Sometimes when we tell people where we grew up, we speak of the town, or the street, or the road that we lived on. I could say that I lived on the road going to Jacket, Mo., north of Pea Ridge. The road is called Hayden Road, or Arkansas Highway 265, today. But I like most to say that I grew up on Otter Creek. As I think back to my younger days at home, so many of the scenes that come to mind are Otter Creek scenes.
Otter Creek was to us a very important source of water for the farm. It still is today. Cattle on the farm could usually rely on water in the creek. Otter Creek is not a big creek, except when the big rains come, but a creek doesn’t have to be big to be important. It is really important today for the existence of the city of Pea Ridge. Nearly all our water that leaves Pea Ridge goes to Otter Creek.
Probably in the early days of Pea Ridge, in the early 1800s, the little creek was one of the attractions for people to settle here, and to establish a village here. Springs and streams were extra important in the days before people had opportunity to dig wells.
Now, the creek has become more important as a means of carrying our water away, and less as a source of water to use. But for the farmers with cattle along the stream, it isstill important in the old ways as well.
Otter Creek was where I learned to fish. Fish were not particularly plentiful or large in Otter Creek, and the fi shing holes were not numerous, but there were fish there, and sometimes we boys brought in some good ones. I don’t recall ever having much fi shing tackle, or of ever thinking that I might need much tackle. If we had a cane pole, some fi shing line, and a few di◊erent sized hooks, we thought we were pretty well equipped.
We didn’t even have to have a cane pole. Most any kind of slim stick or branch could serve if you really wanted to go fishing. It was best if your pole was springy, but even that wasn’t necessary. We were creek-bank fi shing, so you didn’t really need fancy rods and reels. We didn’t even think of using lures or artificial baits, although we had seen such things and we knew what they were. But we could always find worms or crawdad tails for bait.
Otter Creek begins just north of Pea Ridge, with the Morrison Spring as its main headwater source. Of course in rainy weather, water comes from everywhere in Pea Ridgeand from the lands reaching out toward the military park.
The creek is not lengthy, maybe three miles long, since it runs into Big Sugar Creek just into the edge of Missouri. But it is a good little creek, and still my favorite. One of my Otter Creek memories involves one of the older Pea Ridgers of the 1940s and 1950s. That was Henry Martin, known to most people as Si Martin. Nearly every day at school, we would see Mr.
Martin walking across the schoolgrounds with his fi shing poles in hand, on the way to Morrison Spring and the stretch of Otter Creek north of the spring.
I also learned to swim in Otter Creek. You could never tell where the swimming holes were going to be from year to year. In high water seasons, often the rush of the water would fill in the former swimming holes, and would create new ones in new places. None were really deep, often only three or four feet at the deepest, but that was enough for some pretty good swimming. Diving was another matter. Diving was risky. You could scrape your nose on the bottom or klonk your noggin pretty good if you went too deep. I never became much of a diver. After a hot day in the hayfi eld, it was very fine to take a dip in the creek; very cool and very refreshing.
One of the things you get accustomed to when you live on the creek is the sights and sounds. I miss those when I am away from the water, and it is like a coming home again to hear them when I go out to the farm. One of the sounds is the splashing and trickling of the water as it passes over the creek gravel.
If you are on the creek, you hear the bullfrogs sounding o◊, and the chunky splash when one of them decides he has had enough sitting on the bank. Various birds are often around the creek, including an occasional blue heron, interested in the fish. I used to like to watch what we called water skippers, small insects whose feet allowed them to walk on the water, or to skip across it when they wanted to move fast. I never did understand how they could do that.
Then of course we boys were always skipping rocks. We would try to see whose skipping rock could skip the most times before sinking. If we got more than five bounces, we thought we were getting really good at it.
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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at joe369@ centurytel.net, or call 621-1621.
Community, Pages 5 on 07/03/2013