SEVENTY YEARS AT THE LAKE
My intent here is to record as much as I can remember about my early years at the lake.
I want the younger generation and those to come to know what it was like to be part of the lake
70 + years ago. I also think it’s important to record these memories before they get lost over time. We often forget what we hear. Putting my memories on paper is something I have wanted to do for a long time but never seemed to get around to it. Our website has provided me with the incentive. The lake has always been “home” to me. I have lived many places, but no place has ever had my heart as “the lake”. Perhaps it is because it has been part of me for all my life along with the memories created there. For me it is a magical place and it seems part of me remains there when I leave.
My grandfather, Gurney Smith, bought the land when my mama was a little girl. She recalled to me having a big celebration dinner when the mortgage was paid and burning the papers. The land was planted in cotton and sharecroppers lived there and worked the fields. Papa Golden bought the land from Gurney and thus established GSFC. Gurney loved his cabin and the lake. (He developed stomach cancer just after I was born and “legend” has it that his son, my Uncle Lennard, went to the cabin bedroom when the pain became unbearable and gently put Gurney to sleep.) But, what foresight they had for us and how grateful I have always been that I was born into this family and share their dream for us. After 80+ years it is still ours and we all are so incredibly blessed. At one time, there was talk about selling the place. My mama may have been president at the time. All the shares were voted in due process, and I was holding my breath. When it came her time to vote, Mama abstained from voting. She saved the lake as the vote did not carry.
Our cabin was built circa 1931. I was not even a thought at the time but come October of 1939, I arrived on the scene. Of course, I don’t remember my earliest visits to the lake but there is proof I was on the scene early on. I guess my daddy, Tommy Campbell, may have built the brick walk up to the cabin. As you face the cabin, on the left side of that walk close to the steps, is my foot and handprint dated July 1941. (I was 18 months old at the time). My name is there too; but not the name of Melissa. Until I was three or four my name was Elsie, just like my mama’s. Then for whatever reason I was called Melissa, after my great aunt. Then there is that photo of me and my brother, James, as my parents called him, standing by the water pump at the pavilion. Looks like I am in my birthday suit and he was a scrawny little kid of 13! As my Daddy was in the army, the field in front of our cabin became known as the “Parade Ground” and remains so today. The field where the water tank used to be was once home to over 200 rose bushes planted by Grandpa Gurney. There is a picture of it in our cabin.
Every summer mama would cover her pretty living room furniture with sheets at our home in Winter Park, FL, load the car, and head for the cabin. We stayed all summer – June, July, August. Mama hired a young black girl, Rosie, to play with me and keep me nearby. I don’t really remember Rosie taking care of me or what we did, but I do remember the summer Rosie didn’t come anymore. I knew where she lived as Mama and I had walked to her house. (If you go past the Garry Pound’s house, just at the turn to the dam, there was a path to her house deep through the woods.) I must have been 4 or 5. I took off to find Rosie and went down that path through the woods alone without telling anyone where I was going. I don’t remember anything else but the spanking I got for going over there alone. Mama and Daddy had been frantic looking for me.
Living at the lake those early years was rather primitive. We pumped our water from the old pump at the pavilion twice a day. It had a lot of iron rust in it at times and we would have to wait for the rust to settle before we could use it for drinking or cooking. Water for bathing was pumped from the lake at the “pump house” into the old water tower that is long since gone. (The fish shaped weather vane that now hangs at Jim Pound’s house use to be on the top of the water tank.) If it rained a lot and the lake was rather muddy, that’s what we got to bathe in! We didn’t have a hot water heater in our cabin so all water for bathing, washing clothes, and dishes was heated on the stove and carried to the tub. Mama would scrub clothes on a washboard in the tub and hang them to dry on a clothesline behind the cabin. No refrigerator either. We had an old ice box and two to three times a week we would go into Columbus and buy a couple of blocks of ice from the Ice and Coal Company, where the Hilton is now, before returning to the cabin. Sometimes the ice man would come to us when he came to Zila’s. Don’t remember when we did get a real refrigerator. There was a little shed/chicken coop in the woods behind our cabin. We would borrow a hen or two from Zila and collect fresh eggs daily. Pops kept the undergrowth at bay every summer by a lot of hard physical work. No yard toys such as we have now to make the work easier. It always looked so pretty and there was a path to the shed. Later, he dismantled that old coop and it became part of the storage shed that was once beside our cabin until it too burned in the fire. No garbage collection either. Pops dug a big hole to throw trash and garbage into and periodically it was burned. Did we have a stove? I don’t remember. There was an old wood stove with two “eyes” but I don’t remember if it was used for cooking. Mamie had one in her kitchen too. Stan and Scarlett now have hers in their kitchen – but not for cooking!!
Back to the old pump for a minute. At some point, we finally got city water to the lake. Maybe in the 70’s. Much later the old pump just disappeared from the old well. I missed it! It was part of the history of the lake and I wanted it back. I love to haunt antique malls and flea markets and kept my eyes open for a replacement, as did others. Jennie Swany found one for $200 at the Rock Store Antiques in Salem, AL. She thought it looked like the original one.
My brother, as president at the time, wrote me a check and I made a flying trip to Salem. Didn’t want someone else to buy it before I could get there! I was astonished to discover the pump was exactly like the one missing from the well. I just wanted to cry, I was so happy! (I know I am a sentimental old fool and proud of it!) My brother just happened to find the original pump in the woods behind his “moho” and when comparing the two discovered the same serial numbers, makers, and etc. What a blessing. I had been looking out for an old pump for years and had found nothing close to the original one. Things just come together sometimes when you least expect it and finding a similar pump was one of those times. So, the original pump is back at it’s home at the well, and the other one now resides in what Winde calls Gurney’s Rose Garden by the road.
If it rained we would not be able to go into town until the road dried out as it would turn to slick clay and there was no way to get up Three Mile Hill. I remember Sandfort Road being paved but not sure when. It had to be sometime in the late 40s. Paving it took a big chunk of Three Mile Hill. We also lost part of the property up at the road. Part of the subdivision across from our entrance used to belong to the lake. I remember a sharecropper’s house being on the corner as you turned onto the lake road. Mama always said Uncle Bill lost that piece of property gambling. But regardless, the road took a new route when it was paved and cut off the corner where the house was.
At least one day a week, I was taken into town to spend the day with Mamie, my grandmother. It was such a treat . There was a drug store around the corner and a couple of blocks over. Sometimes we would walk there and buy cokes, ice cream, and a coloring book or comic book for me. Other times she would call in an order and they delivered!!! I would get to wait on the steps of her house until the delivery boy brought our order. That was just too cool! She loved Nathan’s Seed and Feed and we would walk there often. Mamie didn’t drive so we walked into town. Often in the morning I would sit on her porch and watch the black ladies walk down the sidewalk with their vegetables in baskets on top of their heads. They would always be calling out what they had for sale that day. Mamie would always buy something – okra, beans, corn, peas, or tomatoes. There was also a black man with no legs below his knees. He had a cart with a seat on it and a goat pulled him around. At 4:30 all the factory whistles would blow to let everyone know it was quitting time and I would know that Uncle Bill would come by Mamie’s to pick me up and take me back to the lake. Until one fateful day!! I must have been about six. He stopped at a bar in Phenix City (the building is still there) and gave me money to play the slot machines while he drank his beer. We were really late getting back to the lake that day and my mama was madder than a tribe of Indians when she was told where we had been. Not to mention that she and Pops were worried sick – remember, no cell phones back then. Uncle Bill got his ears full of her anger and that was the last of Uncle Bill picking me up at Mamie’s. Speaking of phones, at one time there was a phone in the bath house. That didn’t work very well, as you actually had to be at the pavilion to hear it ring so it was moved to Zila’s. If you needed to make a call, you had to plan on sitting a spell with Zila or August as it was a party line and sometimes you would be waiting for an hour!
I had no playmates my age at the lake but I don’t ever remember being lonely or bored. I entertained myself without the ipods, tv’s and etc. of today. Most afternoons about 4:30 or 5:00 my grandmother Mamie, her husband – “Uncle” Frank, Aunt Susie and Uncle Mac, Uncle Bill, would come out to rock in the chairs on the pavilion, eat ice cream or watermelon, and play shuffleboard. As dark came on Mama would take me back to the cabin to my little bed on the back porch. I went to sleep many a night listening to my daddy, Uncle Bill, Frank, Uncle Mac whooping and hollering playing shuffleboard. What a time they had. On special occasions Uncle Bill, Uncle Theo, and Frank would play their musical instruments – Bill on the mandolin, Frank on the fiddle, and Theo on the base (I think). There was always a big celebration on July 4th, as that was Aunt Susie’s birthday. I lucked up as the family celebrated my birthday then as well, even though it is not until October. Nonetheless, I got coloring books, crayons, comic books, hair ribbons, board games, and it was always a very special day.
Most summers Aunt Lessie, Ted, and Dreux and later Alice would be out there as well. I remember picking blackberries on the dam with Mamie and watching her make cobbler in an old enamel dish pan. Never had cobbler that good since. Sometimes Aunt Melissa would come to visit from Florida (where she lived until she moved to Columbus after her husband passed away) and stay with Uncle Bill. I would get to spend a night with her and she would put salt in my hand before we left the next morning to walk down the hill and across the dam. Guess she wanted to keep me occupied on our little journey and she told me if I threw the salt on a bird I could catch him. For some reason that salt never worked. Daddy would wake me up early in morning from time to time and take me fishing with him. I loved walking on the sandbars that are covered up now and seeing the water lily blossoms and the sun come up and catching a fish. Of course, he had to remove the hook. I loved sleeping on our back porch and listening to the bull frogs and the katydids sing. The roof on the cabin at that time was tin. Listening to the rain hit the roof, was magical for me. Nothing compares to the rain on a tin roof. Late one afternoon a rainbow formed across the lake and it looked as if it actually ended in the water. Of course, I knew the story that there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Daddy rowed me out there to look for it. I must have been about 6 or 7 at the time. Needless, to say we found no pot of gold. And, notice I said rowed. No trolling motors back then. How Pops would have loved one! When I think back to these times at the lake when I was just a kid I was happy out there, playmates or not. It didn’t take much to make me happy and life was so peaceful and simple, at least for me.
Levi and Zila Turpin lived in a little four room cabin where Herb and Pat Parker’s mobile home is now. I don’t remember much about Levi except riding in his wagon once filled with pine straw and being covered in every nook and cranny of my little body with chiggers! I do remember the corn, beans, and watermelon he grew in the field that is now my brother’s golf course. But, Zila had a special place in my heart. She would let me chase her baby chicks and eat lunch with her on her back porch. Every other Saturday she would be on hands and knees pulling weeds from rocks that surrounded the bath house and pavilion. I guess Uncle Bill paid her, but even as a kid I felt sorry for her and did not understand why she had to do that. I would pitch in and help sometimes but my assistance was always short lived – maybe 5 minutes. At some point, Levi died and eventually Zila married Horace Phillips. Horace was such a dear sweet man and he worked on the place and grew vegetables just as Levi had done. They tilled the land with an old plow and a mule. When Zila died Horace told me he was the loneliest man on earth. So eventually he married August but when Horace died August moved back into Phenix City. And that was the end of a black family living at the lake. (I think Levi, Zila, and Horace may be buried at the cemetery at the church on the right on Sandfort Road past the Country Store.) August is gone now too and buried in Columbus. (Her son could not afford a tombstone for her, so Winde paid for one.) They were all good people and I loved them.
The furrows made by the mule and plow used by Horace and Levi are still in the field in front of my brother’s “moho”. I found that out the day my brother taught me how to use the SKAG. After all the instructions were given he told me to give it the gas and head for the pavilion. I bumped over every one of those old furrows screaming my head off because I couldn’t remember how to make the SKAG stop. He, meanwhile, was standing on his porch laughing his head off! But feeling those old furrows really brought back those treasured memories of Levi, Zila, Horace, and August.
Uncle Bill: We could all write a book about him! The family renegade of his time. He always told the female guests coming in from swimming that they had to remove their swim suits and put them through the wringer (still there-in his honor?) before going into the bath house so water would not get all over the floor. No one ever did that – at least, not in my presence! If you were going up on the hill to visit with him, you had to stop and ring the big bell at the curve. If it was convenient time for a visit, he would come out on his porch and tell us to come on up. After we moved to Columbus when I was about 13, I took friends out often and after we got driver’s licenses we went really often. Uncle Bill never came home to lunch, or so I thought. So one day about 4 of my high school friends and I were sunbathing on the spillway NUDE. You guessed it! Uncle Bill came to his house for lunch and caught us. Girls scattered every which a direction but there is no place to hide on the spillway! Nothing would do him but to call my mother and tattle on us but not before he enjoyed the scenery and drove away laughing. When I got home to Columbus my mother was livid!!! Never did sunbathe on the spillway again with or without clothes.
These are my earliest memories of the lake. These are the earliest memories of my life. Many more have been made since then. Kids of my own, daughters-in-law, and grandkids all enjoying the lake. I hope my grandkids know how blessed we all are to have a place to come and celebrate life together. As they grow older may my children and grandchildren look back with love on this most special blessing-the lake. May they feel the love of all those that have come before us and use every opportunity to make memories of their own.
Melissa Mitchell
In later years, there were special times too. Pops loved his family and when any of us were around there he would be too. He would come out to the lake early in the morning and he and I would sit in the rocking chairs on the porch, drink coffee, and spend quiet time together. Later, Mama would come out and announce her arrival by blowing the car horn and bringing Kentucky Fried Chicken especially on Sunday. Miss that car horn! My daddy loved working around the cabin and could work circles around any one in spite of two heart attacks and prostate cancer. My husband didn’t like coming to the lake much because my daddy would put him to work.
My intent here is to record as much as I can remember about my early years at the lake.
I want the younger generation and those to come to know what it was like to be part of the lake
70 + years ago. I also think it’s important to record these memories before they get lost over time. We often forget what we hear. Putting my memories on paper is something I have wanted to do for a long time but never seemed to get around to it. Our website has provided me with the incentive. The lake has always been “home” to me. I have lived many places, but no place has ever had my heart as “the lake”. Perhaps it is because it has been part of me for all my life along with the memories created there. For me it is a magical place and it seems part of me remains there when I leave.
My grandfather, Gurney Smith, bought the land when my mama was a little girl. She recalled to me having a big celebration dinner when the mortgage was paid and burning the papers. The land was planted in cotton and sharecroppers lived there and worked the fields. Papa Golden bought the land from Gurney and thus established GSFC. Gurney loved his cabin and the lake. (He developed stomach cancer just after I was born and “legend” has it that his son, my Uncle Lennard, went to the cabin bedroom when the pain became unbearable and gently put Gurney to sleep.) But, what foresight they had for us and how grateful I have always been that I was born into this family and share their dream for us. After 80+ years it is still ours and we all are so incredibly blessed. At one time, there was talk about selling the place. My mama may have been president at the time. All the shares were voted in due process, and I was holding my breath. When it came her time to vote, Mama abstained from voting. She saved the lake as the vote did not carry.
Our cabin was built circa 1931. I was not even a thought at the time but come October of 1939, I arrived on the scene. Of course, I don’t remember my earliest visits to the lake but there is proof I was on the scene early on. I guess my daddy, Tommy Campbell, may have built the brick walk up to the cabin. As you face the cabin, on the left side of that walk close to the steps, is my foot and handprint dated July 1941. (I was 18 months old at the time). My name is there too; but not the name of Melissa. Until I was three or four my name was Elsie, just like my mama’s. Then for whatever reason I was called Melissa, after my great aunt. Then there is that photo of me and my brother, James, as my parents called him, standing by the water pump at the pavilion. Looks like I am in my birthday suit and he was a scrawny little kid of 13! As my Daddy was in the army, the field in front of our cabin became known as the “Parade Ground” and remains so today. The field where the water tank used to be was once home to over 200 rose bushes planted by Grandpa Gurney. There is a picture of it in our cabin.
Every summer mama would cover her pretty living room furniture with sheets at our home in Winter Park, FL, load the car, and head for the cabin. We stayed all summer – June, July, August. Mama hired a young black girl, Rosie, to play with me and keep me nearby. I don’t really remember Rosie taking care of me or what we did, but I do remember the summer Rosie didn’t come anymore. I knew where she lived as Mama and I had walked to her house. (If you go past the Garry Pound’s house, just at the turn to the dam, there was a path to her house deep through the woods.) I must have been 4 or 5. I took off to find Rosie and went down that path through the woods alone without telling anyone where I was going. I don’t remember anything else but the spanking I got for going over there alone. Mama and Daddy had been frantic looking for me.
Living at the lake those early years was rather primitive. We pumped our water from the old pump at the pavilion twice a day. It had a lot of iron rust in it at times and we would have to wait for the rust to settle before we could use it for drinking or cooking. Water for bathing was pumped from the lake at the “pump house” into the old water tower that is long since gone. (The fish shaped weather vane that now hangs at Jim Pound’s house use to be on the top of the water tank.) If it rained a lot and the lake was rather muddy, that’s what we got to bathe in! We didn’t have a hot water heater in our cabin so all water for bathing, washing clothes, and dishes was heated on the stove and carried to the tub. Mama would scrub clothes on a washboard in the tub and hang them to dry on a clothesline behind the cabin. No refrigerator either. We had an old ice box and two to three times a week we would go into Columbus and buy a couple of blocks of ice from the Ice and Coal Company, where the Hilton is now, before returning to the cabin. Sometimes the ice man would come to us when he came to Zila’s. Don’t remember when we did get a real refrigerator. There was a little shed/chicken coop in the woods behind our cabin. We would borrow a hen or two from Zila and collect fresh eggs daily. Pops kept the undergrowth at bay every summer by a lot of hard physical work. No yard toys such as we have now to make the work easier. It always looked so pretty and there was a path to the shed. Later, he dismantled that old coop and it became part of the storage shed that was once beside our cabin until it too burned in the fire. No garbage collection either. Pops dug a big hole to throw trash and garbage into and periodically it was burned. Did we have a stove? I don’t remember. There was an old wood stove with two “eyes” but I don’t remember if it was used for cooking. Mamie had one in her kitchen too. Stan and Scarlett now have hers in their kitchen – but not for cooking!!
Back to the old pump for a minute. At some point, we finally got city water to the lake. Maybe in the 70’s. Much later the old pump just disappeared from the old well. I missed it! It was part of the history of the lake and I wanted it back. I love to haunt antique malls and flea markets and kept my eyes open for a replacement, as did others. Jennie Swany found one for $200 at the Rock Store Antiques in Salem, AL. She thought it looked like the original one.
My brother, as president at the time, wrote me a check and I made a flying trip to Salem. Didn’t want someone else to buy it before I could get there! I was astonished to discover the pump was exactly like the one missing from the well. I just wanted to cry, I was so happy! (I know I am a sentimental old fool and proud of it!) My brother just happened to find the original pump in the woods behind his “moho” and when comparing the two discovered the same serial numbers, makers, and etc. What a blessing. I had been looking out for an old pump for years and had found nothing close to the original one. Things just come together sometimes when you least expect it and finding a similar pump was one of those times. So, the original pump is back at it’s home at the well, and the other one now resides in what Winde calls Gurney’s Rose Garden by the road.
If it rained we would not be able to go into town until the road dried out as it would turn to slick clay and there was no way to get up Three Mile Hill. I remember Sandfort Road being paved but not sure when. It had to be sometime in the late 40s. Paving it took a big chunk of Three Mile Hill. We also lost part of the property up at the road. Part of the subdivision across from our entrance used to belong to the lake. I remember a sharecropper’s house being on the corner as you turned onto the lake road. Mama always said Uncle Bill lost that piece of property gambling. But regardless, the road took a new route when it was paved and cut off the corner where the house was.
At least one day a week, I was taken into town to spend the day with Mamie, my grandmother. It was such a treat . There was a drug store around the corner and a couple of blocks over. Sometimes we would walk there and buy cokes, ice cream, and a coloring book or comic book for me. Other times she would call in an order and they delivered!!! I would get to wait on the steps of her house until the delivery boy brought our order. That was just too cool! She loved Nathan’s Seed and Feed and we would walk there often. Mamie didn’t drive so we walked into town. Often in the morning I would sit on her porch and watch the black ladies walk down the sidewalk with their vegetables in baskets on top of their heads. They would always be calling out what they had for sale that day. Mamie would always buy something – okra, beans, corn, peas, or tomatoes. There was also a black man with no legs below his knees. He had a cart with a seat on it and a goat pulled him around. At 4:30 all the factory whistles would blow to let everyone know it was quitting time and I would know that Uncle Bill would come by Mamie’s to pick me up and take me back to the lake. Until one fateful day!! I must have been about six. He stopped at a bar in Phenix City (the building is still there) and gave me money to play the slot machines while he drank his beer. We were really late getting back to the lake that day and my mama was madder than a tribe of Indians when she was told where we had been. Not to mention that she and Pops were worried sick – remember, no cell phones back then. Uncle Bill got his ears full of her anger and that was the last of Uncle Bill picking me up at Mamie’s. Speaking of phones, at one time there was a phone in the bath house. That didn’t work very well, as you actually had to be at the pavilion to hear it ring so it was moved to Zila’s. If you needed to make a call, you had to plan on sitting a spell with Zila or August as it was a party line and sometimes you would be waiting for an hour!
I had no playmates my age at the lake but I don’t ever remember being lonely or bored. I entertained myself without the ipods, tv’s and etc. of today. Most afternoons about 4:30 or 5:00 my grandmother Mamie, her husband – “Uncle” Frank, Aunt Susie and Uncle Mac, Uncle Bill, would come out to rock in the chairs on the pavilion, eat ice cream or watermelon, and play shuffleboard. As dark came on Mama would take me back to the cabin to my little bed on the back porch. I went to sleep many a night listening to my daddy, Uncle Bill, Frank, Uncle Mac whooping and hollering playing shuffleboard. What a time they had. On special occasions Uncle Bill, Uncle Theo, and Frank would play their musical instruments – Bill on the mandolin, Frank on the fiddle, and Theo on the base (I think). There was always a big celebration on July 4th, as that was Aunt Susie’s birthday. I lucked up as the family celebrated my birthday then as well, even though it is not until October. Nonetheless, I got coloring books, crayons, comic books, hair ribbons, board games, and it was always a very special day.
Most summers Aunt Lessie, Ted, and Dreux and later Alice would be out there as well. I remember picking blackberries on the dam with Mamie and watching her make cobbler in an old enamel dish pan. Never had cobbler that good since. Sometimes Aunt Melissa would come to visit from Florida (where she lived until she moved to Columbus after her husband passed away) and stay with Uncle Bill. I would get to spend a night with her and she would put salt in my hand before we left the next morning to walk down the hill and across the dam. Guess she wanted to keep me occupied on our little journey and she told me if I threw the salt on a bird I could catch him. For some reason that salt never worked. Daddy would wake me up early in morning from time to time and take me fishing with him. I loved walking on the sandbars that are covered up now and seeing the water lily blossoms and the sun come up and catching a fish. Of course, he had to remove the hook. I loved sleeping on our back porch and listening to the bull frogs and the katydids sing. The roof on the cabin at that time was tin. Listening to the rain hit the roof, was magical for me. Nothing compares to the rain on a tin roof. Late one afternoon a rainbow formed across the lake and it looked as if it actually ended in the water. Of course, I knew the story that there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Daddy rowed me out there to look for it. I must have been about 6 or 7 at the time. Needless, to say we found no pot of gold. And, notice I said rowed. No trolling motors back then. How Pops would have loved one! When I think back to these times at the lake when I was just a kid I was happy out there, playmates or not. It didn’t take much to make me happy and life was so peaceful and simple, at least for me.
Levi and Zila Turpin lived in a little four room cabin where Herb and Pat Parker’s mobile home is now. I don’t remember much about Levi except riding in his wagon once filled with pine straw and being covered in every nook and cranny of my little body with chiggers! I do remember the corn, beans, and watermelon he grew in the field that is now my brother’s golf course. But, Zila had a special place in my heart. She would let me chase her baby chicks and eat lunch with her on her back porch. Every other Saturday she would be on hands and knees pulling weeds from rocks that surrounded the bath house and pavilion. I guess Uncle Bill paid her, but even as a kid I felt sorry for her and did not understand why she had to do that. I would pitch in and help sometimes but my assistance was always short lived – maybe 5 minutes. At some point, Levi died and eventually Zila married Horace Phillips. Horace was such a dear sweet man and he worked on the place and grew vegetables just as Levi had done. They tilled the land with an old plow and a mule. When Zila died Horace told me he was the loneliest man on earth. So eventually he married August but when Horace died August moved back into Phenix City. And that was the end of a black family living at the lake. (I think Levi, Zila, and Horace may be buried at the cemetery at the church on the right on Sandfort Road past the Country Store.) August is gone now too and buried in Columbus. (Her son could not afford a tombstone for her, so Winde paid for one.) They were all good people and I loved them.
The furrows made by the mule and plow used by Horace and Levi are still in the field in front of my brother’s “moho”. I found that out the day my brother taught me how to use the SKAG. After all the instructions were given he told me to give it the gas and head for the pavilion. I bumped over every one of those old furrows screaming my head off because I couldn’t remember how to make the SKAG stop. He, meanwhile, was standing on his porch laughing his head off! But feeling those old furrows really brought back those treasured memories of Levi, Zila, Horace, and August.
Uncle Bill: We could all write a book about him! The family renegade of his time. He always told the female guests coming in from swimming that they had to remove their swim suits and put them through the wringer (still there-in his honor?) before going into the bath house so water would not get all over the floor. No one ever did that – at least, not in my presence! If you were going up on the hill to visit with him, you had to stop and ring the big bell at the curve. If it was convenient time for a visit, he would come out on his porch and tell us to come on up. After we moved to Columbus when I was about 13, I took friends out often and after we got driver’s licenses we went really often. Uncle Bill never came home to lunch, or so I thought. So one day about 4 of my high school friends and I were sunbathing on the spillway NUDE. You guessed it! Uncle Bill came to his house for lunch and caught us. Girls scattered every which a direction but there is no place to hide on the spillway! Nothing would do him but to call my mother and tattle on us but not before he enjoyed the scenery and drove away laughing. When I got home to Columbus my mother was livid!!! Never did sunbathe on the spillway again with or without clothes.
These are my earliest memories of the lake. These are the earliest memories of my life. Many more have been made since then. Kids of my own, daughters-in-law, and grandkids all enjoying the lake. I hope my grandkids know how blessed we all are to have a place to come and celebrate life together. As they grow older may my children and grandchildren look back with love on this most special blessing-the lake. May they feel the love of all those that have come before us and use every opportunity to make memories of their own.
Melissa Mitchell
In later years, there were special times too. Pops loved his family and when any of us were around there he would be too. He would come out to the lake early in the morning and he and I would sit in the rocking chairs on the porch, drink coffee, and spend quiet time together. Later, Mama would come out and announce her arrival by blowing the car horn and bringing Kentucky Fried Chicken especially on Sunday. Miss that car horn! My daddy loved working around the cabin and could work circles around any one in spite of two heart attacks and prostate cancer. My husband didn’t like coming to the lake much because my daddy would put him to work.