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Amazing, isn’t it, what half a century of time can do to a place. I grew up in rural Natchitoches Parish near the village of Goldonna and I’ve been gone from there over five decades. I go back today on occasional visits and hardly recognize anything.
There were four of us who grew up together, one year apart. I’m the oldest; my cousin Doug is a year younger; my brother Tom a year younger than Doug and Sambo a year younger than Tom. The four Harris Boys, they called us. Living less than a quarter mile apart, we could have been brothers. Summer days were spent barefooted and bare-backed in the woods and creeks around our homes bird hunting, fishing, killing snakes, playing “deer and dog” and swimming.
One particular area served as a catalyst for our summertime outdoor activities….the Tank Pond. On a visit back home several years or so ago, I took a walk down through the woods to visit the Tank Pond but to my surprise and dismay, it was no longer there. Thick buck brush grew over a damp spot where we once swam and played. If I listened closely though, I could hear a trickle of water somewhere down there in the brush. I could only rely on my memory to bring to life the old pond where the four of us learned to swim. Back then, fresh spring water coursed over a concrete spillway that had been built there maybe a century ago to impound the little creek into a nice sized pond.
The Tank Pond was used as a water source for the steam engines of the L&A Railroad trains that stopped there for water to generate steam. Near the pond was an elevated tank where the water was pumped from the pond. A boom was lowered and water flowed from the tank into the boiler of the engine where it was heated by a coal-fed fire box, thus generating the steam that served as a power source for the train.
I recall lying in bed at night, listening to the train grind to a laborious halt with screeching wheels and hissing steam as it stopped at the Tank Pond for water. Once the boiler was filled, the engine would begin a slow CHUG…..CHUG….CHUG before the wheels lost their grip on the rails with a rapid CHUGCHUGCHUG. I knew what was next. The train had to back up all the way below Goldonna, nearly a mile distant, to get a running start at the gradual grade that culminated on Oshkosh Hill a couple of miles on up the track past the Tank Pond.
That’s all gone now. The L&A railroad is no more, the tracks long abandoned, the right-of-way overgrown. My sister told me that the rails were pulled up and sold to a company that transported them to Chile. I find it odd that the rails I walked barefoot as a kid are now supporting train traffic and barefoot boys in South America.
Water that coursed over the spillway trickled through a culvert beneath the railroad tracks where it spilled into Molido Creek fifty yards from the tracks. Just below where the Tank Pond waters met Molido, a deep hole in the bend of the creek made for a fine swimming hole, one that holds a plethora of memories. The only snake bite I ever had was inflicted in this swimming hole as a snake bit me behind the knee while we were swimming. One look at Doug’s rusty Barlow and I decided to take my chances of dying of snake bite rather than to have Doug whittle on my leg with his dull knife. Luckily, the snake was a common water snake and I survived without my cousin’s help.
I visited the area awhile back and to my surprise, the Tank Pond is there again, much as it was when Doug, Tom, Sambo and I swam in it as youngsters. I learned that some 20 years ago, the brush, debris and sediment were removed, the pond excavated to recreate our old swimming hole much like it was when we were boys.
Some things old and forgotten can be brought back to life. I’m thankful our Tank Pond is now breathing new life.
