The Cash boys shovel snow for Christmas money

We spent some time living in the mountains of Colorado when I was younger. Pops had finally had enough of surveying runways and had turned his interests to helping get a water line from Taylor Reservoir over the divide and eventually into Colorado Springs. Mountain living was a nice change for a flat-lander. And for the first time in my memory our family was split up. Sharon had married and Cole was living on his own so it was Holden and me that had to carry the Cash torch outside of our natural boundaries.

Anybody that has lived in the Rockies above 8500' knows what the weather can be like in winter. It's cold and it snows. One of the unique aspects of living somewhere there is snow on the ground for 9 months out of the year is that roads tend to disappear. It was no surprise after the snow melt to see everybody had actually been driving across Mrs. Gibson's front yard on the corner. And although a snow plow ran occasionally through town, he just followed the ruts like everybody else. It was a gamble for sure.

There was an older fella that lived on one corner near our house named Jack Tising. Jack had been a star baseball pitcher for Pittsburgh once upon a time and retired with a restaurant there in town. He was our local celebrity. And he lived two doors down. We experienced an early winter snowfall that dumped about three feet of snow overnight and it looked like a winter wonderland outdoors with everybody's cars and houses completely covered, including Jack's.

Jack drove an old pickup and parked on the street (like everybody else). Holden and I were outside digging tunnels in the snow and Jack was trying to dig out his pickup. The city snow plow had made a pass the evening before so the road was visible from the fact the snow was only two feet deep in the street instead of four foot in the yards. Holden and I decided to help Jack with freeing his truck from the snow drift.

By the time we started helping Jack had pretty much uncovered his truck and had it started. He needed to get the snow out from in front of it so he could get out to the "street". Holden and I grabbed shovels and started throwing snow as high and as far as we could. I guess Jack was in a bit of a hurry and directed us just to clear "tracks" in front of his tires (instead of clearing the whole width of his truck) for about fifty feet to angle over to the street. We did. Holden had one side and I the other. In a half hour or so we had two fine trails cleared in front of his truck that looked as if he could make it to the plowed street. He thanked us and I think he gave us each a half dollar for our trouble. We were standing well clear when he revved up his old pickup, ground it into gear and lurch forward with a tire spinning roar. Maybe I forget to mention Jack was prone to be already well lubricated by 11 AM. This day was probably no different.

His pickup shot forward and it looked as though he was well on his way when we heard a really, really discouraging metal-on-metal sound. The truck shuddered and jumped in the air and Jack shoved the gas pedal to the floorboard. The horrible banging and grinding continued for a few seconds until the truck had made it past whatever it was that he had ran over. As soon as he was back down out of the air he gave it more gas and out the road he went. Holden and I stood there and watched a geyser of water begin to shoot 20' in the air....

Apparently Holden and I had each cleared a three foot wide path in front of each tire and had completely missed the fire hydrant hidden in the snow. For you folks out there younger than me you may not remember what a 4" hydrant looks like. They're not as big around or as tall as what we would call a "standard" hydrant nowadays and they only had one connection spigot. But they still had water in them...a lot of water.

Jack had made down the street a few houses and pulled over to the side. Amazingly the damage to his old pickup wasn't enough to stop it from running. It probably would have ripped off the muffler had there actually been a muffler...Jack came running back toward us. We figured we were dead and would grow up in the pen at Canon City for helping tear up the fire hydrant. The geyser was flowing straight up and at 10 degrees above, it was freezing pretty quick.

Instead of being mad Jack was laughing. He hastily motioned us to bring our shovels out to the geyser. "You kids want a skating rink?" was all he asked. I'm sure we shrugged our shoulders "yes" and Jack proceeded to show us where to start shoveling and where to start piling. In no time at all we had a fifty foot long stretch of Oak Avenue that was filling up with about 4" of water and freezing quickly

Then the guy from the Town Hall made it out there to "fix" whatever he could. We tried to help him shovel the frozen slush out from around the geyser. But all both of us really wound up doing was standing against one snow shovel to divert the geyser away from where he was looking for a shut off valve. Eventually he was successful and everyone was covered with ice. It was cool...literally.

It took a few hours for the street to freeze. The city guy set out some saw horse barricades to close the street. We actually got out there and "fine-tuned" some of the edges of our make-shift ice rink. We were drenched and frozen. Later that afternoon we had dried out our clothes. With some help from Momma Cash and a couple of slugs of hot cocoa, every kid in the 'hood skated 'til the sun set behind Mt. Princeton and snot was frozen to our nostrils.

The next week when we got home from school the city guys had made a major mess with a backhoe and repaired the hydrant. Our rink was pretty much destroyed This time they left a stub utility pole sticking up about 8' to mark the fire plug's location.

Forever after that we referred to it as "Jack's Pole". It became a legendary local landmark...;)