by Ron Day

Sometimes we'd try to solve this problem by laying dibs to certain holes as we walked to the creek each morning.

"I get the Telephone Pole Hole today!" one of us would shout out while subtlely increasing his gate from a mere walk into a slow trot.

"No you don't," the other would respond as he ran casually past his fishing buddy, "you got the Telephone Pole Hole yesterday. I get it today!"

"No you dont!"

"Yes I do!"

"Not if I beat you there!"

At about which time our leisurely morning walk would turn into a full bore footrace toward the line of trees that marked the distant creek.

Flying like young eagles, and tripping over holes in the ground while heedlessly staining our tennis shoes in piles of fresh cow manure, we'd race on, shouting out insults about the other's fishing skills and laying claim to various fishing holes up and down the creek.

These footrace's often climaxed with a vicious flying tackle, made by whichever one of us was behind, that would send our tackle flying.

This friendly bantering occurred nearly every day and strained our frienship for a few minutes or so until, as usually happened, we discovered there weren't any fish in the Telephone Pole Hole that day anyway.

At best, this was obviously a hit and miss method of locating fish.

One summer afternoon my cousin Tommy and I were taking a rare break from fishing, opting instead to swim in a creek that wound it's way through pastures a half mile or so from his parents home, near the small community of Ahtanum in central Washington.

As we lay on the grassy creek bank, letting the sun burn our backs and dry out our swimming trunks, Tommy rested his chin on his arms and gazed across the surface of the deep water we'd swum in only minutes before.

"I wonder how many fish are in there?" he pondered out loud.

"Yeah, me too," I agreed. "It's too bad there isn't a way to figure out how many fish are in each hole, that way we'd know exactly where to fish every day."

Tommy was silent for a few minutes as he contiuned to stare intently at the water.

"Yeeeeaaahh", he finally said, drawing out the word in a way that immediately made me nervous.

The last time I'd heard him say "yeah" like that we'd had to explain to a rather irate Uncle Bill how twelve or fifteen .22 caliber bullet holes had suddenly, mysteriously, appeared in the left front hub cap of his pristine 1947 Plymouth while it had been locked safely out of harms way in a darkened room inside the barn.

Tommy rolled suddenly onto his side, propping his head on his hand so he could look at me better.

"It'd be easy", he said. "All we gotta' do is find a way to breathe under water. You know, like with a snorkel or something. Like Mike Nelson does on Sea Hunt."

I chuckled at his little joke, relieved in a small sort of way that he didn't actually have some sort of plan forming in his brain.

"Yeah, right! We don't even have a snorkel, so that won't work.....I know! Let's just lay here till we grow fins and gills, and maybe a tail." I bantered as I rolled onto my back to get an even sunburn on my stomach.

"Hey! Maybe we could become Mermen! Maybe we'd meet some half naked Mermaids down there!" I added.

Tommy didn't even crack a smile at my little joke though, only rubbed his chin with his fingers and squinted his eyes as he chewed on his lower lip.

I knew this look. It was a dangerous look. My feeble attempts at jocularity immediately subsided as I awaited his next words, knowing full well that they would somehow permanently alter my life in one way or another.

" Maybe we don't need a snorkel" he mused thoughtfully. "Maaaaybee a hose would work! A garden hose! Yeah! That's what we need! A garden hose!"

Jumping to his feet he shouted, "C'mon, let's go back to the house. Dad's got a hose out in the front yard, I saw it this morning. We'll bring it back here for a little while. He's working till 6 o'clock anyway. He won't even know it's gone!"

I knew Tommy was lying about the part that Uncle Bill wouldn't know about it, Uncle Bill always knew about everything, but I got up off the ground anyway.

As we hurried back to Tommy's house he began explaining his plan to me.

"It's pretty simple, really," he said. "We'll just leave one end of the hose on the creek bank while one of us put the other end in his mouth and walks out into the water until it's over his head. All he's gotta' do then is suck on the hose to breathe. I bet we could stay under water for a long time like that.....an' just think of all the fish we'll be able to see!"

His plan did sound simple, maybe a little too simple, I was figuring. I mean, why hadn't anyone thought of it before? But then, I had to admit, there did seem to be a certain amount of logic involved in it. In no time at all I was as excited about Tommy's plan as he was.

As we arrived at his house we snuck around to the front window and peeked in, just to make sure the coast was clear. Luck was with us! The swamp cooler was roaring loudly and Aunt Mae was busy vacuuming the living room floor. There was no way she'd even know we were around with all the racket she was making, so Tommy began to carefully unscrew the hose from a faucet on the side of the house.

A green 50 footer, with two skinny red stripes running its length, the hose proved to be very un-cooperative. Each time we tried to roll it up into a manageable coil it'd squirm from our hands and strike out at our feet like a hungry python. After several frustrating attempts to subdue it Tommy and I stood back to survey the situation.

"Wait here!" he said as he dashed off towards the garage.

I soon heard a loud crash followed by another one, not quite so loud. A few seconds later Tommy emerged on the run, just ahead of a billowing cloud of dust, carrying two lengths of heavy Manila rope.

It's a good thing I remembered the fluorescent light over the workbench," he said breathlessly, "otherwise I'd of forgotten Dad had it tied to the rafters with these here ropes."

We quickly rolled the hose into a tight coil then held it with our knees until both ropes were tied around it. The green snake was at last secure.

"That's a stupid knot! What's it called?" Tommy sneered as he inspected the twisted and balled up wad of rope I'd tied together around the hose.

"Dunno, I haven't named it yet," I replied, pretending I'd deliberately planned all the loops and twists and whoop-de-do's in it. "I jus' sorta made it up as I went along. I guess maybe I'll name it when I find out how well it works."

Tommy looked at me suspiciously for a second, then poked his head and one arm through the coil of hose.

"Let's go Meeester Boy Scout!" he said sarcastically.

The trip back to the creek was quick and uneventful, although we did pause for a few seconds in order to regret the fact that we'd accidently left all of our clothing and our towels lying on the lawn back at Tommy's house.

The urge to carry on with our experiment was too great though, and we quickly decided that a scientific breakthrough such as we were about to make was much more important than having dry clothes to wear.

Besides, it was a warm sunny day and we were wearing our swimming trunks. Who needed clothes, anyway?

Our first efforts with the hose were discouraging, as we discovered that it was nearly impossible to stay under water for any length of time while holding the end of a garden hose in your mouth. We'd forgtotten that it takes two hands and two feet and a tremendous amount of energy to stay under water. Anything less and you'd just naturally pop to the surface like a cork.

Another problem was the hose itself. It was just too long. We could breath through it alright, but it took long, deep breaths, to do it. The hose needed to be shorter so we didn't have to move so much air at one time. We considered cutting it down to about twenty feet but our jack knives were in our jeans, now lying in a pile back in Tommy's yard.

Besides, Tommy thought cutting his dad's garden hose into pieces would be pushing our luck just a little too much.....what with the light fixture falling onto the workbench and breaking both the tubes and all after he'd untied the ropes.....not to mention the tool box, the contents of which were scattered for a considerable radius around the garage now.

And, oh yeah, there was that one can of chartreuse paint that had lodged upside down between the workbench and the freezer just before its lid came off.

Naw, it probably wasn't a good idea to cut up the garden hose, we both agreed.

But, with a little experimenting, we finally came up with a solution to the hose problem. We discovered that if one of us took a deep breath and blew into the hose at the same time the other was sucking on the opposite end we could move a lot of air through it.

We then developed a signaling system whereby Tommy.....we'd already decided it would be he who would go into the water since he'd thought of the plan.....would hold up one finger to signify suck and two fingers to signify blow. It was that simple. Things were looking up!

The other portion of our problem took a little more thought, however.

How could Tommy stay under water long enough to test our invention without using his arm and legs? What we needed, we decided, was a way for him to be able to merely walk out into the water until it was over his head and just stand there while he breathed through the hose and counted all those huge fish that were sure to swim in front of his eyes.

As we pondered this problem we wandered over to a nearby pile of trash somebody had built, probably a hundred or so years previously.

"I got a idea!" Tommy shouted out as we stood looking at the rubbish.

He began digging through the rusty tin cans, crinkled sheets of tin, and other neat stuff.

"Find something really heavy!" he ordered as I too began to rummage around amongst the junk.

As luck would have it, buried at the very bottom, we found a large steel wheel off an old truck of some kind. Tommy dragged it out, gave it a heft or two with both hands, then brushed it off and proclaimed it to be perfect.

"Must weigh twenty, maybe twenty-five pounds!" he exclaimed happily. He was really getting excited.

Like all of me and Tommy's past ideas, this one was simple, too. It involved tying together the two lengths of rope we'd used to tame the garden hose and then tying one end of it around Tommy's waist and the other onto the wheel. We figured the weight of the wheel would be sure to hold him underwater long enough to at least get a few breaths of air through the hose.

Yes, sir! Really simple. Just the way me and Tommy liked things.

I was in charge of the tying and carefully measured out the rope, making doubly sure that there was only about two inches of slack when the wheel lay flat on the ground at Tommy's feet. Too much play in the rope and his head would be sure to pop to the surface once he reached the deep water.

"Isn't that the same knot you tied back at the house?" Tommy asked asked as he looked down at the rope around his waist.

"Sure is, an' I think it's a holder too, don't you?" I replied proudly.

"Well, umm, I don't know," he said, trying hard to work his hand between the rope and his stomach. "It's a little tight ain't it?"

Handing him one end of the garden hose I said, "Naaaw, I don't think so. 'Sides, I think I heard somewhere that Manila rope expands when it gets wet......or somethin' like that."

With everything ready at last Tommy stepped off the bank and into the water, holding the hose in his right hand and the old truck wheel against his body with the left.

"Now, remember", I said, "once you get out to where the water's about a foot over your head drop the wheel so it'll hold you down. Then, when ya' wanna' come back to the shore, all ya' gotta' do is pick it up and carry it."

Tommy nodded, a little nervously it seemed to me, then took a few steps out into the creek. When the water was swirling around his belly button he turned back toward me.

"Hey! Do ya' think we could talk to each other through this hose?" he asked.

"Yeah! That's a good idea!" I replied. "Let's try it!"

It was a good idea, too. We could actually hear each others voices through 50 feet of garden hose! I noticed what looked like an expression of relief sweep momentarily over Tommy's face.

"Okay," he said, "you listen real careful, and if I get into trouble or somethin' out there then I'll just call you through the hose."

"......an' don't forget our signals!" he added as an afterthought.

From the shore I watched as he slowly walked forward, the water rising higher and higher up his body. The wheel seemed to be working extremely well. I didn't notice any buoyancy at all.

Finally, with the water caressing his chin, Tommy turned carefully towards me before taking a deep breath that puffed out his cheeks like a balloon. Then he gave me a thumbs up, put the hose into his mouth and disappeared below the surface with little more than a small gurgle.

Alone now on the creek bank, I waited for his hand to appear, signaling to me that he had dropped the wheel and was ready to proceed with our experiment. After five or ten seconds with no sign of him I began to grow a bit anxious.

Finally though, I saw his hand breach the surface like a killer whale after a school of seals, two fingers standing as erect as concrete statues from a tightly clenched fist. He needed air!

Taking a deep breath I prepared to blow a supply of life giving oxygen through the hose and into his waiting lungs.

Unfortunately, I became somewhat confused at that point, a sense of doubt clouded my mind, and I felt a twinge of panic set in. I'd forgotten the signals! Releasing the air from my lungs I held the hose to my mouth.

"Hey Tommy," I shouted into it, "was it one finger and you suck and two fingers and I blow......or was it the other way around? I can't remember. Over?"

Putting the hose to my ear I listened for his response.

"Gurrphhhh phrewwww mooorppph waafferrhh!" he said.

A little puzzled by his words I put the hose once more to my lips.

"Your transmission was a little garbled, Tommy. I say again, was it one finger and you suck and two fingers and I blew.....or was it the other way around? Over?"

"Errffffghh phhhiffgghhh carrbburrfer miffufff nowfff!!" came the distant reply.

I could tell by the tone of his voice that he was getting frustrated with my continued questioning, that he wanted me to leave him alone so he could concentrate on counting all those big fish he was seeing down there, so, with a hopeful shrug of my shoulders I took a chance and blew a huge lungful of air into the hose.

The effort made me a little light-headed though, and it was a little bit before I tried talking to him again.

"How'd ya' like that? Nice fresh air from topside! Over?" I said jokingly, trying to put him a a better mood.

My attempt at banter seemed to worsen his attitude.

"Efffff ooooughhh dooooo geffff mehhhh ouuuhhh ahhghhgh errehh owwhhhh aaiieehh weeeell keeeeel ooogh!!" Tommy said.

I pulled the hose back from my ear and thought about his message. His words had seemed a little hurried this time, but I thought I could still almost understand what he was saying.....something about a huge trout swimming right past his face or something like that....and a pleased smile crossed my face as the success of our experiment became apparent.

"Hey Tommy! This is great! I can nearly understand every word you say!" I shouted into the hose.

Just then his hand appeared above the water again.

"Wait a minute, what signal is that?" I asked him. "What's it mean when you're waving your hand back and forth real fast like that?.....Over?"

Arrrghhhhhgggrrrosssppphhhhh!!!" said Tommy's voice.

"Ahhh, shoot!" I said aloud to myself. "Maybe I was being too optimistic. I didn't understand a thing he said that time."

As I lowered the hose from my ear in disappointment I happened to glance toward the water. Right away my spirits were lifted again as Tommy's waving arm shot downwards into the water to be replaced immediately by his legs and most of his knees.

"Look at that guy!" I exclaimed enviously. "He's havin' so much fun! Look at 'im kick those legs in the air! I bet he's lookin' for crawdads down there now, bein' upside down like he is. Man! I wish I could'a gone first!"

No sooner had I said this than his legs went back under the water again and it became strangely calm. After a few seconds I became a little worried.

"Tommy! Are ya' alright? Wave your hand in the air or somethin' if you're okay......Over?"

It wasn't until after I'd spoken these words that I noticed the the current had taken Tommy's end of the hose far away from where he was supposedly at.

I, of course, became a little more concerned about my cousin at that point, and in another minute or two would have jumped into the water myself, just to make sure he was safe.

Luckily, though, in just a few seconds more, Tommy's head, then his torso, popped to the surface with lots of splashing and waving, and kicking and coughing.

Dog paddling to shallower water he crawled up onto the bank where he collapsed face first onto the grass at my feet, still gasping and wheezing.

"How was it? How was it?" I asked him excitedly in between his coughing spells.

"Could ya' actually breathe? Didja' see many fish? How 'bout crawdad's? Didja' see many crawdad's when ya' was standin' on your head like that?"

Slowly, ever so slowly, Tommy rolled onto his back and glared at me, still gagging on a little water that was in his mouth.

"What the hell were you doin' up here?" he finally demanded. "Can't you see I nearly drownded to death just now!?"

I was taken aback. Tommy rarely cussed, and I began to sense he was troubled about something, but I wasn't sure what it was. Eventually, however, as he awaited my reply, it began to occur to me that perhaps the experiment hadn't gone quite as well as I'd previously thought.

"So, umm, uhhh, you sayin' ya' didn't see any crawdads then?" I asked him.

"YAAAAHHHHHGGHHHH!" Tommy screamed as he leaped to his feet and began to chase me across the pasture.

I'm sure he'd have eventually caught me too, except about halfway to the fence he looked down and saw there was nothing at all covering the important parts of his anatomy.

He immediately dropped into a crouching position then, and crossed his arms in front of him, even though he and I were the only two people in sight.

"What happened to your trunks?" I asked as I cautiously walked back towards him, "I noticed ya' wasn't wearing any when ya' was layin' on your face back there on the bank."

"It was your stupid knot!" he replied hotly as his naked body remained crouched there in the middle of the pasture on that hot summer day. "I couldn't even move that wheel after I dropped it and pretty soon I was runnin' out of air and I tried to breathe through the hose and for some reason that didn't work either so I tried to untie that dang knot you tied so I could get outta' there but you tied it so tight I couldn't so then I had to slip the rope down around my waist and it was so tight I almost couldn't do that either an' then I finally got loose and that's when I musta' lost my trunks."

His words had begun to run together and I had a hard time following his explanation. Evidently though, he'd had some sort of problem down there and had somehow lost his swimmming trunks.

"Ooooh boy!" I said in sympathy. "Was ya' gettin' scared?"

He chased me around the pasture a little more after that, but his heart wasn't really in it no more. An' besides, we decided it wouldn't look too good if somebody saw us chasin' each other around like that.....him still bein' naked an' all.

Anyways, after we'd calmed down and became friends again, we realized we had one more problem to solve, a big one this time.

"How am I gonna' get home?" Tommy said. I can't just go home naked like this....Ma would skin me alive if I did!"

Well, we thought and thought and finally came up with a solution of sorts. We just wound the garden hose around and around Tommy, from his armpits clean down to his knees, and it covered him up real nice, although it made walking a little awkward.

At first the coils of hose kept falling down around his feet but through a little trial and error we discovered that if we wound it real tight, and if Tommy held his arms real tight against his body, the hose would generally stay in place.

Of course this meant Tommy had to walk a little strangely.

In fact, in my mind, he resembled a penguin, sort of, holdin' his arms like he was, and only being able to move his legs from the knees down. But I didn't tell him that, though.

"Do I look funny?" he asked me, a bit of concern in his voice.

"Naw," I assured him as we began our journey home, " "You look 'bout as natural as anything I ever saw."

Sometimes though, I'd have to lag a little behind him, so's not to damage his confidence with the sounds of mildly subdued laughter.

It took less than a half-hour to reach the long driveway that led to his house. We stopped for a minute there, looking the place over real good before walking on in. Nobody, especially Aunt Mae, could be seen, so we started to make a run for it, only Tommy, he couldn't run too good like a penguin and the coils of hose began to uncoil.

"Wait up! The hose is fallin'" he shouted as he was about half-way to the house.

Well, I turned around and went back to help him, but as we were tightening the hose, Patty, Tommy's older sister, came around the corner of the house and of course spotted us right away.

"What are you little twirps up to this time?" she demanded in a big sister sort of way.

Me and Tommy tried to act real calm, as if we weren't doin' nothin', and nothin' was wrong.

It didn't take Patty long to spot the hose. At first she had a real puzzled look on her face, but as she drew nearer that look turned into anger.

"What ya' doin' with that hose?" she demanded. I've been lookin' for it all afternoon 'cause Daddy asked me to water the flowers today an' I couldn't because I couldn't find the hose! And there you've got it wrapped around ya' like some sort of weird little Michelin Man. Now you give it to me!

And with that she began pulling and yanking on the hose, sealing me an' Tommy's fate for sure because Tommy of course was pulling and yanking right back. It only took a few seconds of this before the entire length of hose fell to the ground at his feet, and was covering nothing except his ankles.

There was, then, a moment of dead silence and suddenly I could hear nothing except a loud roaring in my ears and I thought I was gonna' faint or something.

My hearing came back though and I could hear Patty saying in a hushed voice, "Oooohhhh Myyy! Oh my, oh my, oh my!"

Then she said, "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeekkk!" in a real loud voice and then said it again even louder as she turned and ran towards the house.

"Mama! Mama!" she cried out, "Come out here quick! Tommy and Ronnie stole the garden hose and now Tommy's standin' out here buck naked in the driveway. Oh Mama! Please come out here!"

Things seemed to happen in slow motion right after that, and the roaring came back into my ears again for a few moments as I saw Aunt Mae come outta' the house a runnin'.

Only it was like she wasn't running at all, more like she was floating through the air with her arms and legs moving slowly in a synchronized rythym.

Like I said, everything seemed to be in slow motion for some reason or another.

She had a switch in her hand, too, and an astonished look on her face as she saw her son standing there naked, a coil of garden hose piled around his legs.

I heard Tommy say "Ohhhhhh Noooooo!" and that was in slow motion too, sounding really strange, like a 78 record played at 45 speed.

I sensed him starting to run. But then he stopped and turned back to face his Ma. I mean, after all, where does a naked eleven-year old boy have to run to in the middle of a summer afternoon?

And then, just before Aunt Mae reached us, my hearing came back to normal and everything seemed to speed up again so I turned one last time to Tommy.

"I've got it!" I said to him as he practiced raising his hands in a defensive manner.

"Got what?" he replied in a whiny, high pitched, frightened voice.

"That knot I invented today!" I've got a name for it! I'm gonna' call it the Tommy Knot.....in your memory!!"

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