"April showers bring May flowers." I don't remember the flowers much, but I sure remember those spring rains we used to get. It seems we don't get rains that hard any more, but maybe it's just because rains don't inconvenience us as much.
Back in 1942, when I was a small girl, my family moved from a dry, sandy ranch in Nebraska to a corner of Northwest Arkansas. My father immediately bought cattle to graze in the rich, lush fields. Their milk made our livin.'
In the springtime we kids loved walking barefoot on the rocks that somehow didn't hurt our feet. We especially enjoyed walking up and down the trickling creek which had its beginning at some springs deep in our land. But half way through our 400 acres of hills and woods and fields the creek suddenly ran dry. Except when it rained.
After days and days of heavy spring rain those dry creek beds would become swollen with churning water, too dangerous even for a pickup to cross. When the sun would come out and a rainbow cover the sky as far as eye could see, my father would go out to survey 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 had gone on ahead as I splashed in the shallow stream. All at once I found myself in a deep hole. I screamed as I thrashed about in the water, trying to keep my head up, but no one heard. Somehow I managed to catch hold of the soggy grass on its bank and pull myself out. I lay there, shaking, feeling like I had nearly died. By the time I arrived back at the house the sun had dried my dress. For some reason I never told anyone about the near-death experience.
Heavy spring 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 a big rain came up. We thought we'd wait until it quit before headin' home. When we reached the creek below our house rained had filled it, but my brother thought he could make it. The motor died in the middle of the raging water. He had to go get papa to pull him out with the 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 after those rains 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 the creek the wider and deeper it became. We finally spied 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 one through six, 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 record. I thought of that as I laid down on that log, hugging it for dear life, and scooted across, inch by inch.
By the time school was out that day the creeks were down and we could wade across safely on our way home. 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.