The scary canal

We lived on an eighty-acre farm in the Big Bend area of eastern Oregon when I was a child. It is the only portion of the state east of the Snake River.

A dirt road ran along the eastern edge of our farm and on up and over the hill that was to the north of us. That road was the state line between Oregon and Idaho. We had substantial ties to both states. My parents both worked in Idaho. We went to school in Oregon. Our mailing address was in Idaho. We went to church in Oregon. Our telephone number was in Idaho. But we lived in Oregon.

A paved road ran along the southern edge of our farm. That road headed west to Adrian, which was about six miles west and north from where we lived. Adrian is where I went to school. Going in the other direction, that same road turned by our house and headed south toward the Snake River, which was about a mile away, and then mostly east from there to Wilder and Greenleaf and Caldwell.

Someone else's farm was to the west of ours.

A large irrigation ditch, a canal really, ran across the northern border of our property. A sagebrush-covered ridge that was too rocky and steep for farming was on the other side of the canal. A narrow path where the tractor or a pickup could drive ran along our side of the canal. And that was what was scary. I used to panic when I was riding in the truck with my dad and he'd turn around, repeatedly back­ing and pull­ing forward enough times to turn the thing around in an area that was way too small for such turns, and with my knowing that some day he was going to back right into the ditch, and we'd drown, and that would be the end of that.

But he never did.