Breath of Relief: The Crawdads Celebrated

The Crawdads Celebrated

. . . When the Little Boy’s Bike was Found

by Rudy Taylor

It was late in the afternoon when I turned the corner near our home in Caney, Kansas.

I took note of a small bicycle lying in a ditch that was churning with runoff water. The ditch was a popular place for kids to search for crawdads after a spring rain.

I parked my pickup in our driveway, then walked out to the ditch — which was starting to drain down. The boy’s bike was still lying there, near the corner where the water was fierce. I walked a half block to check it out. Surely, a little boy wouldn’t leave that bicycle there, would he?

The scene of that bike remained on my mind after I returned to our house. I told my wife, Kathy, about it and we both walked out to check again, hoping to see the bike gone.

But it was still there.

I called 911 and told the dispatcher my concerns. “I will tell the chief,” he said.

I saw our police chief, Kevin Kitterman, driving alongside the ditch, and talking on his cell phone. He stood in our lawn and looked in all directions. “Something’s not right. A little boy wouldn’t leave his bike like this,” he kept repeating. He called in the Caney Fire Department.

Soon, there were trucks and firefighters on the scene, along with another police officer. Red lights on the vehicles caused plenty of concern from people who drove by. “You know whose bike this might be?” the chief asked neighbors and motorists who stopped by. The mystery grew grim as a firefighter got in the ditch near the opening of a large pipe that runs underneath the street.

A long pole with a hook on the end was used to reach into the culvert pipe, as all of us standing nearby held our united breaths and prayed silently. Everyone had fearful looks on their faces. Firefighters talked on their radios, calling for a pump to help lower the water level.

Then, a firefighter who lives nearby said, “I’ve got an idea. There’s kids who live in those apartments up north about three blocks. They’ve got boys — and bikes. They often play along this street.” So, he left to start knocking doors and talking to parents.

Bingo.

A mother answered the first door he knocked. “Do you have several kids, and are they all here?” he asked.

“Yes, all four are here — why?”

“Do they have bicycles?” the firefighter asked.

“Yes, four of them.” she answered.

“I only see three bikes out here,” the firefighter said. “Is there one missing?”

That’s when a young son poked out his head and said, “My bike is down the street somewhere. I left it down there when it started raining.” He identified the bike, and the crisis was over. The firefighter’s voice cracked as he called the police chief on the radio. “We have located the owner of the bike,” he said. “We can go home.”

Strangely, there were no cheers that went up from the small crowd that had gathered — only smiles and the shaking of heads. “Praise the Lord,” one quietly said.

My own evening changed. I said a thank-you prayer as we ate supper. The gnawing feelings inside the stomachs of the firefighters, police officers, and neighbors were slow to go away.

The best sight I saw was the firefighter who picked up the bicycle and put it in the bed of his pickup. “I’ll take the bike back to the little boy,” he said.

And soon, the corner with the flowing water in the bar ditch, was back to being the home to crawdads that, surely, will attract little boys tomorrow.

This column was penned by Rudy Taylor, longtime newspaper editor and book author from nearby Caney, Kansas.