Safety is Paramount at Times

Safety is Paramount at Times

fiction
edward w pritchard

The boy 9 and the girl 5 both sensed that the Mother was acting strangely, or at least for now out of character, but only the little girl in the car seat of the Van seemed aware at a conscious level that today was going to be different than usual for the three of them. They lived in a large house South of Akron, Ohio in the country, in the small town of Clinton. Their Father was away on business and their Mother had proposed they go for a picnic at the Lake of their very small town, actually no more than a village really. They had done this before but always in the middle of Summer and today it was barely April.The Mother disliked the cold, everyone in the Family knew that; it was a running joke.

The boy was measuring the the Lake height as measured by where the shore line reached up to on the grass, somewhat compulsively and marking it's progression with a small stick. The Lake was slowly and mysteriously rising and the boy who was very bright was noting the movement of the lake. The Mother was gathering supplies from the expensive van to take on their walk down the tow path toward the old canal lock. The girl reminded the Mother to take sunglasses and a tarp and blankets that were in the rear of the van. The girl who was barely past being a baby, didn't know why she had suggested those supplies, but she was sure they would need them and the Mother followed her instructions.

The stroller was still kept in the rear of the Van although the girl was actually too large for it now, but they put the little girl in the stroller, loaded it up with the supplies and the lunch which they hadn't eaten at the lake, back where the ducks were, and they headed for the canal lock.

As a very young girl the Mother had often played at the canal lock while she was with her Grand Father. She woke up this morning, after her husband had left for the airport, with a strong urge to go to that old Lock.

When they arrived at the old cement lock the three of them methodically began to plan their picnic, which was decided should be held between the very thick walls of the two ancient sides of the Canal Lock. The walls were each fifteen feet thick, of heavy concrete, and were over 175 years old, and of course the old Ohio Canal was now dried up and the locks were merely now for effect, a diversion to look at on a nice walk along the canal. In fact there was a bench over looking the lock and it had been there a long time for the Mother and her Grand Father had often sat there 25 years before. They used to make up stories about what a small cut out recess in the concrete of the west side of the concrete walls was originally for. The grandfather would often make up stories to delight his grand daughter about the cave like recess and what the space could be used for. Maybe storage, or to hold heavy metal equipment to open and close the locks, or maybe the tired Irish immigrants who had originally dug the canal and poured the walls for the lock, a lock which like others, was needed periodically on the Ohio Canal because of a slope in the land running North and South through this area, had felt artistic one day and built that small recess into the heavy cement for no practical reason.

Fifteen minutes later they were having their picnic up against the west wall of the lock just in front of that small cave like recess. The cave went back into the thick cement about 4 feet, and the cave also went down from ground level of the old canal, that was now dry, also about 4 feet. They had their food in front of them and their supplies neatly stacked in front of the cave. It was an odd place to have a picnic because the old canal bed was full of sticks and debris, especially in this old lock. Suddenly there was a very large loud booming noise. The girl thought a train had wrecked nearby for they were only about 1000 feet from a major north south track. The boy thought it was a plane crashing, for he had seen simulated jet crashes on TV and in his video games. The Mother alone felt the Meteor explode west of them, less than a mile away, maybe over their house.

Immediately they jumped down one at time into the cave, and within 120 seconds tens of thousands of round hard balls of a very heavy and concentrated metallic substance from the broken up meteor began to crash onto the ground within a very scattered random manner for a five or six mile square area in and around Clinton Ohio. Because of the density of the round fragments from the exploding meteor, the round fragments went through cars, buildings, and houses and many people were killed. Luckily, the area South of Akron is relatively sparsely populated and losses were only in the thousands.

The thick cement walls of the lock protected the three members of the family sitting safely in the tiny recess in the cement walls.