[Sunset at the Brick Pond. Photo is mine.]

As man-made objects formed from clay and hardened by fire, bricks symbolize human effort, industry, and transformation through skill.

~~Merriam-Webster Dictionary

All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall.

~~George Roger Waters (Pink Floyd)

[Historical Note: The Brick Pond got it’s name from the Hollenback Brick company. In the 1870s the kiln where the bricks were fired was located on the shore of the Pond. The bricks from that company were used to build the Tioga County Courthouse. Hollenback owned large tracts of land on the eastern edge of Owego. The house where I grew up, 420 Front Street was nextdoor to the main Hollenback house. It seems that he discovered a rich clay layer while excavating for new houses.

For a more complete history of The Brick Pond, I refer to the link to the Waterman Center at the end of this post.]

I stood on the ice of The Brick Pond and watched the sun turn the western sky red and then gold. It could have been any day of the week in the wintertime of 1957 through 1961. My homework was usually done and dinner at our house, as a rule, would be served at 6:30. I just completed a dozen or two figure 8s. I practiced skating backwards…I got pretty good. Earlier I had tied the laces of my girlfriend’s white figure skates. She would put the blade on my thigh and I would snug the red laces. On weekends when we had more time on our young hands, others from the neighborhood would come down the bank and enter the old RR shed. It was built for the train crews but now, it was for us to use.

Someone’s father (usually) would come down and shovel off any snow and check for the ice thickness.

Such cold nights. Such bittersweet memories of things I did as a young man on the cusp of adulthood. During our high school years, I don’t recall many of my friends finding the time to don skates and take a few turns. Do a few 8’s.

A few days ago, in those dusky early evenings before the clocks went back and Halloween was fast approaching, Mariam and I found the yellow trail that circled the Pond. I hadn’t been on that path since it was constructed. I was being careful to walk tenderly and avoid anything that might affect my already sore foot and knee and back and ankle and shoulder.

I must have worn out Mariam’s ear from my stories of how I skated the Pond so many decades ago. I told her of how we would gather wood and build a bonfire on a tiny finger of land that jutted out into the water at the Pond’s far western edge.

So many evenings, so many stories.

The bonfires are out now. Many of my friends that I’ve reconnected with since moving back to Owego have shared their own memories of the days and evenings they spent skating there. And the others? My other friends who helped me up when I hit the ice, threw another log on the fire, told a joke, stole a kiss, laughed and smiled…have passed on.

I’m remembering Jimmy M., whose house was on the western flank of the Pond. He was my best friend for years. I could see his house from my bedroom window. We played hard around the neighborhood until our mothers called us in for dinner.

A number of years ago, while struggling with a bad case of nostalgia, I wrote a blog aptly titled: The Brick Pond. The link is below.

But I digress.

While Mariam and I made our way around the Pond, I took a number of photos of plants. I was especially interested in the way those plants changed their nature at the far end of summer, just before the snow falls. It’s the time of year for all good seed plants to think about the next generation. These plants, like Milkweed, have evolved those white fuzzy attachments to the seeds that will catch the wind and and carry said seeds to a new location where they will then fall to the ground and, with any luck, survive the frost of winter and make a new plant.

It’s quite awesome how nature works out the details of propagation. Darwin is smiling somewhere. He was right about most things.

[An autumn walk around The Brick Pond. Video is mine.]

[The symmetry of the thistle. Photo is mine.]

[Berries of a plant I have not yet identified. Inviting, but I wouldn’t eat ’em. Photo is mine.]

[Moss slowly devours a log that was not yet a sapling when I was a young teenager. Photo is mine.]

[Mariam surveys the Pond on the Yellow Trail. Photo is mine.]

[The floss or coma of an unidentified plant. Photo is mine.]

[Mariam helps a seed fly away. Video is mine.]

[The western portion of the wetland known as The Brick Pond. Photo is mine.]

We rounded the Pond and came out onto E. Front Street close by my friend Jimmy’s house that still stands, occupied by another family. It was a pleasant walk through the woods that circled my wintertime skating rink.

I’ll be making the walk again and I’m positive that a new set of memories will race through my mind…of people I loved and who loved me. It was getting late, darkness was descending. I unlocked the car so Mariam could sit and rest. I stepped down the wooden stairs to where the trail begins. I wanted another photo of another plant going to seed, but nothing captured my interest. As I turned back to the small parking lot I heard the unmistakable sound of a flock of migratory Canadian Geese…

[The geese, searching for a place to spend a quiet evening. Video is mine.]

I would love to read any comments you may have about this blog post. If you have any memories to share, please do. Perhaps you, dear reader, skated alongside me, back in the day.

I’ve included two links, one to the Waterman Center. Click below if you wish to read more of the history of The Brick Pond. The second link will take you (hopefully) to a blog I wrote several years ago. It’s my homage to the days and nights of skating on the Pond and how those recollections remain an important part of who I am.

https://www,waterman.com

https://patrickjegan.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=6686&action=edit