"The Stinson"

There is an old friend that flows forgotten through our town. By Midwest standards it isn’t much; it’s not wide or deep; it’s not always clear and clean smelling; it doesn’t even have a fancy name like those in southern Missouri: the Niangua, the Gasconade, Jacks Forks, and the Eleven Point. Unlike those beautiful streams that find their birth in some magical flowing spring, our creek rises in a most common way out of the pastures and woods northwest of town. Many years ago, an uncreative individual gave our stream a kind of working man’s name: the Stinson. Like a worker, day and night, it goes about the business of carrying the unwanted water through our town toward the great Missouri River in a most uninspiring manner.

But for those of us who grew up playing on its banks, it was a place of spectacular beauty and wonder. An enchanted place where a boy could sit and listen to the melodious sound of the water as it flowed from pool to pool through the maze of rocks. A place where we could reach out and touch and ask questions about those curious things nature had placed in those rocky pools. To be alive, for us, meant being on the creek for the creek was alive. The sign on town bridge may have read Stinson Creek, but to the legions of young pirates, whooping painted indians, and terrifying desperados who hid out on its banks, it was our place, and we called our stream Town Creek.

We knew the history of our sacred waters because it had been passed down to us from other boys who had grown up and become men; those boys had learned it from other boys who had grown into old men; they in turn had learned it from other boys who had grown into old men and had died. Like the waters of the creek, the history flowed in a continuous telling from one generation to the next, a trickle added here, another trickle coming in there, until each hundred yards had its own story. While our showing in the classroom was rather dismal, we could sit by a small fire in our secret place on the creek and tell one whopping tale after another about the historic events that had taken place along our sanctuary.

Like the other boys, I grew up shaped by this storytelling, exploring, questioning, naming, and creating. I could find little reason to hurry into adulthood. On the creek I was the same as the animals, fish, insects, and crustaceans: I was free. I would never again in my adult life feel that complete sense of liberation and exultation that I found as a boy on the banks of Town Creek.

One crisp morning this fall I decided to retrace my boyhood steps, hoping in my approaching old age that maybe I might once again feel the freedom that had stirred my soul so many years ago. When I was a boy, the creek was much deeper with perch, bass, and catfish in some of the better holes, so fishing was the prime motivation for a trip to the secret spots. My retracing began not far below where the 54 by-pass sign reads, the Stinson. Somewhere along there I broke my dad’s expensive bamboo fly rod fishing for perch. A rather common event to most, but to a twelve-year-old boy it was a cataclysmic event of such historic magnitude that I was sure it would rank along side the great San Francisco earthquake, and prompted me to considered a move to the creek permanently. As hard as I tried I couldn’t find the spot; that enchanting hole with the perch has long since been claimed by silt from strip mines farther upstream.

A few hundred yards down stream I walked beneath an aging friend where my youthful courage had been tested for the first time as I had gingerly stepped from tie to tie trying not to look down. I had remembered it as a structure of wonder and magnificence standing thirty feet in the air. When my aging friend was new, a group of the creek boys from an older generation were swimming and were caught by the sheriff in the unspeakable act of mooning the passenger train as it made its way over the new bridge toward the thriving town of Guthrie. But now, it stands rusting, having outlived its purpose as a railroad bridge--long since forgotten as a place were a boy could prove his courage.

Within sight of the bridge rises a great monolith from the creek floor. At the top of this imposing rock was the holy-of-holiest places on the creek for here the greatest boy of all had signed his name: Daniel Boone. This was a place where all blood oaths were taken--especially the one to forever protect the creek. The magical spirit in this rock was so powerful that poison ivy or a good case of chiggers could be cleared up on the spot. But today the spirit of imagination is no longer found there for some adults who lacked the power of imagination tore the sacred altar from the top of the high place and positioned it at the county’s entrance to records, facts and the law.

A short walk down stream brought me to the indication of another time, another group of boys, and the pristine water the creek freely gave the people of the town. Still hidden in the brush is the hint of a dam that crossed the creek in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Here, in the winter, the town’s ice house cut ice and stored it under straw and sawdust to be used in the hot weather. Overtime the creek had churned a great deep hole behind the dam where men fished on the weekdays and families gathered on Sunday afternoons to picnic and swim. It was here, on a special long ago day, that a non-creek boy had stepped in over his head and was saved by a young man from Liberty, Missouri--my grandfather.

Down the creek, from where the low water bridge is today, I found the traces of a long deep hole that still makes a bend toward the college. In 1943, at the end of this hole, the water had separated and rushed on both sides of a long narrow sandbar called Bomber’s Island. The name had its origin in the flights taking off from England to bomb the German fortresses with crews of boys only eight to ten years older than we were. This extraordinary name had been given by a group of patriotic African-American creek boys who claimed the island and everything else living near that bend on the creek. It was certainly true that if one used one’s imagination the island was about the same size and shape as the outline of the famous Flying Fortress. I must add, that on one fine August day--long before the Tuskegee airmen-- the Bomber’s Island crew helped the war effort immensely by setting a new record by downing 2768 Messerschmitt 109s and one English Hawker Hurricane that got in our way. No one was killed; all the pilots--even the Germans-- bailed out and our momentous victory was celebrated with a grand feast of catfish, perch, and crawdads we caught in the creek.

Between Bomber’s Island and the Seventh Street bridge a spectacular geological formation crossed the creek in such a way that a series of mini waterfalls bubbled constantly. This was the second most sacred place on the creek for the boys because over time the water had eaten strange knee-deep holes in the reddish-yellow rock shaped like very large footprints. We--following the tradition of other older creek boys--always approached the spot with veneration because we were sure that all the holes had been shaped by a giant who had walked there when the earth was new. It was a holy place: a place we whispered out of fear of waking the great giant that we knew was sleeping close by. We called this second sacred place, Sleeping Giant’s Rock.

As I made my way down the creek from the old dam to the Seventh Street bridge, I had hoped to find something that spoke of those golden days when I had absorbed the magic of this place. I guess I was looking for some of the Bombers to appear and help me bring back those courageous flights in that old Flying Fortress with the shape of an island. Maybe, just maybe, the old girl that had carried us on so many flights over hostile territory was still there. Nothing is there today; it has long since been filled in. Gone! All of them gone: the ice dam with the deep fishing hole, Bomber’s Island, Sleeping Giant’s Rock, and those other creek boys who helped define my sense of what freedom really means to a creek boy now grown old wishing to once again sit by t he fire and tell tall tales.

At some point, near Sleeping Giant’s Rock, the city’s new asphalt hiking trail meets the creek and follows the old trail left by hundreds of animals and wild creek boys. Within sight of where the bubbling rock was located, one can still see the beautiful arch of the Seventh Street bridge. In my creek boy days, the water under the bridge was a constant three-feet deep fed by some unknown source. It was the place a boy could turn to for some quick money with a piece of bacon, a good line, and a cut willow limb. With such time-honored fishing gear, one could always get two dozen big blackish-brown crawdads. These could be sold for the unheard of price of twenty-five cents to any fisherman in town--good for a Roy Rogers’ movie, popcorn and drink on a Saturday afternoon. But there was a dark sinister side to the bridge for the creek boys. It was a place of ill-omened sorrow for some of the town’s cruel citizens threw bags of unwanted kittens and pups over the side of the bridge bringing death into our wondrous living creek.

Not too far down stream from the bridge, the old trail had crossed over to the college side of the creek on a most intriguing collection of wobbling stepping stones--they have long since disappeared. Back in the woods-- which is now the parking lot for Westminster’s Science Center--the Navy had built an obstacle course for the young men training at Westminster for bigger events in the South Pacific and Europe. Directly across the creek, through a slim natural barrier of trees, stood the once great oak under which Jefferson Davis, ex-president of the Confederacy, had made a moving speech. Even in my time as a creek boy, the old sentinel had shown life each spring, but lightning had hit the old fellow many times and had taken its toll. The college had to have it removed. Here, in line with the great tree, the creek had cut a deep long hole tempting many a boy to take a quick dip on a hot July day. It was a good place for a boy to be with his thoughts as he fished from the shade of the tall whispering cottonwoods and listened to the jabbering of the fox squirrels in the woods.

From the asphalt footpath, I could still see the place where deep water had stirred my young thoughts. One of the great trees that had lined this hole was unmajestically on its side in the water that long ago used to be five feet deep, but now is less than one foot. Up the hill, on the north side of Westminster Gymnasium, a natural stone stairway had made its way down to the deep hole. Many of the creek boys thought the stones had been laid by the college so the college boys could cut ice in the winter for their parties . This marvelous artistic feat had been created from flat rocks taken from the creek long before my time--probably, when the college was new. Some are still there, slowly being disassembled by the erosion caused by the gutting of the hill and a questionable need to have access to the Science Center’s parking lot from the asphalt trail.

Near the middle of this hole a white rock resembling large steps rises from the water on the college side. This stone extends from the college side across the creek and disappears under the far bank. The water over the rock was never more than three-feet deep so the boys, whose swimming skills were not what they should be, felt safe. During my youth, the steps formed a natural seating for up to twelve creek boys and was a place of great political significance, hence, the descriptive name of Council Rock. It was here on this rock that great disputes were settled between the Below the Bend Boys and the Above the Bend Boys--I, along with my little brother and the boys from Bomber’s Island, belonged to the Above the Bend Boys.

Leaning far out over Council Rock was a fine buckeye tree that in the fall kept all the boys supplied with brown, shinny, round talismans that we carried to ward off such horrendous things as toad warts--I carry a buckeye to this day. Tucked into the roots of this buckeye tree the most secret messages could be left in a Mason jar informing all the boys of such great events as to which store in town had a new shipment of good bubble gum--a rare treasure because of the war effort. Today, Council Rock lies beneath heavy concrete steps that come down from the hill of learning and crosses the creek to the fields and courts of competition. The buckeye tree--I assume--was in the way of the third concrete step up from the top of the white rock’s face.

At the south end of this long hole a large flat rock, the size of a bathtub, dominated the center of the creek. It had a most important unique feature for the boys of my time--a hole in the center. This hole was the home to two strange bed fellows: a very large snake the creek boys named Old Mocs, and a very large black perch reverently called Daniel. Near the rock the water ran through a series of narrow riffles lined with dark green snake reeds. This area was well supplied with frogs and minnows and was the reason for Old Mocs and Daniel to live under the big rock with the hole in the center. Here, at these small riffles, one could still find the place where wagons of long ago had made a cut in the west bank as they headed for the golden land in the West. It was from this spot that the young men of the 1860s watered their horses before they crossed the creek and left to fight at Wilson’s Creek or Pea Ridge--that’s what we were told by older creek boys, who had learned it from older creek boys, who were told by...

Below the riffles the creek took a sharp bend to the west cutting a deep hole against a tall dirt bank. A large tree had been plunged by the force of the creek’s water into this bank creating a terrific place to fish for fiddler catfish. The deep water then turned south into a wide hole known to all as The Mississippi before bubbling into a very long riffle that turned east.

Today, this area stands clean with little character. Some engineer decided the water would flow more expeditiously through the town if the unique creek bed was more customized by being bulldozed into submission. I didn’t go any farther on the asphalt trail for the great bend marked the boundary for the Above the Bend Boys. In the three miles I had traveled I found nothing alive in any hole or riffle. The extraordinary place of beauty, wonder and history of my youth, and for generations of other creek boys, is now dead.

I don’t know when the creek died. I don’t even know who is responsible--maybe all of us. I do know that when people see nothing but a ditch for dumping their commercial wastes where a beautiful creation of God once brought joy to so many, we as a people are in desperate trouble. We are God’s stewards of this land. God has no one else. Natural things like our creeks and rivers become the barometers for how well we are doing our job. Unless we demand more from ourselves and others, we, like the creek, will in the end be truly lifeless.

There is an old friend that flows forgotten through our town.