The Great Submarine Incident

I don't remember where we were living at the time but my mother, my brother and I were wading up Nat's Creek some ways above the Wash Rock.  (My brother says it got this name from a time when there was a severe drought and everyone would bring their laundry there to wash in the fairly large pool of water that was there.)  I had to be very young at the time as the water was quite deep to me and I know from being there in later years that section of the creek was not all that deep.

I had a little, toy submarine and I think it was wind  up.  I do know you could hold it under water and let go and it would travel  along until it ran out of power then come to the surface.  My brother wanted to try it out.  I don't know how many times or what he did exactly but shortly my submarine did not come back to the surface.

He made a valiant effort to find it but it was irretrievably lost.  I don't know if I cried or not but I could not have been very happy.  I mentioned the incident in passing to my brother a few years ago and he was amaze I could remember it.

I think our memories are episodic and most especially when we are young.  I don't know what triggers a lasting memory but I can see all these pictures in my mind.  Mostly they are not connected in any way except for the times and places they happened.  The Great Submarine Incident is one of those it makes no sense I would remember.  Losing a toy is not all that traumatic.  I don't remember why we were in the creek or exactly when but I do know where we were and I do remember my submarine.

I wonder where it ended up.  Is it still lodged under the creek bank there above the Wash Rock?  Did it wash out and down the creek in some flood and end up in the river?  Did it go down the Big Sandy River to the Ohio?  From there to the Mississippi?  Then Past New Orleans into the Gulf or Mexico?  I'll never know but it is something to contemplate.