The Lake

Out in the back of the field was a small lake that we would often go play at (see map). In the early years the lake was surrounded by trees and was quite pretty. In later years they were going to develop the land so they cleared all the trees around the lake. We would fish at the lake and one year David and I got BB guns for Christmas and we would go hunting at the lake. I got to be quite a marksman at shooting things around the lake, cans, bottles and an occasional bird.

One time David and I were sitting on a log that was a few feet out in the water of the lake when David saw a water moccasin sitting right behind me and he shot it with his BB gun and killed it. The lake was fed by a small stream which over the years we explored where it went finding it led through the woods to another small lake. I sometimes now have dreams about following that stream through the woods. I remember one time I made a dam across the stream just as it fed into the lake and the water backed up and then burst the dam. In the late 1960's they changed the drainage in the area and the stream stopped flowing and the lake started to slowly dry up. In the end it was little more than a large mud hole with a room sized puddle in the middle. The lake was filled with fish and as it was shrinking it the catfish would be the last fish, swimming in the three or four inches of water that was left. We would take our BB guns and shoot them.

One of the last memories I have of the lake was a fond one. A year or so after I had moved out of the house I was went home one winter day and decided to go for a walk to the lake. It was a brisk but sunny day and when I got to the lake I found that the recent rains had once again filled the lake and it was bright blue with the sun sparkling off the surface. Being winter the knee high grass all around the lake was dry and brown and I laid down on my back and looked up at the bright blue sky and thought of all the wonderful times I had spent at the lake as a boy.