I enjoy traveling to Box Butte Reservoir to check on its filling process and to have my dogs play in the water.
My last trip was April 12.
No ice, and the shorelines are getting a bit smaller.
It won’t be long until boating, fishing, skiing, tubing, swimming, camping and all the other wonderful aspects of summer water fun returns.
I’m old enough to remember the construction and filling of Branched Oak Lake located roughly 15 miles northwest of Lincoln.
The dam was built in 1967 and was filled in 1968.
My most vivid memory of the lake occurred 55 years ago in May, 1970.
I was in the fifth grade at Valparaiso Elementary School.
My fifth-grade class and the sixth graders miraculously talked our teachers, Mrs. Evelyn Martin and Mrs. Emily Millward, and Principal Darrell Rosenquist into taking us on a field trip to Branched Oak Lake.
We convinced our superiors we only wanted to fish, play games in the sand, enjoy nature, and have a huge picnic.
All 50 of us solemnly swore several times over that we would not get in the water, and the brass conceded.
The day we selected for the trip was gorgeous: sunshine, blue skies and 80 degrees.
The trip took us away from the rigors of school, including the countless social studies class discussions of the May 4, 1970, deaths of four Kent State, Ohio, students who were shot by members of the National Guard while protesting the Vietnam War.
Despite Mrs. Martin’s warnings, threats, and pleas, about 40 of us decided to take off our shoes and wade in the water up to our ankles — followed by the submersion of our knees, hips, chests, and heads. Most of the boys who jumped in were fully clothed, and the girls were, too.
I can’t claim I was the first to enter the water, but I certainly wasn’t the last. All I needed was a glimmer of an indication that it was permissible, and I got it. One of the sixth-grade girls informed me that she thought Mrs. Millward believed it was okay to wade in the water, and seconds later, I was trying to impress as many girls as I could with my best imitation of a scuba diver.
And then . . .
Mrs. Martin came running along the shoreline screaming at the top of her lungs for everyone to get out of the water and onto the school bus. My fifth-grade teacher was so angry, she didn’t even inquire as to whether anyone still needed to be baptized. There was dead silence on the yellow school bus as our driver, Mrs. Bonnie Masek, escorted us back to Valparaiso. By the time we returned to town, the bus reeked of lake water, and the seats were soaked from the boys’ wet blue jean bottoms and the girls’ shorts.
Mrs. Martin’s screaming was downgraded to simple yelling in the classroom the next day, and her final words were: “I can guarantee you this school will never allow another class to take a field trip near water.”
Despite the turmoil, our lake journey taught me this lesson: Getting in trouble was no big deal, IF I was aligned with 40 other guilty parties.
Our soaked-to-the-skin trip to Branched Oak wasn’t a total loss. One of my classmates, Mark Masek of Agnew, whose father was the local TV repairman, had caught a large catfish, and he gave it to me. I took the fish home and dumped it in the stock tank. But not before I named it Gladys in honor of a girl who had sat near me on the school bus.
Gladys had spent most of our 10-mile trip back to school opining about the ugly appearance of my fish.
Gladys (the girl) wasn’t even brave enough to go swimming with her namesake fish.
She was one of those students who was water nice.