Spring Showers Sometimes Bring More Than Flowers

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

I don’t remember the flowers much, that were the result of April showers. But I sure remember those spring rains we used to get at our farm west of Gravette.

Moving from dry sand dunes in Nebraska, the rains in April seemed spectacular. My father had brought cattle to graze on the rich, lush fields and their milk made our living.

In the springtime we kids loved walking barefoot on the rocks that somehow didn’t hurt our feet, up and down the trickling creek which had its beginning at some springs deep in our land. About halfway through our 400 acres of hills and woods and fields the creek suddenly ran dry. Except when it rained.

After days of heavy spring rain, those dry creek beds would become swollen with churning water, too dangerous even for our pickup to cross. When the sun would come out, my father would go out to assess the damage - fences split, cows stranded on small patches of grass, corn fields standing in water.We kids always followed, awed by the deep, swift water, where before had been only gravel beds.

One time, after an especially large rain, I pulled up my skirt and began wading along in a ditch formed by water risen out of its banks. My father and siblings went on ahead as I splashed in the shallow stream. All at once I found myself in a deep hole filled with water. I screamed and thrashed about, but no one heard. Somehow I managed to catch hold of some soggy grass and pull myself out. I lay there for sometime just shaking. By the time I arrived back at the house the sun had dried my dress and for some reason I never told anyone about my near-death experience.

Heavy rains could swell those creeks in no time and, of course, there were no bridges. Once I went with my brother in his Model A to visit friends, when it began to rain real heard. We thought we’d wait until it quit before heading home. When we reached the creek below our house, now filled with water, my brother tried to make it across. The motor died in the middle of the raging stream. We had to get Papa to pull the car out with his tractor. Through the years that tractor pulled many a car out in this same place until the county finally built a tall wooden bridge there.

The biggest challenge was walking to Wann School, one mile away. A dry creek bed and the year round--running Honey Creek stood between the school and our house. The year I was in the fourth grade, one Monday after it had rained all weekend, we kids headed for school, trying to find a place to cross. We jumped across rocks in a few narrow streams until we came to Honey Creek. The further we followed it the wider and deeper it seemed to be. We finally found a large tree laying across the banks, high above the water. Slowly each of my brothers and sisters walked across that log, until only I was left.

Out of all the kids at our country school grades I was the only one who hadn’t missed a day of school that year. My teacher, Mrs. Sanford, praised me every day for my perfect attendance. I thought of that as I laid down on that log, hugging it for dear life, and crawled across, an inch at a time. By the time school was over the day the creeks were down. When the school term was over Mrs. Sanford presented me with a doll for a year’s perfect attendance.

It was during that next summer that I learned to swim, in Honey Creek.

Marie Putman, one-time Gravette resident, shares her thoughts with our readers twice every month.

Opinion, Pages 4 on 04/14/2010