On the western edge of the neighborhood I grew up in, there was a small pond known variously as Chandler’s or Shanley’s Pond. Whether this is a trick of memory or the latter is a mere bastardization of the former, I do not know. This pond figures prominently in the tales I will regale the reader with here. As kids, we skated here in winter and fished in summer. There was no swimming as the pond was hopelessly polluted by the time I was introduced to it.

The pond was at the foot of a slope that led down from a country club and terminated in a small wood – this was later replaced by a housing development. As a boy, I spent a lot of time as a caddy at this golf course. One incident, in particular, stands out. On Mondays, caddies were allowed to use the course at no charge. As we were young and foolish with our money, this constituted a real advantage. A day of free golf was just the ticket for boys of thirteen – young and fancy-free.

The ninth hole was a par three – short enough to be reached on a tee shot by even young golfers. As such, foursomes would gather on the tee awaiting the call from the foursome putting to tee off. On this particular day a group of two or three foursomes was gathered, standing in a circle. When the call came from the putting green, only one boy in all the groups noticed.

This lad addressed his ball without any comment to those assembled. He drew a mighty backswing directly into the circle and, as luck would have it, drove his iron smack into my face. This knocked me cold and when I awakened the club pro was ministering to me. He assured me I was okay and my father was on his way to take me to the hospital. When my dad arrived, he picked up a tooth that had been knocked out and thrust it up into my jaw.

Later on, the doctor proclaimed this action to be fortuitous, as it probably saved the tooth. After nearly forty years of being told that this tooth was dead and should be extracted a dentist did just that – relieving me of my tooth but not my memory of my dad’s quick thinking. On the way to the hospital I caught a glimpse of my smashed countenance in the chrome molding around the window frame. I could see clear through the wound and into my mouth – all blood-red and green.

This sight unnerved me as I considered myself relatively good looking and thought that my face was going to be forever disfigured. Something in my expression must have communicated this to the doctor attending me as he reassured me the wound was drawn in a line that followed my lip. Sure enough, today I have only a dim scar just above my lip to evidence that long ago trauma. Meantime, back at the pond, life went on.

As mentioned, kids skated here in winter. I was not much of a skater, as I had weak ankles, but skating – particularly in the Northeast, where I grew up – was de rigueur. Hockey was a favorite sport. In winter, after a snowstorm followed the first hard freeze, boys would shovel off the ice and construct a makeshift ice rink. I would trundle out there, with my skates flattened against the ice, unable to participate but enjoying the fantasy of being a hockey star nonetheless.

Once, skittering along near the edge of the pond, I went through the thin ice. Fortunately the water was none too deep and I sunk only up to my hips. The walk home was most assuredly chilly but I was unharmed. This gratified my mother no end as she was convinced we would drown at that godforsaken pond. I also alluded to fishing. I had no fishing rod so one day I found a wooden handle from a child’s push toy. With a length of string and a safety pin I fashioned a fishing pole and without any bait managed to land a large catfish – my first fish! Of course it was inedible due to the pollution.

Later in life, in my late teens, the pond provided other entertainments – namely as a site for imbibing intoxicants of the legal and not so legal variety. On summer nights, the pond was favored as a rendezvous for young lovers. To this end, I was at the pond one night with an early love, a bottle of wine and some herb. This girl, Mary, the same name as my mum, was the daughter of a local police officer. As I put away the film canister in which I stashed my contraband, headlights appeared pulling off the road and onto the apron of grass surrounding the pond.

Since this was highly illegal I surmised that this must be the cops. I quickly placed the canister behind the tree we were leaning against. The cops pulled up and approached us on foot. Flashlights blazed in the darkness about the pond. As they advanced, I recognized one of them, Billy by name. He was notorious as a brow-beater of the first order. He recognized Mary as well. I would find out later that he and her father were drinking buddies. With a quick scan of his flashlight, he located my stash.

“Mary,” he quipped, “you really should exercise better judgment in your choice of boyfriends,” flashing his light in my eyes. “We’ll see what your father has to say.” Now, as to Mary’s parents: her father always hated me, her mother not so much. One time I took her younger son and my younger brother to the circus, which forever cemented my reputation, in her mind, as “that nice young man” until this night.

When confronted by her parents, I assumed the justification that I did not believe marijuana should be illegal. Her father, to my surprise actually bought this. He liked my fortitude in standing up for my beliefs but impressed upon me the fact that possession was still illegal despite my opinion. The mother did not want to hear such philosophical niceties. I had compromised her daughter and that was that: henceforth I was anathema. Funny how life goes, isn’t it?