Granny’s Little Creek
by Roger Darnell
the raw and sometimes bone-chilling coolness of the water
as it flowed there, just behind Grandpa’s Smokehouse.
Often less than a trickle, that creek was a haven of life to us kids.
In many ways, just a few odd rocks amidst the sand and muck,
to youngters, an oasis where the iron-rich flow of rain-fattened
groundwater would flow forever around the well-hidden
crawdads, waterbugs, and occasional minnows and tadpoles.
Who was the first to take me there? My granny, it seems…
but just as likely, it was Tim, Bart, Joel, Rodney, or other
cousins who led the way in “growing up so fast.” There was a
sort of aging-out for the small creek which crept up over time.
All of us who were children on Terrapin Ridge found that
little creek, and communed with those crawdads on our own
in ways that were very casual, deeply calm, and definitive.
Above all, it was safe and known: The creek at Granny’s house.
For everyone who hit it right, the days came where it was
all about the food. There were no trips to the creek to hunt about;
instead, we sat, ate, laughed, shared, talked, drank, and said goodbye
until the next time. Maybe we walked to the bridge, or sat outside
in the lawn, or at the picnic table. There was a swing
at different times over the years. And lots of visiting among
the parked cars, which lined the roadway for most of the big
holidays, driven by the old folks, then the kids… then their kids.
When I grew older, many nights I’d get in late, and have to
awaken Granny from sleep. And oftentimes those visits would
end just hours later, the next morning, after breakfast and yet
another sweet, tearful goodbye. But one late night when I was
coming in – I think it was on a quick trip I made in 1988 when
I was a struggling student – I pulled in, and the lights were off, and
I thought about the creek: That place where I could kneel and
fish around to catch a creature and know all was sound and safe.
I walked past the house, down what was left of the brick path,
past the “burning barrel,” past the side of the smokehouse, down
the rocky creekside to where the water trickled on downstream…
just as it always had, and as it still does now, I well imagine.
Part of my standard gear in those days was a handheld cassette recorder
used for recording lectures, and I took it with me into the darkness
surrounding the creek that night. I pressed its buttons with high hopes,
and it worked like magic: I remember listening to it and hearing things
I thought had disappeared forever. I heard my Granny when young,
my Grandpa at his money tree, Uncles Scott and Homer, Aunts Ruth
and Lila… my mom in youth and her brothers and sisters as kids, too.
In the sounds of that little creek, my family’s joyful dreams live on
forever.
