An old picture of a baptizing in the beautiful Pinnacle Creek. Mom is on the left and Aunt Bea on the right. An assortment of uncles and bystanders can be seen on the other side of the creek. The water was clean in those days before all the contamination and pollution. There was a great deal of swimming and fishing.
June 18, 2013
My childhood was a special time! I spent childhood summers with Gramma and Grampa on Pinnacle Creek. I still recall the clean smell of the flowing creek mixed with the aroma of the many Mountain Laurel that covered some nearby mountains. There was a magic to the soft trickling of the creek as we followed a path nearby. Sand in the mountains? Yes, and plenty of it on the roadway. We built sand castles aplenty right there on the roadway surrounded on all sides by mountains. There was no “Watch out for Children” sign on a roadway that might have an automobile every 3 days. Now and then a rider on a horse would ride by or Grampa would lead Prince or Ole Roy down the sandy road.
The absolute greatest day of the year was the 4th of July. Everybody brought watermelons which were stored in a cool branch across the creek. There was plenty of ice cream, and this was kept on dry ice. All of us kids had a blast dropping coins on the dry ice and watching them sizzle. I recall one 4th that brought a strange kind of excitement. Grampa had a huge turkey gobbler that only chased son-in-laws with dark hair, and we would gather around and laugh hysterically as the gobbler chased our uncles. That gobbler never ended up on the platter! I think Grampa enjoyed the carnival atmosphere too much. Or maybe he thought it made a good watch gobbler at night; any would be burglar would have a tough time, but only if he had dark hair. Actually, there weren’t any burglars on Pinnacle Creek…. what a scary place at night with all those night sounds.
I might add there was no electricity, no cell phones, and certainly no television on Pinnacle. All entertainment was triggered by the imagination. A good imagination surpasses all technological advances. It gives you the ability to make hideouts in fallen trees, and believe me it was hard to find your cousins and uncles when playing hide-and-go-seek. We used the skill of making the best hide-out, and you could never find anybody. Fodder shocks were excellent places to hide, and I often wondered how many copperheads and garter snakes we shared these hide-outs with.
—Shirl
I still haven’t heard from PinnacleCreek, but I sure enjoying reading her old offerings.
Last night’s video: Aunt Arie 14.
Tipper
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