The Lake
One Sunday afternoon, while conversing with my uncle Jay (also known as J. D.) on the phone (long distance; Jay lived in Oklahoma City), an idea hit my dad. He paused.
"Hot damn, Jay," dad said, jauntily mimicking a phrase Jay used more than he did,
"let's go into real estate together! We could have a business together, or each have our own separate businesses."
Apparently Jay wasn't arguing, because Dad continued: "We could buy some land, sell some of it and keep some of it, and use the money we make selling the other land to develop that land. Then, we could sell that land, too, and make yet more money," and so, on and on. Jay must have been listening intently at the other end of that long distance line.
Dad harkened back to Art Van Houten's lake: Art had recently mentioned to dad that he wanted to move back to the city. He'd originally had the lake built as part of his retirement plan: he had a bad heart, and he wanted a place that would be far away from stress and strain.
But, he'd told dad that, over the past few years, he had found the lake increasingly hard to take care of. He'd hired a gardener, but the lake itself was being overrun by algae from Spring River, which in that area was an underground stream. He had a plan to bring Israeli Carp into the lake to eat the algae, but his health was just too bad to oversee all of that.
So he wanted to sell the lake. He told dad he'd give him a good commission if he could sell it for him. Then dad began his foray into the real estate business. But he didn't just accept the idea of selling someone else's real estate; he decided he'd buy some of his own.
Jay, retired from the Air Force in his fifties, had some extra money, and wanted to buy some land in the country. There he could build himself a cabin and maybe sell some lots, too.
On a visit that Thanksgiving, Jay began the conversation about real estate.
"Heck I don't want you to make all the money from this land around here!" he joked to dad, with a chuckle he repressed in the back of his throat, part of the two men's feigned "goofiness" routine. "You don't need that much money!"
"Good point; I might get too rich! Just like I might be too smart--I might even be way too smart!" dad replied with a grin as he shook his head rapidly back and forth.
So Jay and dad started looking around the area for a good location. After only a few weeks, they found one.
It was a beautiful, weedy but green and wild-flowery, tree-covered stretch of hilly land near Mountain View, Arkansas--not all that far from our home in Batesville. Beautiful streams and creeks flowed gushily through it, and several small, still but fresh to a chill ponds that had only recently been stocked with fish dotted the land--therefore offering almost impossibly good fishing. It could be used as a site for a cabin and as a location for selling lots further over on the property.
The land had been used as pasture for years, prior to the building of the ponds; cattle had grazed those rolling hills, stepping repeatedly over those waving fields of weeds and wildflowers, and bumping all up against those trees not that long before. They were rambling over what we shortly came to regard, for a time, as paradise.
We kids were, of course, overjoyed to get an opportunity to explore Uncle Jay's new plot of land. I especially was, because Doug was there. With Doug along, anything might happen: things could even get out of hand.
We had driven out from Batesville in the electric car--an old, wood-panel-sided station wagon with a Pepsi sign painted on the side of it. Pop--my mother's dad--had formerly used it for advertising purposes in connection with promoting his Batesville Pepsi plant during the annual White River Water Carnival Parade, held every August in Batesville. Upon Pop's retiring of it from his fleet for sheer decrepit-ness, Dad had decided to latch onto it, when Pop offered it as a virtual gift--part of Dad's Christmas bonus that year. Dad usually called it his "electric car," because the battery had to be re-charged on such a frequent basis that it wasn't much good for regular driving.
"It doesn't need much gas--just a lot of electricity!" he'd joke.
I didn't understand back then that dad was being sarcastic about the car's performance and his lack of good judgment in having it; to me, he seemed to be bragging about it. So I thought it had to be the neatest car on earth, with those wood-paneled sides--since even I had noticed, in my child's way, how often it had to be hooked up to electricity.
As we pulled up onto that plot of rolling foothills, weeds, and wildflowers, with beautiful, rippling little creeks, clear, softly-roaring streams and shiny blue-green ponds all over it, we thought we'd found paradise. We almost jumped out of the electric car before dad even got it parked--already having on our swimming clothes, our goggles, our flippers--and ran as fast as we could to the nearest body of water.
We hadn't seen any snakes yet. In fact, as I recall it, we didn't run across any snakes for a good while in the Mountain View area, unlike some other trips out into the country we'd made with Jay and Doug in the past.
For example, near Camp Takhoda one summer, Doug, Tim and I had come up on a large water moccasin, only barely lying across a fairly wide path. We each had a brand new Bee Bee gun, and resolved that we'd defend ourselves from the varmint with them. We moved in a little closer, all three dropping to one knee, rifles at the shoulder at my command--because, even at the height of "danger," I insisted on us not losing our cool.
We fired a volley of bee bees into the snake, but to no effect--except that the snake coiled up, maybe more out of annoyance than injury at that point--until, Doug--always the "neatest" one--got in close, aimed well, and popped that snake's eye out with a bee bee.
"Wow Doug! Wow! You got in so close--you may have killed him! You got him right in the head!" I'd shouted insanely, quickly turning back to see if the snake was dead yet.
Of course, all that had actually done was to make the snake mad. The poor, tortured and probably incredibly patient creature finally started moving forward and striking at us repeatedly--pith, pith!
Soon we'd lost our "formation" and started firing individually, wildly--just filling that snake full of bee bees--but just as ineffectually as before. We began to back down the trail, stumbling over vines and rocks. And I guess that snake would have gotten one of us, after all--for all our volleys of bee bees. But, just in the nick of time, our uncle Bob came up from the camp cabins area with a big rock and smashed it down on the head of the half-blind, agonized snake.
He laughed and said, "I thought I'd better put that thing out of its misery!"That incident helped Doug, Tim and me to realize we weren't really country kids. We didn't know enough about even the simplest country things like killing snakes.
I told dad about the incident a little later, trying to make myself sound as rational and mature as possible. "We saw a big snake."
"Yeah, I know--Bob told me."
"It was going to bite us if we didn't shoot it," I lied. "We thought we could kill it with our Beebee guns."
He looked at me with a half-amused gaze, head tilted slightly to one side--a pose he usually assumed when engaged in conversations with me at that age.
"Yeah, you're goin' to kill a lot of snakes that way, I think. Son, that's a real good way to get snake bit!"
Then Dad made a determined eye contact with me--making sure I saw the look of serious concern that was now on his face. That was another favorite tactic he used with me when scolding me.
"You know, now, don't you, not to fool with no snakes? You know to stay away from 'em? I don't want anyone to tell me they see you fooling with no more snakes--ok?"
Then he turned to Tim, with that same determined eye contact, that same super-concerned expression. "Ok, Tim?"
Tim whimpered a little and turned away, but didn't cry. After a moment which was silent at the time--but which I now can see must have been filled with confusion in his little mind--he turned back to face dad.
"Ok, Daddy," he softly said.
At that moment, I felt riddled with guilt. Tim was still small and impressionable, and he'd just been following my example--my instructions, even. At the time, in my foolish childhood egotism and illusion, I'd thought I was being the height of maturity and role-modeling; now, I felt small, guilty and rather like a snake myself.
I had gotten Tim into trouble for trying to do what I told him to do in attacking the snake. He wasn't deliberately being bad; he had just been trying to be good, trying to do what his big brother told him to do. And I had wanted to say those words to Dad at the time--to defend Tim, and take all the guilt upon myself, but I had choked up inside, and hadn't had the courage to do it.
Jay's land had a cave on it--that was the neatest thing about it. You could almost have fallen into that cave; it was virtually a hole. In fact, as I recall, dad used the word "cave" sarcastically there, too. Some fellow had found a small cave and had enlarged it by digging into the floor, and had then used it to store salt pork, fish and sundry items of flesh he had killed or purchased at Piggly Wiggly.
That evening, we were happy with what seemed to be Paradise. We had run through those bright, fragrant wildflowers, ugly but verdant weeds, and reliable-looking trees. We'd explored that in reality rather non-starter of a cave--which to us, having been to Cave City, seemed an abiding, dark Mystery. We'd swum in that beautiful, psalm-inspiring still water, and run almost the above-ground length of at least one clear, bubbling stream in the course of our play. We began to settle into our sleeping bags. We were all exhausted.
The electric car was parked on the gravel banks of a stream. Scattered around the edges of the electric car, the boys (Tim, Doug and I) were on one side, the girls (my sisters Amy and Ann) on the other. The bank we were on was only slightly above the level of the water, which was rolling with whispers and sizzles over rocks under a beautiful half-moon--beneath which were crickets chirping, frogs croaking, and even bullfrogs bellowing--and in the background, the warbling of night birds, including Whipporwills and Mourning Doves. The blue-white light from the rising moon reflected in the running water like heat lightning on a hotter summer night will sometimes do on the same horizon.
Even so, it took me a little while to get settled in, because Doug was there, so it was all so neat. We had flashlights, which I'd planned far enough in advance to get at Clark's Army and Navy Store; I had even planned so far ahead as to buy some little green camping bags to carry our canteens, flashlights, and Tootsie Rolls--all necessities for boys headed for the country from town. We watched a couple of clouds roll over the stars, jumped out of our sleeping bags a couple of times to shine our flashlights over into the nearby stream to see what that was that made that barely-audible splashing sound, and finally began to settle into a still position to sleep.
Amy and Ann, our sisters, kept asking if we were sure that was an owl making the hooting sound. Tim said loudly that he thought it was a monster, quickly got out of his sleeping bag and walked right around to the other side of the electric car, where the girls' sleeping bags were, and, in his loudest and deepest voice, said "Boo!" They screamed and squealed, which of course prompted us boys to laugh hysterically. Though it was probably a relief to Amy and Ann to learn it was only a trick, it prompted angry shouts from them.
Dad and Jay, lying in the front and back seats of the electric car, respectively, in turn responded to our noise by telling us to get to sleep, leave the girls alone.
"Lights out, ya buncha little old ladies!" Master Sergeant Jay Standridge, U.S. Air Force,(1)* commanded. Doug, his son, seemingly unintimidated, started to ask me if he should get up and pull one more thing . . . one . . . more . . . thing on Amy and . . . and he and I were conked out, before he'd even finished his sentence.
And we all slept for hours. We were forced into wakefulness by severe itching. And then it was that we were suddenly confronted with the reality of life on earth, versus life in Paradise.
Uncle Jay's land looked beautiful enough, but it was home to more than beautiful things; it was home to ticks as well. And we had accumulated half the state of Arkansas' population of them that day. They ranged all over our bodies and had found parasitic homes everywhere, including our private parts--a parting gift from those cattle.
By morning, we were frantic, panicked. We boys only half-jokingly asked each other, "Are we going to be all right ?" Amy and Ann were terrified, pleading with Dad to take us home. So our camping-out weekend was cut short, and we went back home, back to town, a bunch of city kids, to be doctored for ticks by over-indulgent mothers.
For once it was Dad's turn to laugh at something Jay had gotten himself into. Jay joined in, and from then on they dubbed Uncle Jay's beautiful, well-watered lands near Mountain View as "Jay's tick farm."
None of this stymied dad in his efforts to get into the real estate business. He2(2) continued to deal with Art van Houten, and finally came up with a scheme to buy the lake, cut it up into lots, keep part of the property for us to use, and sell the rest. We'd keep the part that had the house on it, and the cabin, and boat docks--and we'd keep the two small ponds that sat on either side of the small reservoir road that ran along the east side of the lake. But the opposite shore would be for sale.
That was the plan. We'd keep the place up, using the entire family, and saving the
expense of a gardener; we could then sell some lots--and thus supplement the family's income. Big plans all right--and many of them involved Tim running a riding lawn mower around the shores of the lake, cutting down the high weeds that infested the place incredibly quickly after a rain. It took almost constant activity to keep the weeds under control.
And we also began to encounter the algae Mr. Van Houten had talked about--so we got those Israeli Carp into the lake. They began to tear into that algae. All seemed to be going well, and we had some good times at the lake. Several times, J.D. and Doug came to visit, and I'd loved those summer visits, because we'd swap visiting each other's land, on opposite weekends.
First we'd go to Mountain View, to visit J.D.'s tick farm, cave and pretty water. Now being fore-armed with tick repellent, we'd get into the water right away upon getting out of the electric car, not wandering around in the grass and weeds. Then, the following weekend, we'd go to our lake at Cave City, and spend the night at the house, which sat high up on a low cliff, overlooking the lake.
Man I loved that place: so did Tim--and we were soon trying to figure out ways to build some kind of cable car to go across the lake, from the house to the opposite shore
--like the ones at Magic Springs, Arkansas, or in those toy Swiss villages we'd gotten for Christmas. Those little cable cars that went up and down mountainsides had fired our imaginations.
We thought we'd hit on an idea one day. We found a rope that was tied to a tree behind the house, stretched it over to the roof, and, finding a section of pipe, inserted the rope into the pipe and ran it through. The combination of the rope and pipe could act as a miniature cable car for one person--specifically, one little boy.
I was the inventor, but Tim was the test pilot. He insisted. He put an old glove on, then wrapped his hand around the pipe, and I helped him up to the roof of the house. Then I pulled him back and gave him a slight shove. He slid down the rope, gliding across the chasm between the house and the tree--a distance of about 12 feet.
We were impressed, and resolved to expand our cable car operations. I almost immediately began to form visions of Tim gliding all the way across the lake, suspended from the rope. Tim was enthusiastic.
But lack of funds--and our mother's glare through the window of the house, accompanied by "Get off that roof! " stopped us.
"Now you boys know better than that! We may need to sell this house someday! We can't damage the roof! You might make it rain in!"
"Ok! Ok! We're off the roof. Please don't sell the house."
One night J.D. and Doug and my sisters Amy, Ann and Sue--and Sue's husband, Jay Johnson, Tim and I were all staying at that house at the Cave City lake. My uncle J.D. and Sue's husband, Jay Johnson had gone out frog-gigging, so they could have frog legs the next day. Sometime late that night, they came back in. They told us the next morning that about all they'd run across was a bunch of snakes, so they'd given up on frog legs after awhile. "I wasn't in the mood to do any snake-gigging," J.D. and Jay had said.
I woke up early that morning, sometime after midnight, to see a stick or limb scraping across the window screen in front of me. It seemed extremely real and vivid, the lights and shadow at that hour seeming eerie in that house which was still strange to me. The "limb" seemed three dimensional enough, casting a shadow on the window screen. It took a few minutes to build my courage but I finally went closer to the window and looked out. I saw no one there.
I checked the time; it was about 2 a.m.. I checked the next day, to try to determine what it was. There was no plant, bush, or tree nearby that could have reached the window from where it was. J.D.and Jay said they didn't think they'd been out that late.
Of course, I ran down the list of possible explanations. First of all, I couldn't be absolutely sure it wasn't Uncle J.D. or Jay, scraping on the window with a frog gig. Uncle J.D., however, was a USAF sergeant who rose early and generally didn't keep late hours and, for his part, Jay was a serious type not taken to late night pranks. Weeks, even years later, the two continued to deny any recollection of any such activity.
Maybe it was an extremely vivid dream. However, I know I woke up at some point in the midst of the stick's scraping, because I looked at the clock. Perhaps, then, it was one of those hypnagogic hallucinations that people talk about and that my sister Sue experienced so frequently as part of her dream patterns. It's interesting in that connection, however, that I looked at the clock: that is, I was conscious and awake enough--and long enough--to read the clock. Then I returned to view the stick's immediate area. Hypnagogic hallucinations supposedly require that one be still asleep on some level, probably too much so to be able to tell time. (I was subsequently to find other, perhaps more fitting, explanations for this phenomenon and these are discussed in "The Shadows of Memory and Tragedy," as well.)
Perhaps, then, it was something else: I never did really find out what caused that eerie image of a stick scraping across the window screen at two in the morning. It didn't, however, deter either Tim or me from loving that lake and that lake house. Although I wasn't much of a fisherman, I loved to photograph the lake, its little denizens such as "Rex" the lizard and its environs, in color and black and white. Though I developed a "wasp phobia" for a time after a few visits to the lake, that was to fade in the next few years. My anxious moments as a teenaged boy were often easily calmed by the slow, soft ripples of that beautiful lake as it gently glimmered in the sun.
1. *Since this piece was begun, he is deceased: as of December 1, 1996.
2. *2 As of September 2, 1998, my beloved father is deceased.