Sunday, February 20, 2011

Reminiscing about my childhood home

Here in Michigan, we're under a winter storm.  The snow started around noon and by dark, we've received 6 or so inches...  I seemed to have been thrown into a whirlwind over the past few days.  I'll write more about it in time, but not just yet.  Instead, I am resurrecting a post (with some edits) that I wrote when I was visiting my parents in 2005. The photo is of a waterway marker not far from my parent's home.  Enjoy. 


Sheba, our English Setter, barked incessantly at something in the drainage ditch at the back edge of the yard. Going to investigate, I found her moving around a pocket in the clay wall of the ditch. Water had been draining out of small caves such as these. "What is it, girl?" I asked as I rubbed her head and got down to peer inside the hole. A good-sized turtle was hiding inside, its head barely sticking out of its shell. "Good girl," I said, grabbing a stick. I slid the stick underneath its shell and tried to drag the turtle out when, like lightning, a head wtih exposed fangs popped out of the shadows.  Dropping the stick, I jumped back as the snake’s body recoiled and Sheba frantically barked more. I was maybe ten years old and had come just inches from being bitten by a water moccasin. Leaving the dog to guard the snake, I ran inside and told dad who came out with a hoe and killed the snake. It was too dangerous for something that poisonous to be at the edge of our yard.


The drainage ditch behind our house was a wonderful place to play as a kid. When we first moved here, there was always water flowing through it as it drained down to Myrtle Grove Sound. (I didn’t realize this being an ominous sign as they were draining the swampy areas to the south of our house). As kids, playing in the ditch, we hunted for salamanders and turtles, and even caught a few small red-finned pike. Also exciting were the carnivorous plants, especially the Venus flytrap with trigger-hairs in its cupped hands that would imprison an unlucky insect as it feasted on its decaying body. The ditch also served us as a trench for us to re-enact Civil War battles. Having moved here from Petersburg, Virginia, we were well aware of how trenches were used during the Civil War. We fought our battles with friends, unaware that just a mile or so away our ancestors skirmished with Union soldiers, in an attempt to delay the fall of Wilmington until all the provisions at the port had been shipped to Lee’s troops held up in trenches at Petersburg.


Behind the drainage ditch were several square miles of woods and swamps. In this area, these swamps are known as Carolina Bays, low oval shaped depressions filled with peat moss. In all but extremely dry periods, the depressions were filled with water. Ringing these oval depressions were thick undergrowth including live oaks bearded with Spanish moss and towering cypress. The rest of the land, which was only a few feet higher than the bays, consisted of sandy soil that supported tall long-leaf pines, occasional patches of sumac or blackjack oak, and the ubiquitous wiregrass. In ages past, these pine forests of eastern North Carolina supported a thriving industry for naval stores and turpentine and as I got older we found evidence of such. The mature trees had slash marks where sap drained. There were also mounds, which we at first thought were Indian burial grounds, only to later discover they had something to do with burning pines in order to extract pitch, a valuable comodity in the days of wooden ships.. The woods and bays made a great playground, but until we were older, we could only play there during the winter due to the snakes.


We moved here in 1966, when I was nine years old. This was before the big building boom in Wilmington, which started around 1970 and has continued ever since. There were only seven houses on our street, each sitting on a half-acre. Ours was an exception for my father brought two lots, not wanting to be "crowded in." In addition to the woods behind the house, we could cross the street and ramble through more swamps and pine forest until we came to the headwaters of Whiskey Creek, which I thoroughly explored after I purchased my first canoe when I was sixteen. The woods across the street were the first to go as houses were built up and down the road. By the time I was in high school, all the lots had been used and new roads were being laid. I don’t remember just when the woods behind my parents succumbed to the great urban sprawl of the Southeast. My last trip out through the bays and pine forest was during a break from college. A few years later, as I was surprised to visit one day and discover the ditch had been filled in and where the bays had been stood houses.


I can’t imagine growing up down here now. Houses are everywhere. When I was a child, my friends and I freely roamed the woods in winter and rode our bikes in summer. It’s only a half a mile to the water, where we watched fishing boats and barges make their way up and down the inland waterway as we fished or caught crabs. Today, access to the water is severely restricted, the woods have all disappeared, and it's been decades since I've seen one of those meat-eating flytraps in the wild.  They say its progress; I have my doubts. As a child, living here, the world seemed endless. Now, children growing up in this neighborhood will have worldviews limited to a fenced half an acre.

14 comments:

  1. A Great and thoughtful post!
    Funny to look back and see (and think) of where it is we came from!

    Did you make it out for a ski on the full moon night...or was it mud as the weather guy predicted? I tried but it was -32C with wind. Brrr....Maybe when it warms up- if it does before the moon disappears...

    Hope all is well and the whirlwind settles.

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  2. I didn't "know" you in 2005. I'm glad you reposted this.

    I'm looking forward to the N.C. coast this summer.

    Cheers.

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  3. I enjoyed reading about your memories. That sounds like an idea way to spend your childhood years. I think some kids are just so disconnected from nature these days and there is no way to consider that progress.

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  4. It was different growing up on the plains of Nebraska. There the opposite has happened - depopulation, as larger farms have gobbled up smaller ones...

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  5. I enjoyed hearing about your story from childhood,(takes my mind off our winter storm) glad you posted it again. I too found it sad when I returned back to places from my childhood and found most of our hideouts and such all gone and replaced with houses as well. One place by the river in Lansing is still there, not much woods as the houses moved in close. I can imagine you have lots of stories you shared growing up with your dog! Thanks for sharing!

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  6. It sounds as if you had a wonderful and adventurous childhood. I'm glad you reposted this.

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  7. I brought my son up in the suburbs and I will always wish we'd been able to live further out of town. His mom wouldn't hear of it but the city is no place to raise a kid.

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  8. dude i grew up on a hill surrounded by woods and a pond...used to play there all the time...all tore down now for a subdivision and beer distribution plant...sad.

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  9. Great stories! And I often don't think of "progress" as progress. We lose a lot for the sake of wealth.

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  10. I am so there!! Great visuals, and I just saw it as I drove down the Coast to Fl. Esp--in Ga- seeing Jeckle & Tybee Islands from I-95, and Jacksonville, bridges etc!

    Good stuff Sage!

    John

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  11. Love your memories--I grew up first in a garden apartment on top of the largest hill in Queens--which would probably seem closed in to you, but we had endless courts, huge yards, abandoned pits and places later to become country clubs to play in
    Then we lived in a third of an acre in a quarter acre development and it did seem closed in--but it was next to farms and old Quaker communities and a short drive from the Sound and the ocean so...

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  12. A close call. My father killed some snakes that were too dangerous for we kids in the Mid-West also, Sage. I relate!

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  13. It is a sad thing at times to be able to remember when...

    I would never call it progress though.

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  14. I loved your childhood memories. It sounds so nice. Everything changes eventually though, and I guess it inevitable. New kids have new places I'm sure. Nice post!

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