memories #3   

                                                              The Whistler

      My left front upper tooth has a chip in it that enables me to give a rather shriek whistle when called upon to do so. As a career school teacher that whistle has come in handy many times. It has brought a noisy classroom to complete silence, broken up fights and gotten the attention of referees in various sports. I got the chip tooth because of a skinny dipper. 

       Durango has a beautiful river that flows right through the middle of the city. In springtime, people mostly stay away from the river as the runoff from the high country snows raise the level of the water to terrifying heights. The river's name is the Rio De Las Animas and its translation in Spanish is the river of lost souls. It has earned this name over the years.

     In the middle of the summer, however, the river is a haven for most of the youth of Durango. I probably fished every fishing hole from city limit to city limit and caught my fair share of trout out of it. In several places the river mellows out and contains deep holes that are just for swimming.  A couple of our favorite spots even had ropes tied to trees so that we could swing out from the bank into the deepest part of the hole. 

     Along the side of the river, Durango’s pride and joy, the narrow gauge train travels from Durango to Silverton catering to thousands of tourists from all over the country and the world. They love to ride and experience the splendor of the Rockies. While I was growing up, there were just two trains that traveled that route each day. Today, there are five or six that haul tourists. There was a hand cart that traveled ahead of the train each day to check tracks early in the spring. The kind  two people would operate by pushing up and down on a lever while facing each other. The faster you pumped, the faster it went. We took one for joyride one day but that's another story.

     When I was attending Animas grade school, another boy and an older girl (we were in second grade and she must have been in the fifth grade) ran around together every day of the summer. Jim Kelly and Carol Mayor were my two best friends then. Carol had an old black mare named Andrea that I loved to ride.

     In the summer time the three of us were usually together and most often by the  river since our houses were right above the tracks and the river. We would explore the banks and undergrowth and look across the other side of the river to check out what activity may be going on there. Sometimes there would be kids from another neighborhood across the river and we would get into shouting matches daring each other to come across. No one did.

     One day we were exploring we saw three people on the other side swimming. These were old teenagers, a boy and two girls. And thede. Plans were immediately made to try to get to the other side and find their clothes. That didn't work so we stared and shouted at them. They told us to go away, which only served to forge our determinationto stay. We began to throw rocks at them trying to get them to move out of the water. I stood in front of Jim and Carol and came dangerously close to hitting them.

     After firing a salvo off in the direction of our skinny dippers, I bent over to pick up some more rocks. As I stood facing away from the river, Jim fired one of his rocks and hit me square in the mouth. I screamed in pain and began to chase him with Carol trying to calm us both. Jim headed in the direction of his house with me close behind and Carol in hot pursuit. The rock had broken my front tooth and I was determined Jim was going to pay for it. I didn't catch him.  Carol didn’t catch either of us and my mother, after close examination,  took me to the dentist. 

notice left front tooth

     I have no idea what happened to the skinny dippers. I imagine they laughed too but we never found them there again.  The dentist didn’t cap the tooth and it has been this way every since.  I got a great  whistle out of it and I no longer throw rocks at nude swimmers.