My elder daughter posted on Facebook today about one's favorite thing to do when age ten. Being that was somewhat over fifty years ago I had do to pause and consider. But, first, let me tell you something about my world at age ten.
That would have been the year of 1964. I know I was in the fourth grade for the '63 - '64 school year as I can clearly recall sitting in the sun on the porch in front of Mrs Hazelett's fourth grade school room and thinking about President Kennedy's assassination in November of '63.
Other than being historically significant with the assassination it was a watershed year for me as well for, as I recall, that was the year I made the acquaintance of three men who were to be a great influence in my life from there on out.
They were Isaac Isamov, Arthur C. Clarke and Robert A. Heinlein. In case you are not familiar with those names they are three of the greatest luminaries from the golden age of Science Fiction. Plus all were scientists themselves as well as being writers. I suppose Asimov was the most prominent as he was assuredly the most prolific.
By the time I reached the fourth grade I was reading at an adult level. And I was a voracious reader. It was not just that I loved to read it was that I was also pretty much ostracized from the social activities of my peers at school and not allowed to "associate" with them when not in school. One of my parent's few shared beliefs was anyone whom I were to associate with would be a bad influence on "their little angel". So, books had quickly become my best and, mostly, only friends.
But, when I was not in school and did not have access to the book-mobile my reading material was pretty limited. But, during the summer and and on many weekends my dad and I would catch the passenger train at West Van Lear and ride down to the Patrick station. From there we'd walk up the creek and across the gap to the Nat's Creek side and follow the foot path to my grandparent's house. I don't think my dad bought me my own shotgun and took me squirrel hunting until the next year. So, my most common past time was playing in the creek down in front of grandparent's house.
It was not a large stream but it seemed pretty big to me. I guess the deepest part was about mid shin on me at that point in time. The part right in front of my grandparent's house was the deepest and slowest flowing and it had a sandy bottom. But just above and below that were rocky shallows where there were crawdads under almost every rock of any size.
So that is what I responded to her Facebook with as my favorite activity when I was ten. Playing in the creek and catching crawdads. Or crayfish if you prefer. They will always just be crawdads to me.
Being a long way from the bayous we never thought at all about eating them but they did make really good fish baits. Bass would "tear up" the whole ones and most any fish would bite on a peeled tail. Maybe we should have taken a note of what the fish ate and tried them ourselves. I know I was certainly hungry enough all the time in those days where I'd have tried almost anything anyone put in front of me. Well, except vegetable. Was never much for vegetables when I was a kid.
That creek is wildly different now though. It seems much smaller than in memory and the strip mines dumped so much sand/silt in it all the fish, minnows and , probably, crawdads died out. In the years after the strip mines left it has been recovering though. A lot of the sand has washed out and the life is returning though it is mostly overgrown as people no longer use it for a road.
Yep, I reckon at age ten playing in that creek and catching crawdads would have to rate as my favorite thing. Unless I had a good book.
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