. The next day, I
learned that New England was struck by a disastrous storm, the infamous hurricane of
1938.

Airplanes and the clouds always fascinated me. Occasionally, I would look up at the
blue sky and see a sky-writing plane spell out Coca-Cola. I wouldn't miss the comic
strips with airplanes and airships, like Smilin' Jack and Tailspin Tommy. One day my
father drove us to Newark airport to see them on the ground. Wow! What a sight to see
a bright silver DC-3 Eastern Air Lines plane parked by the terminal.

When the next Christmas came, my father gave me a wood-burning kit. It had an
electrically heated pen and a few slabs of softwood containing drawings of a bird or an
animal. The object of the kit was to burn each image into the boards. My first lesson
was a painful one, not to hold the lower
end of the pen below its cork ring. The
first time I held it, the heated end
burned my fingers. A few weeks prior
to that Christmas, I remembered
watching my grandmother
(Grosmutter) knitting from large
spools of maroon wool.

On the morning that Santa arrived, I
unwrapped a present that contained a
pair of nice, warm wool stockings. I
was very happy because when walking
outside my feet had been getting numb
from the cold, damp winter weather.

10