It was a long walk for the small amount of money that I made by delivering 12 newspapers, and the deserted street was slippery with ice and melting snow. What a difference from how that same street would be in the summer during the tourist season when the little town on the lake would be bursting at the seams with people on vacation. The arcades would be full of people playing pinball machines, the restaurants would be full, and the streets would be crowded with bathing suit attired families on their way to or from the beach. But right now, all was boarded up and on many days I could walk the entire length of the strip, delivering papers to those scattered dozen year-round residents who were my clients, without ever seeing another soul.

I dreaded doing it, and on the coldest days of winter, my mother or father would sometimes take me in the car, but on most days it was just a long, lonely walk with not much of interest in the gray and barren landscape that made up my after school routine. The sun, already low in the winter sky, and now sinking quickly in the late afternoon, did little to make the job any more tolerable. The few extra dollars it provided for spending money was little comfort. On cloudy days, it would be almost dark by the time I got home. I dreaded that long walk, that is until I found it.

It was a short way off the path I took to the farthest of my customers' houses, and I don't remember for sure how I found it. But it was the one thing that made my paper route a bearable routine on those mid winter afternoons. I was sure that I had found something that no one else knew existed, and at the same time, that no one else would value. To me, it was the thing that hurried my steps at the midpoint of the long walk and the thing that lifted my spirits for the return trip to my house. It was a pool of water.

The summer sun, low in the southern sky, managed during the middle of the day to hit a certain roof at just the right angle to melt the snow, which drained off of the corner of the roof and into a pool about the size of a large wash basin. It wasn't very deep, but the water, crystal clear and ice cold, provided a welcome and refreshing drink when the cold, dry winter air had left me parched after the mile and a half walk.