My closest call

to actually 'not making it', probably came when, as a kid of about 12, I was bowfishing for carp at a local sandpit. This was an actual working pit, beside the Platte River, where they would suck sand out, into large piles, and leave a 'sandpit', filled with water. Anyway, I was at the business end of an old pit, and was walking along the newly formed shoreline, with a 'cliff' of sand behind me, when, all of sudden, a section broke off, and started to slide into the water, taking me, buried in sand to my waist, with it. Was like slow motion, but there was nothing I could do, as I was slowly, but surely, carried under the water, entombed in sand up to my waist. After what seemed an eternity, I was able to kick my legs free, and fight my way to the surface. I was lucky. My classmate, Mike Stumf, died at the same pit, in the same circumstance. An attractive nuisance, it would be called today...