A Creek Ran by Our House

Southeastern Kentucky, 1958. . .
a creek ran by our house,
come down from Long Branch.
My brothers played in it
and my sisters
stood on that old, wooden foot bridge,
sailing rocks
right under my brothers' noses,
laughing
from the high up safety
of the logs
stretched across the creek.
Sometimes, in their exuberance
they'd execute a half hop, a skip and a jump
between the splashes, the taunting
and their frantic puffing
on their Lucky Strikes.

1961. . .
a creek ran by our house.
On a dusty, hot, July Sunday
blackberries were ready
to be picked
from the tangled canes
growing along the cool, creek banks.
Five or six dollars
could be had
from Missus Varney
or Missus Clark
for a ten-quart bucket
full of these berries,
and most likely,
a piece of the pie, too.

If you were of a mind,
all sorts of treasures
could be found
along the flow of that creek.
Old pop bottles. . .
Upper Ten and R. C. Cola.
The grocery store
would give you three cents
for every bottle you found.

When a fellow stood
ankle deep in that water,
trying to imagine what flavor of soda
had once been in the bottle he was holding,
Grape, or root beer, or even cherry...
it wasn't no mean stretch
of his imagination
to think that every Nehi bottle
that had ever been tossed
by the waves of that creek
must have once held Orange soda
because that particular shade of orange,
a deep, dark, Orange Crush orange
was the exact color of that creek water.
Sulphur, they said it was,
come down from the old coal mines
up at Long Branch.

In March of 1963,
my Daddy watched the rains come down
and said it was going to be
some hell and high water
like it was back in 1957.
Daddy didn't know it at the time,
but that water
would do just like he said it would.
I thought it was a good thing
for a boy to be doing,
his blue eyes shining,
standing by the side of that creek
watching old refrigerators, tires, outhouses,
and any manner of thing
people didn't want
get carried past him,
a rolling and a tumbling
toward a coal, black grave
somewhere in the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River.

My sister was,
I remember,
down at the Appalachian Regional Hospital
in South Williamson, Kentucky.
She was just a little girl
and real bad off.
I don't recall anymore,
how I got there,
nor, who I was with,
but somehow or another
I had taken myself
down by the United States Post Office
which at that time
was in Keither Wilson's grocery store.
Wilson's was about one half a mile
from the Tug Fork River.
The creek, along through there,
had taken on the mask of a huge lake
being unable to empty itself
into the swollen Tug Fork.

I don't, to this day,
know exactly why I was there.
I just know I was as happy
as a piece of apple pie
that had drawn the blue ribbon
down at the Baptist picnic on a Sunday morning,
as I threw rocks and sticks
into that muddy water
to see what kind of a splash
I could raise.

After a while
one of those other boys
that was trespassing
on my supply of rocks and sticks
started in a hollering
about a motorboat a coming.
I looked,
and sure enough,
one was.
Of course I quit that important stuff
I had been doing,
to watch that boat
come plowing through that muddy water
right toward us.

At first,
that boat was pretty far off
and you couldn't tell
nothing much about it
except that it was a boat
and somebody was in it.
Directly, though,
my eyes started telling me
something about the people in that boat.
I could see the driver
pretty clear
and I think he was wearing one of those hats
like fire fighters always have on,
or maybe, it was a National Guard uniform,
I don't rightly recall.
That other fellow,
now, he was the one
who drew my second glance.

I seen, right off,
he was wearing an old, brown suit
of a particular shade
with which I was awful familiar.
He had on one of those hats,
the kind a lot of men wore
in the forties and fifties.
That boat got a little bit closer
and I seen that little, wren-sized, red feather
tucked close along side
the brim of his gray, felt hat,
and that big, old smile
I was famous for
started spreading itself across my freckled face.
I started in a hollering,
" Daddy! Daddy!"
I seen him a waving,
smiling that good smile of his,
and I did me a dance.

The boat pulled close along side the hill
I was standing on
and my Daddy stepped out of it.
I seen he was carrying something
held loving tight in his arms.
It was my little sister,
she was coming home,
her heart stronger
than what had ailed her.


1977. . . a creek ran by our house
catching my memories in its flow.
I don't think the old, wooden foot bridge
is where my Daddy built it any more,
but I expect,
if I was to go down there
to where the creek still flows,
climb that old, sycamore tree of mine,
sit up there high above the water
on a limb that's larger around than I am
and look blue-eyed down into the water,
that I could talk that creek
into giving me back
some more memories.