Reminiscing on Nostalgia Creek

The morning sun has emerged while I work in my yard. A gentle breeze carries to me the wonderful reminders of gardening in my mountain homeplace many years ago. Such a heartwarming experience.

We were out riding our bikes on the Huckleberry Trail on a late summer day, I heard faint chirping of crickets beneath the now fading, fall influence of the woods; birds were flitting about and I was able to recognize the Sparrow’s chirp, the Cardinal’s beautiful song and the Blue Jay’s loud squawk There was a lingering fragrance of the Honeysuckle vines, the Mountain Phlox and the damp earth beneath the beautiful mature trees presented its own unique backdrop. The sounds transported me to the summer days of my youth. That time in the mountains when we had been freed from classroom confinement; we exchanged the smell of the chalk dust on the blackboard and felt erasers resting in the tray for the wonderful mountain potpourri of damp earth and blooming Mountain Laurel shrubs graced by wildflowers dressed in orange and Scarlet red.

Oh, it was not just one experience of summer imaginations. No. It was my momma holding my hand as we walked the street in town to the hair salon and boarded the bus as we journeyed on farther to another coal camp community, it was a picture of Daddy with his dinner bucket and cap light leaving for another day of work.

My reminiscence as those bike wheels rolled was weaving the scene once again. I was traveling again, across the winding, rugged roads as I made my way to my childhood home. Each of us from those mountain and coal camp homes can warmly remember "the times" of our childhood and youthful experiences.

You're welcome to come along and listen as I tell you of my mother's touch. Stand nearby and peer over my shoulder as I write with warm and sentimental reflections ----When winter has stretched in to spring and then summer, I occasionally treat myself to mental drifting on what I call, ‘Nostalgia Creek’, a fictitiously named location in West Virginia, where the cold stream of mountain water runs, babbling over sharp and smooth stones, the same ones on which our all-summer-long bare feet walked. It's the same place where we watched elusive minnows swim as we tried to catch them with our bare hands. It's a good place to sit on a rock now and remember--- girls barefoot in shorts, little boys and no shirts or shoes. We go to the creek with empty tin cans. One never knows what small creatures ( minnows and crawdads fascinated us), will appear and we are prepared. Sitting on the creek bank, totally oblivious to our surroundings, we could talk for days about many things.

So, today, I re-visited the past. Join me next time and let your memories drift.

For more memoirs from my childhood in the West Virginia coalfields, checkout my latest book here.

https://www.endearingappalachia.com/