Crawdads, Doodle Bugs and a Clapboard House

When we'd visit my grandparents during the summer when I was a kid one of my favorite things to do was to go play in the the creek that was in front of my grandparent's house.  The house was not all that old though you would think it was just to look at it.  I was told the house that was originally there had burned and that was when this one was built.

It was white washed (Think Tom Sawyer and the fence) on the outside and it would get on your cloths or body if you rubbed it.  It was also a "clapboard" house.  On the outside was made of planks about six to eight inches wide (as I recall) with a narrow slat of wood on top of that to cover the seam where two of the boards met on the side.  I guess these clapboards served the same purpose as the mud or concrete chinking in between the logs of the two log cabins we lived in.  Keep the cold out and the warm in.

When you first walked in the front door, just past the doorway to the bedroom on the right sat a dresser.  On that dresser my grandmother (known just as granny) had a picture of me that was taken just up the creek from their house.  I don't remember when it was taken but I for sure remember the place.

The foot path between my grandparent's house and where the road came out of the creek on the up creek side was right beside this place.  There the creek was shallow and narrow and the creek bed was rocky.  I liked playing around there because of the rocks and how may crawdads (crayfish) one could catch.

In the photo on the dresser I am dressed only in my little pair of "tightie whities" and holding out my cupped hand toward the camera.  For many years I've assumed I was holding out some water but now I wonder if I was not holding our a small crawdad. 

That picture was not in a frame it was on the frame.  The back of the frame was just cardboard with a little flap that would fold out to support the photo.  I have that picture now and it sits on a night stand in my bedroom.  The little flap fell off a year or so back so it just leans up on the base of a lamp.   Every time I see that picture I think of that little boy and how I wish I could return to those innocent days when getting to play in the creek was the greatest joy.

Unfortunately, strip mining run off filled the creek with sand and I'm sure the place changed.  I have not been on that spot in  almost forty years.    I don't think anything at all stands where Granny's house  was.  One of my cousin's had a small house trailer there but I think it is gone.  Well, it is gone from reality but it is there firm and clear in my memories.

I think there were some doodle bugs up by the old barn.  My mother told me you could sing them out of their hole.  A doodle bug hole is generally in a sandy or dusty area.  I don't ever remember seeing one in harder dirt.  They are shaped like a small funnel and the doodle bug sits out of sight in the bottom covered with a layer of sand or dust where it can't be seen.

I don't know why the doodle bugs would come out of there hiding place if you sung to them but they surely did.  If you had the patience and sang softly enough for long enough you could draw them out of their hiding places.

Did not take much to amuse me at that time.  Neither we nor Poppy and Granny even owned a TV.  We were living out at Spring Knob tower at that time and had no electricity so, at home, even listening to the radio was limited as it was run by a battery and it was difficult to get the battery recharged.  So about all we listened to was the Grand Ole Opry on WSM on Friday nights.  That made a creek full of crawdads and some curious doodle bugs a great adventure.