This is the story that got me to write more about the canal. Sadly, I did not write enough about the canal. Today it is covered over by a park and unseen and probably unknown about by many. The bulk of adventures at the canal happened from when I was 12 to about 16 years old. Although they are not terribly life changing or even remotely enlightening, they are a form of entertainment and a piece of my history. Someday I will fill in some of the gaps with more.

Enjoy,

The canal was a magical place where you could go if something was on your mind or you just needed some peace and quiet. The gurgling and gushing of the running water outdid the other sounds so all you could hear was nature’s blood. Water.The water was fairly cold in the summer and got even colder as the year went by. I remember one cold day in the Fall of ‘94 when I was down at the canal with my friend Matt Duran(His uncle has been best friends with my mom since high school). We were eating pomengranates and smoking cigarettes when I looked up and saw two little kids crouching at top of the canal about fifty yards away.

 They were throwing rocks and stuff into the canal. I jumped up from where I was sitting and yelled “Get the FUCK away from the canal and quit throwing SHIT in or I’ll kick your FUCKING ASS!” jokingly. I had their immediate attention and as a result they jumped, stood up straight, looked at me, looked at each other, looked in the canal, looked at me again, looked at each other again and walked away.I was fairly curious why they startled so easily and also as to why they were throwing things into the canal. I supposed they were being like every kid who passes by, and like every kid they too fell victim to the sudden urge to throw things in the canal. Well, when you throw rocks and stuff in water you’re usually trying to hit something or throw hard and/or far. As I was turning around to sit down again, something caught my eye. A black object. In the canal. Floating. I pointed it out to Matt and he stood up. We both looked hard at it and agreed that it was a black plastic garbage bag floating in the canal. It wasn’t going anywhere. No sir, it was staying right where it was. Upon longer inspection I observed that it was half submerged as if it had an object in it of some weight to keep it down for it was full of air.

Matt and I joked about it being the head of some woman or an unfortunate child for they had been found in the canal in the past.

Later that day after Matt went home I was getting bored and with nothing to do I decided to venture back to the canal.

I did.

I grabbed my board and skated down to the canal.

I climbed down to my usual smoke stop halfway down the side and lit up. I was looking at everything. People jogging by. The ducks. Water. Black Plastic Bag.

“What the HELL is in that DAMN thing?” I said to myself.

Curiosity killed the cat.

Curiosity got the best of me so I put out my cigarette and climbed up the other side of the canal. I wasn’t wearing any shoes or socks because I was walking around in the shallower parts of the canal’s water and my feet hurt from climbing the sides. I carefully walked down to the spot where the bag was and carefully surveyed the situation. There was only one way to get the bag and only get your feet wet, and that was to cautiously make your way down the side, grab the bag and even more cautiously go back up.

Easier said than done.

Just recently, about a week before this adventure, the dirt walls of the canal had been smoothed by a machine with a gigantic arm that stretched out to about fifty feet long. At the end of this arm was a hand like block that, when it was rubbed up and down the sides, knocked off protruding rocks and dirt. So in other words they “cleaned up” the sides of the canal by making them smooth.

They were smooth, real smooth.

I knew it too. I knew what risk I was taking by going down the side. I knew that if I slipped that I would get soaking wet and filthy. I knew if I came home wet and filthy that my dad would kill me. I knew all those things and yet I still took the risk and went into the canal.

It may not seem like much now but those were big things to a kid like me.

I used my heel to dig little steps or holes in the side of the canal as I went down. It was easy, all you had to do was pound the soft, loose, dirt with your heel until it made a little step hard enough to support you.

It was the first time I had done anything like that. I’d never made steps or dug with my heels. I never climbed barefoot into a canal to look at a black garbage bag. It was all new to me so I was learning.

I was about halfway down when the soil got real hard and I was unable to make more “steps”. I proceeded to go back up the side, using my “steps”, backwards.

Apparently I hadn’t made the “steps” well enough because they were falling apart or weren’t even steps at all. They kept coming apart. Falling apart. I was sliding down the side towards the water. I couldn’t stop. Soon enough I was frantically clawing the sides with my hands trying to find some handhold that would stop me. I was getting closer and closer to the water. I was almost there. As a last minute desperation I tried a jumping /running kind of motion.

It didn’t work.

I was in the canal and I was waist deep in filthy freezing water and something was giving off a hell of a stench. I was pissed and I was wet. I was wet and I was pissed. I was pissed, wet, in a canal and the sun was going down. In other words I was gonna freeze if I didn’t get out.

The bag.

Oh yeah! The bag. It was about a foot away begging for me to open it and look inside. I grabbed the bag and ripped a hole in it.

What’s this?

Another bag?

Oh Fudge.

I ripped open the next bag and the next bag and the next bag. I realized by then that something either very important, or very disgusting, was in those bags and that who ever put it in there didn’t want anybody to see it.

That hell of a stench had increased.

Hmmm.

I ripped open another layer of bags and by God the stench was coming from the bag! IT was IMPORTANT! I had to get that bag onto some dry ground before it was opened all the way.

I remembered Matt and I’s joke earlier about it possibly being a woman’s head.

I prayed to Allah, God and Jehovah that it wouldn’t be a head, or any body part for that matter.

Up until this point I had forgotten about my wallet and the pack of cigarettes in my pocket. I quickly pulled them out. Whew, lucky me, only the filter’s had gotten wet. I held the pack in my mouth, the bag in one hand and my wallet in the other. I slowly but surely made my way back to the only place where anybody could get out of the canal with a heavy, plastic bag in their hands. My smoke stop.

It was getting dark. The sun only had a bit more to go before it was gone and the streetlights were coming on. Night bugs and water bugs were flying everywhere. It felt humid. Maybe because of the heat produced by my exertion plus the dampness of my clothes. My feet were sinking into the mud and silt on the bottom about a foot each step. It was difficult, very difficult. I was going about 5 to 8 feet per minute and I still had about 45 yards to go before I even could think about getting out.

It was real dangerous walking in the canal water because people would throw glass, metal and other sharp and possibly infected items in the canal. It was even more dangerous for me because I was barefoot. I was still curious about what was in the bag but as time passed it turned into a fear of knowing what was in it. What if it was a head or another part of someone’s body? What if it was a head and a bunch of chopped up body parts? I mean, people are reported missing every day, some of them turn up in the canal.

After what seemed like an eternity I finally made it to the spot where I could get out. My shoes and socks were there so was the skateboard I used to get to the canal on. I put on my socks, then my shoes, grabbed my board, climbed out, set down my board and climbed back in for the bag. I carefully pulled the bag out and brought it under the nearest streetlight so I could see what I was doing.

I counted how many layers of bags I had ripped open. I had opened four. I continued to open the rest. I ripped and ripped. I went through twelve layers of black plastic and another one remained. It was cold and so was I. My nose was cold and running so I sniffed and the smell. Oh the smell! That rotten flesh, putrid kind of smell. It was bad. Real bad. The smell was so bad I almost puked. I’ve only puked twice in my entire life. That bag nearly made it three.

I held my breath as I opened the next layer of plastic. I let it out in a real quick cough when I saw what was in there. I had opened thirteen layers of black plastic bag and I had come to a clear plastic layer through which I could see what was inside.

The lighting wasn’t all that great and all I could tell was that whatever was inside stunk and was white. A head perhaps? Maybe a body part? I hoped not.

I poked the bag and made contact with what was inside through that last layer. It was hard, like a rock, a stone, a bone, a skull. Oh God don’t let it be a skull! I pushed the plastic onto the object and what I saw scared the living shit out of me. It wasn’t an eye, a nose or any other recognizable body part. It was:

Hair.

Thick, blondish-white hair. I thought I was going to die. I jumped up, grabbed my board and skated as hard and as fast as I could home.

On the way from the canal to my house was a big rocky patch in the sidewalk that I hadn’t been able to jump over, with my board, and land on the other side still in motion before. That night I did. I finally did. I cleared the damn thing with a foot to spare. I was excited, but crazed too.

It seemed like it took forever to get home but I finally made it. I grabbed my dad, told him to get in the car, took a flashlight and hopped in. We went to the canal. I showed him the bag. He could smell the stench too. He didn’t want to open it up and neither did I anymore. So, he called the police on his cellular, told them what I found and how it was probably something dead.

You know what they told him?

“Call Dead Animal Pick-Up, it’s probably a dog or cat.”.

To this day I still do not know what was in that cursed bag and even though I wanted to once, I don’t want to know what was in that bag anymore. Last time I checked the bag was still there. Nobody touched it. It wasn’t moved. But it still stunk to high heaven.

Like I said:”Curiosity killed the cat.”.

It didn’t kill me, but it did manage to scare the pants off me.

 

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