As a kid growing up in a valley full of chemical plants and related industries, one would think that my young life would be centered on neighborhood, factory-town stuff. Not so, at least not very much.
In spite of all those factories, our neighborhood was about a mile away from real woods. And through those woods ran a smallish creek named Joplin Branch. Somehow we never called it “branch,” rather we called the entire area — woods, creek and all — Joplin Hollow.
I tagged along after older brother Dave to the hollow when I was about seven; he was eleven. And he often chased me home — who would want to put up with a seven-year-old who asked dumb questions? But I learned the way to “Joplin.”
My mother was always willing to let us roam, explore, move around. She trusted that we wouldn’t do anything too stupid, and that we’d always get home at the expected time. For the most part, we lived up to that. And so, by the time I was eight or nine, I was allowed to go to the woods alone. And I did.
Almost daily in the summertime. I played in the creek, chased lizards, crawdads, frogs, even small water snakes. And I climbed the very steep wooded hills, crawled on rock outcroppings, turned over rotting logs — the whole works. I was in wonderland.
Our neighborhood gang of four or five boys would sometimes go together, and about a mile up the creek there was a swimming hole — at least we called it that. About the size of a large living room, and about four feet deep. We’d strip and jump in, splash, play water tag, all the stuff that’s part of a boys’ swimming hole.
By age ten, I would often rise before daylight, take a skillet and food and go to the woods. I’d build a small fire and cook my breakfast — usually eggs and warmed-over meat, along with white store-bought bread. And hot tea, using creek water. Those early mornings, with my breath showing, and that small fire, were a magical time for me. Joplin Hollow was very much my second home. It was there that I learned to love the woods, the waters, the sounds, scents, and sights that together were “nature” as I understood it then.
Later, one day when I was about eleven, I went to the swimming hole alone, stripped, jumped in. About five minutes later I heard voices — Girl Voices!! I was terrified. Here they came, early-teenagers, four of them. I had never seen them before, had no idea where they came from. But they came to the edge of the water, made great fun of that “nekkid kid,” and then saw my clothes on the large rock where I had left them. Yep. They took my clothes (not my shoes) and ran down the creek, laughing. I yelled at them but without any hope of getting my clothes back.
I came out of the water, got my shoes and went up the bank, looking desperately for something to put around my waist. Luckily, just beside the creek was what we called a banana tree with very large leaves. Holding a leaf in front and one behind, I started down the creek with the prospect of going through the neighborhood to get home burning me with fear. Oh Lord, I thought, help me please help me please help me!!!!
As it turned out, I had not gone far — perhaps a hundred yards — when I saw my clothes, in the path where those “vicious” girls had left them. I never told a soul about that day until I was in my forties. Oh no. Not mom, not anyone. My secret was sacred. As time went by, I was able to deal with it: just forget about it; no one will ever know. I know all this sounds fabricated, but every word is the honest truth. To this day, I remember that horrid moment when they said “what’re you hiding under the water, boy?”
During those early years, I discovered wildflowers at Joplin. On shaded hillsides, usually in deep loam caused by rotted wood and leaves, I found my favorite: trillium. I took one home to show mom; she knew immediately what it was and told me. She agreed that I could bring home trillium and other flowering plants and plant them in a shady area beneath a small pine tree in our front yard. I did this every spring for five or six years, digging up trillium — white and deep red — along with a red flower I mistakenly called Indian Paintbrush, Jack in the Pulpit, Lady Slipper, and others of various size and color. Many of them didn’t survive the trip from Joplin to the house, and the soil beneath the pine tree was hard and poor. But some did survive, and I got a big kick out of my wildflowers. My mother was a walking dictionary on wildflowers, and in her later years had a locally famous flower bed on the river bank where she and Dad lived beginning in 1961.
Did I mention smoking? I learned how to smoke at Joplin. Yeah, it was brother Dave, my outdoor mentor, who taught me. Not cigarettes, not Indian stogies (dried seed pods from a Catalpa tree), it was much more creative. Dave showed me how to take a big acorn, slice the top off, hollow it out, and insert a stem — a local hollow weed — into the lower side. Then take dried leaves and crumble them in my fingers and stuff them into the acorn/pipe. Light up. Lots of smoke. Probably toxic. We all did it, and in the fall, when the really large acorns had fallen and the leaves were very dry, we had contests to see who could sport the most colorful pipe. Of course, from there I graduated to cigarettes, my first being Wings, a cheap WWII brand you could buy for 12 cents. Ah, Joplin.
When I was twelve or so, we “graduated” from Joplin Hollow (although I returned there many times) to Little Creek. Little Creek was in fact a much larger stream which flowed through much larger, wilder forest country. It was about four miles from home, so we couldn’t go there as often due to the time it took to get there and return. My brother Dave was again the “advance scout” who got there first with his crew, to be followed by me and mine a couple years later. Little Creek was truly wild. The water was incredibly cold; to swim was to go in the water and back out as quickly as possible. No splashing and water tag in Little Creek. It also had fish: sunfish and rock bass we sometimes caught.
The place was kind of snaky. Very, very large black snakes and a few copperheads, although no one was ever bitten or attacked. To get to Little Creek we usually went on Sunday morning to the railroad, which was only about five minutes from the house. There was a scheduled freight train that always slowed though the South Charleston freight yards, and we would hop that train and ride it for about three miles, jump off at a spot close to the path to Little Creek. Then later that day we would return by hopping another (scheduled) freight and jumping off close to home, and get there in time for Sunday dinner. Of course, we never told our parents about the railroad part of the day; only that we went to Little Creek.
I was a Little Creek kid until I finished high school. But during that same time, I often went to the more tame but closer and more familiar Joplin Hollow.
I can still see the sunlit swimming hole, the Christmas-card-views of snow-laden branches and white-capped rocks in the creek bed. I can still smell the fall leaves, the damp path following a spring shower, the smoke from those small fires built by a young boy who learned to love the woods and waters by being there, most often alone.
That love of woods and waters never faded, and later, many of my happiest times were spent on the rivers and lakes of West Virginia and Virginia. As I write this at age eighty, I have no intention of giving up my annual camping trips with Patrick and some longtime friends. And it’s mostly because of Joplin.