Wild Goose Chase and Waterboarding

School is out and its summertime. For the past three years my parents have sent my little brother ( Russ ) and me to live with my mothers parents for two weeks. My cousin Jesse always went with us. I am sure this was quite a relief to our mothers and possibly a burden for my grandmother, but for us it was some of the most memorable moments of our lives.
My grandparents ( Poppy and Carrie) lived in a farming area known as Heart Mountain. It is located Northeast of Cody, Wyoming halfway between Heart Mountain Butte and the Shoshone river. They owned a section of land (260 Acres) but were not farmers. They leased the farm land to share croppers, raised chickens and always planted a big beautiful garden. My grandfather was a well driller and moved from Texas to Byron, Wyoming to get rich in the oil fields of northern Wyoming. He ended up drilling mostly water wells and had a very comfortable life at Heart Mountain. Their home was a mile off of the main highway and was set at the foot of a steep hill. The main farm land was west of the home and on the plateau above the house. East of the house was a small stream that flowed from the south end of the property to the North end. To 9 and 11 year old boys , it was paradise.

As the car left the highway and started down the dirt road you could see grandma Carrie working in her garden. She was wearing a dress and I don’t recall ever seeing her in anything but a dress. As the car makes the last corner up to the house, right on cue and in unison my mother and aunt shouted the warning. “ STAY AWAY FROM THE FLUME”. The flume was a concrete structure built into the steep hillside that the irrigation district used to get the canal water from the top of the steep hill to the bottom. Without it the water would eventually erode a canyon in the side of the hill. It was 4’ wide and 4’ deep and open at the top. At the top of the hill the water would slowly roll out of the canal and enter the open flume and plunge to the bottom with ferocious speed and noise. At the bottom of the flume was a deep pool to absorb the impact of the falling water. This pool was a white water churning whirlpool that we were taught to believe could consume any young boy that was even just looking at it. I do not recall ever driving past this flume without hearing this warning.

As we jump out of the car to run and greet my grandma we can’t help but notice that there is a new addition to the farm. My grandma now has four big, white, fat domestic geese. As soon as our eyes are on the geese the warnings have begun. “You boys stay away from those geese”. The next two days are typical summer days in Heart Mountain catching magpies, chasing rabbits and floating the stream. The third day starts with a distraught grandma. The four geese are missing. Sometime in the night they have wandered off and they are gone. The search party of four looks on every square foot of the 260 acres and the geese can’t be found. Jesse, Russ and I decide to expand the search to neighboring farms. Grandma packs us a lunch are we are off on our quest. Considering that all three of us own authentic ( even though the tag says made in Japan) coonskin David Crocket hats, we are the best trackers assigned to this mission. We decide to start the search at the irrigation canal near the flume. Staying far enough away from the boiling whirlpool we eventually come across signs that geese have been here. The goose droppings are deeper on the North side of the ditch and that must mean that they have followed the canal North. Two hours and 4.5 miles later we have visual contact of the geese. It is pure evidence that we are indeed the greatest trackers ever! They have joined in with another flock and are in the middle of a field next to the internment camp.

The internment camp represents one of the poor decisions the US government made during
war time. It was decided that any Japanese living on the west coast would be arrested and brought to these internment camps . The camps were intentionally placed far enough from the coast to prohibit any Japanese from becoming spies. One hundred and ten thousand people living in California were arrested and sent to these camps. Eleven thousand of them were sent to Heart Mountain, Wyoming. Seventy % of the people living at the Heart Mountain internment camp were born in the US and were US citizens. Eight hundred of the Japanese men living in this camp were drafted into the US Army and fought in the war against Japan. In 1988 the congress passed a bill to apologize to the heirs of the decedents of these camps and paid 1.6 billion dollars in reparation damages. Norman Mineta the transportation secretary under George W. Bush, was a teenage boy living in the Heart Mountain Internment camp.

As we look over the land the camp occupies, you could still see the concrete pads where the barracks had been. My father worked on the construction of these barracks and learned the carpentry skills that he passed on to me. Only four buildings remain of the camp and one of these buildings has been turned into a community center. In fact my Grandma will be attending a woman’s luncheon there the very next day. We eventually separate the white geese from the flock and herd them South, back to Grandmas. We arrive just as it is getting dark and are certain that we will be treated as conquering heroes. Exhausted from the full day we go to bed that night full of pride in our abilities.

The next morning Grandma is already busy preparing a special dish for her luncheon. We quickly eat breakfast and get out of her way. The first thing we do is check if the geese are still imprisoned in the chicken coop, preventing them from running away again. Just before noon , grandma leaves for the luncheon at the internment camp. As soon as the car is out of site, we decide to check out the flume. We have decided that after the tenth warning it starts to sound more like a dare. Checking out the flume starts innocent enough. We throw rocks, sticks, and
zucchini in the rushing water and watch them disappear into the whirlpool. We find a large plank, taller than anyone of us and throw it into the rushing water. It hits the whirlpool but stays on top. It is decided that if the plank weighed the same as us, it would surely sink into the bottom and would not pop back up for hours. We find two large rocks and enough bailing string to tie the rocks to the plank. It enters the flume at the top and rushes to the boiling whirlpool. The plank and the rocks hit the whirlpool at full force and the plank still does not sink.
That is all the scientific reasoning we need. If we jump into the flume it is now proven that we will not be sucked into the whirlpool at the bottom. Russ is the smallest and most likely will float. He is not as brave as he should be this moment and needs some help conquering his fears. Jess and I throw him in and scramble to the bottom to pull him out. His head comes bobbing out of the bottom end of the whirlpool and he is laughing. He hollers at us: that was a thrill, you have got to try it! Within an hour we have all gone down the flume and survived the whirlpool , several times. It is time to head back to the house because grandma will be home soon and we can not let her catch us near that flume. As we head back we notice that the concrete bottom on the flume has torn away the seats of our pants and this is going to be hard to explain. We quickly run into the house and change pants as grandma’s car is just pulling up.

Instead of coming to the front door grandma heads for the chicken coop, as if to check on the geese. We run to meet her at the coop, we are still full of pride. She tells us that Mrs Perkins that lives on the farm next to the internment camp is missing four of her ten geese. Maybe Grandma’s geese did turn South. That will have to be tomorrows mission.