Hogtown Creek
Hogtown creek was a small creek that ran though Gainesville and was a few blocks from our house. David and I would sometimes go down to the creek and fish catching small brim or perch. We sometimes would find crawfish in the creek and would bring them home and keep them in a jar or aquarium. One summer we got an old duck boat that someone gave us and we tried to fix it up. It was in pretty bad shape with all sort of cracks in the bottom but we puttied them up as well as we could and took the boat down to Hogtown creek and launched it. Well we didn't a real good job on patching the cracks and within a few minutes it sank. We still wanted a boat so somewhere we found a sheet of plywood and we cut out a boat. It had a flat bottom and straight sides that were bent to come together in the front. We then heated tar and pored it all along the seams. The finished result was a pretty good boat which we took down to Hogtown creek and the lake several times before it finally to broke up and sank.
One year after a big hurricane we had flooding in the area and Hogtown Creek was really high and flowing fast. David and I went to the creek and floated down it. There was one place in which it had a small waterfall which we went over and I got sucked down under the waterfall and really struggled to get back to the surface. I really thought I was going to drown but we were good swimmers and I got back to the surface gasping for air.