A long anticipated journey back into the past

 I finally fulfilled a planned day trip to Sumter County this past Tuesday, a trip back in time 50 years ago to childhood places that I loved going to on summer vacations in South Carolina in the late 1950s and early 1960s.   It seems so impossibly long ago now, writing this account in the summer of 2013, but, as I discovered, both places had changed not a bit as far as I could tell.   Truly, when I got there, I had this strange sense of being in a time warp.

On the way, I stopped at a favorite small town diner I had not been to in quite some years, and it was as good or better than I remembered.  I had some of best chicken pot pie I have ever tasted plus three vegetables, sweet iced tea and vanilla ice cream for dessert.

Unfortunately, it started raining as I turned off  the main highway onto the county back roads that would take me to my destinations.  I had to locate the fishing pond my father, brother and I went to way out in the country those many years ago on Google maps, and the accuracy was uncanny.  There it was, the locked gate, the road alongside the pond and the earthen dam at the far end.   My brother and I would futilely try to catch bream in the stocked pond, finally taking our poles over to the outflow creek in back of the dam and letting turtles take our bait.   At least we could imagine what it was like to have an actual fish on the line.   There was an old rusted iron water pump by the shore of the pond, and we city boys delighted in priming it and then feeling that icy cold, clear water come rushing out and over our outstretched hands.  After our visit, we’d return to my aunt’s house in Sumter for a huge midday southern dinner of fried fish, rice and gravy, butter beans, tomatoes, and more, I am sure.  I just can’t remember the whole menu.   Food never tasted better.  I was 10 and 11 those years.   It was disappointing that it was not sunny and hot the day I visited because that would have really triggered the memories even more powerfully, but the light rain created its own moody, nostalgic effect.

Despite the weather, I decided after visiting the pond, to head to Poinsett State Park, a truly beautiful and geographically and botanically diverse natural area with a swimming lake and nature trails, and a beautiful creek that fed into the lake and out from a dam on the far side.   Again, my brother, father and I would go there on our summer vacations, probably during the years 1958 through 1961.   It was an experience I have never forgotten.  We just didn’t have that sort of thing in New Orleans where I grew up.  Also, my father and I never got along, but I am grateful to this day that he took the time to bring us to the state park and to the fishing pond.  Those were some of the happiest memories of my childhood.

The fishing pond on a rainy summer day in August.

The road leading up to the house by the pond and the area we launched our small boats near the water pump.

The swimming lake at Poinsett State Park.

Another view of the small lake at Poinsett State Park.

Beautiful Shanks Creek at Poinsett State Park as if flows from the dam outflow into thick woods.

Shanks Creek