April 8, 2018 - I awoke this morning at 2:00 and began thinking about the house we lived in when I was six years old (1939). It was located down the hill from the old Center, Texas Grammar school on Arcadia Road.
It was big, old and just high enough off the ground for our dog Nellie to go under it in bad weather. Behind it was a chicken house, an outhouse and on the porch, a well. About ½ mile down the road were two of our favorite places …an old iron bridge and the shallow creek that ran under it. It was on this creek that my brother Bill, Uncle “Jink” and I fished, swam….. and played hooky when we could.
Remembering the Iron Bridge and this little creek brought back a list of unforgettable memories today. Bill and I learned to swim there. The water had gotten so low that the fish swarmed to the top for the lack of oxygen and a considerable number of water moccasins were having a banquet. But neither the muddy water nor the snakes bothered us. After all, Uncle Jink had assured us that “snakes caint bite you in the water”.
I dropped my treasured Barlow Knife off the Iron Bridge one day and even though the water was shallow, after thirty minutes of wading, we gave up. Daddy had given me the knife when he came home in from a construction job one weekend.
I had cut my first “two-stock” sling shot stock with it and never went anywhere without it in my overalls. Bill found our neighbor’s false teeth near the bridge one day and got 25 cents from Mr. Stephens for finding them.
Among the things I remembered about the bridge this morning was the day that we peed in the creek to catch fish the easy way. ”It’ll make ‘em come to the top”, Jink had said. When no fish showed up, he said it was because the creek didn’t have any fish in it. When our teepee caught on fire one day and burned off several acres of land we ran home and never told a soul about it.
Pam and I drove to Center today to see if we could find the Iron Bridge. When we finally found it, it had been replaced with a cement bridge and didn’t seem as large as I remember it. But many things seemed much larger …and more exciting… when I was young and experiencing new surprises every day. The days of the Old Iron Bridge and the little creek are forever gone, but I remember them like it was yesterday.
They were some of the happiest days of my life.
