By Seán Malone and John Sweetman
We drank water out of hoses, ate dirt and raw oysters, and fell down steep cliffs. We had other dangerous hobbies, such as climbing the nearly vertical clay bank down at the beach or paddling logs out to the middle of Colvos Passage to wait for a freighter and riding the four-foot waves. Kit Bradley underestimated the outgoing tide and came ashore a good half mile up the beach.
Many misadventures were the kinds we kids told our parents, and many we just kept to ourselves. But somehow, we survived to tell the stories today.
Back then, nobody had watches, and our sense of time was related to the sun or looming dark clouds. We kids fended for ourselves with the minimal parental instructions of “… be back in time for dinner …” and maybe “…watch out for your brother [sister ] …” or whomever tagged along, against the wishes of older siblings.
Seán had more than a few good stories, and escaped drowning in Mukai Pond once. I’m not sure if that event was before or after he never learned to swim.
Seán’s story: I was sinking fast, and my head was underwater when the lifeguard shoved the oar into my hands and pulled me to the ladder on the float at Dockton. It was our first effort at swimming in deep water, and I failed.
Swimming classes were held at Dockton Park every summer. We were first taught to dog paddle in chest-deep water before being led to deep water at the end of the dock. I cheated and paddled with my hands underwater while reaching for the sandy bottom with my feet. I couldn’t swim three feet when we were led out to the float in deep water.
Kneeling at the edge of the float, we were taught to roll into the water. After the lifeguard had pulled me up the ladder, I was sent back to the beach for further swimming lessons. I was determined to learn, as it had only been a few short weeks since my near drowning at Mukai Pond.
John Sweetman vowed that he could build an airplane out of wood and fly off the shed roof. Now for John’s story of adventures gone awry:
I grew up with Boeing. Everyone either worked for Boeing or was connected somehow to airplanes. The other universal connection on Bainbridge was that everyone had a boat.
Naturally, I was intrigued by flight at an early age. My dad was a flight engineer on the B-29 project that was started to deliver the first nuclear bomb to Japan. He went back and forth between some obscure base in Utah and Cuba before and after I was born.
After the war, he and my uncle Bill established a foundry on the Island to make model airplane engines. The “Husky” .045 was moderately successful, but required an extremely unusual fuel mixture due to the very high compression ratio, so after few years, the business came to a slow end.
I had absorbed this aviation interest at an early age, and at four years old started building balsa wood models. Perhaps it was the “Testors” glue fumes that led me into building my dream of a “full-size” aircraft. Parental supervision at that time being somewhat minimal, I planned this out on my own after I decided that the top of an old Quonset hut overlooking a steep drop into a stinky pond would be a perfect launching spot.
Astutely knowing that my aerial adventure would not be greeted with parental enthusiasm, I assembled my parts in secret. My mother asked: “Where is my clothesline?” I had snagged it for “control” cables. “Maybe it just blew away?” I weakly suggested.
“Who used my handsaw?” My dad asked. “Maybe it just got dull by itself!” I had sawn some scrap wood up for the frame, neglecting to inspect for nails. My sister sniveled, “Who took my roller skates? I needed landing gear.
I got away with using old bedsheets for the wing covers, but did not have enough, so I cut off some of the wing area. “It’ll go faster,” I said to myself. This turned out to be my only engineering decision that was a successful guess.
I mounted a broomstick for the control stick … I did not have enough line for anything but the cardboard rudder … and an old couch seat. I was ready …
Launch time! I waited for a wind, and sure enough one came up. It was a gusty one! A problem arose, as not only was I not quite seated in the device, but the wind was the wrong direction and blew my devious work such that it slid backwards off of the launch pad with a giant crash.
The crash resulted in some parental attention and certain confessions. My sister got her skates back. My mom threw the purloined sheets away. My dad gave me a small lecture about the use of a saw, and a sly smile.
Much later, in graduate school studying atmospheric physics, I did belatedly learn which way the wind blows and that gravity turns out to not be your friend. This was after I, not surprisingly, became an Air Force officer. Thank goodness I had not yet built a boat, or I would have been a swabby in the Navy.
