Tell us your favorite local stream story. It can be recent or from childhood. Just click on Leave A Comment, below the Polldaddy Survey. Also, let us know about your favorite area creek among Shady, Deer, Gravois, Sugar and many other famous area neighborhood waterways. Is your favorite creek polluted? Is it safe to play around? Is it being re-discovered?
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Thoroughly enjoyed your article about creeks. As a child growing up in the 60s & 70s we spent the majority of our time in the woods & in Watkins creek in North St. Louis County. Swinging on vines, building forts, digging tunnels & smoking grape vines were favorite pastimes near the creek in the woods. Creek jumping was a fun activity which involved jumping from one bank to another until the creek proved too wide to handle. We slogged through the creek in spring, summer & fall and ice skated on it in winter, not in ice skates but in Converse tennis shoes. Once, the ice broke, my tennis shoe came off and floated beneath the ice downstream. I had to walk home through the woods with one shoe on & with one wet soggy sock on a frozen red foot! That day I was alone in the woods, something common in those days.
I went back to the creek of my childhood with my family in October 1978 for the last time. I was rewarded with the discovery of an arrowhead lying on the bank in the middle of the creek. In all the years I played down there, never had I found an Indian artifact. Not too many years passed when not far from that location an Indian maiden’s 2,000 year old remains were found.
A few years ago I wanted my daughter to have some of the same experiences that I had as as child so I would take her “creeking” along with some of her friends. We played in & explored the creek behind Larson Park. We have also played & explored in the creek near White Cliff Park and have found pieces of china & pottery & also geodes. She really enjoyed those adventures.
Here is a creek memory from Harvey Meyer published in
the South County Times:
Don Corrigan’s May 20 column, “A Creek Runs Through It,” really brought back memories. Way back in the late 1930s, we were a family of refugees from the Great Depression, living with our grandfather on Carver Creek, located about 10 miles south of Ironton, Mo.
Carver Creek ran just past our house, a clear, spring-fed stream that averaged 10-feet across and about two-feet deep. During the summer, my brother and I practically lived in that creek because there were numerous “swimming holes” three- to four-feet deep.
My father and grandpa would fish the creek, not with line and sinker, but with a method called “hogging” by the old timers living on the creek. I would watch with horror as they waded around reaching under the creek bank, grabbing anything that moved. Sometimes they would grab a snake, swing it around and toss it onto shore.
I always worried about one of them catching a snapping turtle because I had heard if they ever grabbed hold of you, they wouldn’t let go until it thundered. In spite of all the risks, they always managed to catch a fair amount of fish.
I mentioned the creek was clear, so clear in fact, that we drank from it. Now that I think back, that was not such a great idea. Just upstream about a quarter mile, a neighbor’s herd of cows would be wading around drinking – and whatever else cows do. Yuck!
Great memories. I can’t imagine how we managed to avoid coming down with the plague (or worse), but nevertheless, great memories.
Harvey Meyer
Green Park
May 26, 2011
Don, when my paddle first banged on the gunwale of the family’s aluminum canoe and echoed off the rocks at the mouth of Cave Spring, back in 1953, we thought Current River was overcrowded. And when we set up camp on the first gravel bar down from Cave Spring we suffered through the night, as loud music, from just upstream, drowned a whippoorwill’s calls, we became sure of it. So today’s problem on THE river has a long history.– has only intensified.
I hope the present generation of “floaters” will find a better solution to the problem than did my generation. Obviously, we failed miserably. Have at it, kids, and more power to you.
— Glenn Hensley, Kirkwood.
From Colleen Kelly Warren
Don Corrigan’s column a couple of weeks ago about the pleasures of creek exploration (“A Creek Runs Through It”) asked readers to share their own “crick” stories.
Although I was an urban child of south St. Louis, the house where I have lived since 1973 is on the Gravois Creek; sometimes it has been in it. For many years the Gravois flooded its banks and our basement. Turned out we had bought a house on a flood plain, something the former owners neglected to mention.
Our first flood was the most traumatic. I still remember looking down the stairs and seeing the family room furniture bobbing around in three-and-a-half feet of murky brown water. Just a few months before, we had installed lime green shag carpeting. (I know. But it was the seventies).
“Act of God,” said the insurance people. “Not our responsibility,” said MSD. We bought flood insurance and determined not to keep anything in the basement ever again.
Still, by the time the second flood occurred, stuff had somehow accumulated down there. Our son Matt’s pet turtle Fred was almost a casualty, heroically rescued as neighborhood kids looked on and cheered.
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An impromptu flood party convened in our kitchen as the water receded. Neighbors brought food and drink and consolation. We took turns peering downstairs and reporting how many steps were visible. An air of “Oh well, what the hell” prevailed. At least this time we had flood insurance. A decade or so later, MSD replaced the existing sewer pipes with much larger ones. Miraculously, the “acts of God” ceased.
But those are my creek memories. My children’s stories would be different. They would tell about entire summer days spent following the creek in both directions, catching crawdads, looking for treasures, building forts and planning raids on other kids’ forts. The only danger was the legendary “mean old lady” a few streets away. It was a different era, before every minute of a kid’s day was scheduled and structured around organized activities. Our sons pretty much organized their own activities, coming home when they were hungry.
The annual reappearance of Mr. And Mrs. Duck is another facet of creek life. For a long time we assumed it was the same pair of mallards who came around each spring. We’d herald their arrival with the announcement: The ducks are back! The year we put an above-ground pool in the back yard, the ducks thought of it as an extension of their creek, skidding in for noisy 5 a.m. landings.
I don’t know if there are crawdads in our creek these days — or if not, what that means in environmental terms. I don’t see kids playing in the creek any more. I’m glad our sons had the experience of “goin’ creekin'” when they were little boys in search of big adventures.