The Creek

The Creek
Now I know that it was Crawford Creek and that the park I used to pester my parents to take me to was named for it. But for most of my life it was just and only THE CREEK.

It was that deliciously wild place where, if I were lucky and promised to be good, my Dad would take me when he 'went fishing'. Honestly, now I suspect he was just looking for some alone time but occasionally agreed to share it with me.

He would sometimes let me help him fish and once I even caught one. A rather small sun perch that I was quite disappointed in. Only Dad grinned and said, "Well, if you don't mind. I could use it for bait." I agreed and quick as the sun shimmering on the water that little fish was in several pieces with one of them decorating the end of Daddy's fishing line.

But fishing is not what really drew me to that fascinating chasm of limestone. Dad had told me in passing what he had learned in school about how sedimentary rocks were formed. He also told me of that freaky new idea going around called continental drift. He even showed me the imprints of ancient shells that had fallen long ago into soft mud. Imprints that, when I saw them, resided in stone whose only softness lay in it's creamy white color.

I admit it, I was totally fascinated by the layer cake of those ever so slightly differing pale cream colors. Then there were the nuggets of iron pyrite that would sometimes make it look as though someone had shot the creek wall and it had leaked a streak of bloody rust down its side.

As I grew older and read more about geology and other earth sciences the creek began to show to me the grand forces of the planet and how they danced in a slow steady rhythm of subsidence, deposition and up thrust with erosion. It let me see the gradual inundation of the land by the sea that left the grittier layers of low water sandy marls where, when I was old enough to explore the creek on my own, I found shark teeth and, where, if I had had access to a microscope at the time, I quite possibly could have found various microscopic critters as well.

By then I was off to college most of the year. Visiting the creek only when home on holiday or over the summer break and when social obligations did not intrude.

Ah, how I loved to tramp up and down its length then! From the deconstructed dam well up river from where Old Homestead dead ended in the creek all the way down to the park the creek gave it's name to.

Only then, while going to ET and studying Earth Science, I could really appreciate that fascinating erosion feature. By then I knew that the walls of the creek were the Austin Chalk that lay beneath most of Texas. I even understood that the creek its self had probably originated as part of the outflow of the great glaciers that had covered most of North America during the last Ice Age. Glaciers that had stopped just north of Texas somewhere up in Oklahoma or Kansas. And that was why it was so flat here and there. Flat there because of the glaciers scraping along like a wood plane. Here because the outflow from the melting glaciers deposited so much of the mud and silt they had ground off of the rocks north of here.

Then, I graduated and having no luck finding a job, I joined the Army. Then I tried to go into business with some Army buddies doing Soil Analysis up in Kentucky, failed, came home and kept house for my parents while I licked my wounds and decided what to do next. At a loss, I saved up my money got on the GI Bill, and went back to school. Majoring once more in Broad Field Earth Science. Sigh. I never learn.

In any event, at this point in my life, life itself seemed to keep me from my beloved creek. I had my memories and some photos and I used both (I was also once more minoring in art.)to paint what I considered one of my best paintings. It was of a particular bend in the creek that I felt had been controlled by a fault. There I had found an outcrop of a mineral called slick and slide(though not formally named that I believe). This mineral forms inside old faults and records the scraping of rock against broken rock on it's sides and it was right along that line of outcrop that the creek had a slight little kink in its generally straight path.

I painted the scene from a photo I had taken, and from the memories I had of bright summer sun reflecting up from cream colored rock.

Of course the art teacher didn't like it much. After all he could tell what it was and there were no people in it. He of course didn't spot the unicorn I stuck in amongst some of the distant trees just for fun. He would not have thought it fun or cute.

I and my Dad got it framed and gave it to my Mom for her birthday that year. It pleased her I think. It was often hard to tell with Mom.

I left it in the house when I rented it to my Cousin Craig after both my parents died. He fell in love with it and has taken it with him when ever and where ever he has moved since. I suspect he has as much love for and fond memories of the old creek as I. Especially, as he got to ramble it with Granpa Montgomery and they both liked fishing.

Unfortunately, that old creek is dead now, as well. As dead as my parents and grandparents.
In their wisdom the city fathers of Dallas decided to put a north south road through and that required a bridge across Crawford Creek. It crossed just about where that little kink used to be. Areas up steam decided they needed more land area so they filled in parts of the creek, including an area where I had found a truly spectacular ammonite. Sigh.

Then while I was living in Grandpa and Grandma Montgomery's house; I had inherited half at Grandma's death and bought the other half from my Uncle who had inherited the rest, I started hearing cop-choppers whupp-whupp-whupping up and down the length of the creek, shining their bright light down into it. They were looking for drug dealers I was told. Drug dealers who had started using my creek to meet buyers and sellers. Then, a little later, I read in the paper about an abandoned stolen car being found dumped into the creek near my house.

Yes, my creek was dead. The bright shining, vanilla cake sided, geologic wonderland of my youth was now degraded into a dumping ground for stolen cars and a meeting ground for druggies.
The yuppies coming by to try to get me to sign a petition to outlaw farm animals and large dogs, while two horses grazed behind me and two big dogs barked at them settled it.

I started searching for another place to live. I found it here in Lone Oak. I haven’t been back to the old home place since the day we pulled out of the driveway with a two horse trailer loaded with two horses and the back of my truck piled nearly as high as the horse trailer with belongings. My Uncle followed with the rest in one of his closed trailers.

Some times I wonder what Crawford Creek is like now. Most times, I don't want to know, just to remember how it was.