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Summer seemed very long I thought. My brother Hank and I wandered around the city since we were very young. Hank was about six and I was his old brother. When we were out and about, I was supposed to take care of him. That meant not allowing him to get hurt or keeping him out of trouble. Oh boy, was that a mistake. Just ask my brother Hank. Anyway, Once a year my Mother, Hank and I would take a train ride to Des Plaines to visit our cousins. Louie and Bob were about the same age as Hank and me and we always had a lot of fun together. They lived near the river so many times we would walk to the bait shop on rt 12 and buy a carton or two of red worms and we would fish for blue gills and bull heads. We usually caught a few.
But there were other days we went to town, which was only a few blocks long back then. That's not what attracted us though. The four boys headed for the dam. Yep, The dam was a great place to have fun. Some days we would walk across the dam, slipping and sliding along. Once in a while one of us would fall in and we all would pull him back up . It was great fun. As an adult I discovered that the same dam has claimed quite a few young boys doing the same thing.
Running parallel to the dam, going over the river, is the commuter railroad tracks. They have four foot high sides along the sides of the tracks. One day I decided I was going to run to the other side of the dam using the railroad tracks while my cousins and Hank were walking the dam. I walked about half way across, I looked up and saw the train coming right at me. I turned and start running back. I don't know how close the train was when I got to the other side, but it was way too close. I should never have walked away that day, just luck .