In 1963, my family began moving off the farm. The first apartment we moved into in Valley City was on the second floor of an older home located one block south of Central Park.

Our family filled the smaller space with only two bedrooms and a single bathroom. Finding an area to sleep in at night was hard. Jack and Jerry temporarily slept in an unfinished attic room off the dining room. Jim, Eugene, and I slept on a pull-out couch in the living room. Mom and Dad slept in their bedroom while Joanne and my grandmother slept in the other bedroom.

It was an exhilarating time for us. Our apartment was located on the south side of Valley City, two blocks away from the State Teachers College and a half block away from the Sheyenne River. Valley City was a lovely small town that was known for its scenery. The city was known as the City of Bridges. The river twisted its way throughout most of the town, surrounded by tree-lined slopes bordering it on all sides.

My mother had reservations about living near the river. She told us that one of her uncles had drowned during swimming lessons in the Sheyenne River, and the riverbank was full of quicksand. She did her best to make us afraid of the river, but that plan quickly failed. The lure of fishing and crawfish hunting was too much to resist.

Until we moved into the city, our only experience with water was in the small sloughs on our farm. The water in these was not very deep, but it was deep enough to hold a raft made by roping together dead trees from the shelter belt across the road. Eugene and I were used to the raft and spent much time floating on it and reading comic books. (Our oldest brother had figured out the easiest way to babysit us was to give us comics, push us and the raft out to the center of the pond, and anchor us there. With nowhere to go and lots of reading material, we happily sat out there for many hours while our older brothers went about their day.

When on the farm, I had only one friend who wasn’t related and lived within walking distance of our home. His farmhouse was less than a quarter mile away, and he and I lived for adventure. We hunted gophers, snakes, frogs, toads, and salamanders who “volunteered” to be the stars of the wild prairie circus we built. We also dug endless holes, looking for the buried treasure under the trees. We spent hours inspecting the large apple tree with small green apples hanging on the branches. We were told they were “baking” apples that would be too sour to eat, but we tried them anyway, and they gave us horrible stomach aches. We carried bucket after bucket of water that we poured down gopher holes, thinking we could drive them out of their tunnels into our snares. We collected the tails from the gophers caught in our steel traps, hoping to make a fortune by turning them in for the state’s three-cent bounty payments. Unfortunately, his dog found the tails and ate all our profits.

One day, I woke early and walked over to my friend’s house to find he was gone. The doors to the home were left open, and the house was deserted. I was told they didn’t get a crop, meaning they had no money to pay the rent. They had packed up and left in the night! I never saw my friend again.

Not long after that, it was our turn to leave the farm. Because of a drought, our crops that year were terrible. My dad found a job working for the State Highway Department as a “Grease Monkey.” Grease Monkey was a term for a beginning mechanic assigned all the jobs no one else wanted. My father did not appreciate the title, but he stuck with it and worked there for many years, clawing his way up the ladder to be one of the better mechanics in the shop.

We loaded our possessions into a truck and moved into the city. Settling in the apartment, we didn’t take long to meet our new “city” playmates, who lived in the immediate area. I remember meeting and playing with the Iverson, the Bongs, and many others. We had so many things to keep us occupied. Neighborhood ball games, street soccer, swimming lessons, tennis practice, and going fishing at the little dam, which was only four blocks away.

In the backyard of our building was a work shed we commandeered as our fort. We played games from morning till night in it and kept ourselves busy. After our first Christmas in the city, Gene and I got the idea of expanding the “Fort” by piling Christmas trees (that were left outside after the holiday for garbage pickup). Our neighbors were happy to give us their old trees, and we happily dragged all the trees within a few blocks of our house to our backyard. After we had collected thirty or forty trees, Dad noticed our fort! He did allow us to play in it for one weekend, and then he found a neighbor who helped haul them all away.

There was so much to do in town during the winter for young boys. There were considerable hills to sled down, skating rinks to slide on, and snowy trails to explore. During that first winter in town, one of my friends told me that he heard that a person could walk under the bridges and capture pigeons when the river was frozen. It sounded like a great adventure, and I eagerly volunteered to go with him. We knew we would be in trouble if anyone caught on to what we planned to do, so we kept our mission a secret. Waiting for the Christmas holiday, we put our plan into action. Because my parents were not around during the day, we walked to one of the nearest bridges and walked onto the ice.

We checked around the bridge, and all the birds appeared to be gone that day. So we started to leave. Suddenly, my friend thought he heard something, so he said to run and get away. I took a few steps, and the ice gave way under me. I slipped entirely underwater. I remember opening my eyes and seeing the ice above my head. Luckily, I was wearing a large parka that had filled with air, and it pulled me up into the hole above me. I grabbed the hole’s edge but could not pull myself out. I called my friend to help me. I started to scream for help and my friend told me to be quiet because someone might hear us. I thought that someone hearing me would be a good thing, but my friend, I later found out, hadn’t told me that he had been on the ice before with a friend, and the boy had gone under the ice and did not make it back up and had drowned. That’s why my friend was terrified that it was happening again. I kept asking for help, and finally, he helped pull me up onto the ice.

I was freezing, so I ran to the apartment. No one was home, so I went to the bathroom, removed my clothes, and ran a hot bath to soak in. My grandmother came home and found me in the tub. She asked me what had happened, and I said I had fallen into the river. She got a very shocked look on her face. I knew immediately it was only a matter of time before retribution would occur.

Stupidity would not be a good defense, and I knew facing the music was better than trying to delay it.

To this day, I do not go on the ice. I do not go ice fishing. In fact, I have a hard time watching ice skating and hockey.

CJ Holm