Our family farm in Lake County, FL, west of Leesburg on highway 44, was small, about 33 acres in size. The neighbor to the west was Earle Hester (Mr. Earle), who had 40-50 acres that ran all the way to Whitney Road in front of the old Whitney Baptist Church, where Grandma Spears often hauled me for Sunday services when she was put out with the folks at First Baptist in Leesburg. We used Mr. Earle’s property, by agreement of course, to pasture cattle and to hunt on. Our farm and Mr. Earle’s property were my domain every summer and any other break in the school year that was more than just a weekend.
Farm ponds are a wonderful and necessary thing. You gotta have water. Recreationally, they were swimming holes, fishing spots and just places to hang around and see what mischief you could scare up. Some were more inhospitable than others and the old clay pit ranked right up there. It was exactly as the name implies, a pit originally dug to extract clay to use as the subbase for the old abandoned roadway (wagon and horse path really) that originally ran through our farm and Mr. Earle’s place out to where Whitney Road intersected the “new” highway 44. The pit was probably 100 feet across, fairly round, and was thirty feet or more deep. It had been dug deep enough to strike water, which kept it filled to a certain level, and it also served as a collection area for rain runoff, etc. Huge oak trees shaded it on two sides and our little orange grove (about three acres or so) lay on the south side between the clay pit and highway 44. The sides were steep and my earliest memories include stern admonitions to stay back from the edge of the pit since me falling in would entail a rescue operation that would be most inconvenient and would likely earn me a serious whippin’ (that’s like a spanking, but with a bit more effort invested).
Over time, the clay pit had accumulated (with some managerial encouragement) a thriving population of bluegill bream, warmouth perch, small bass and catfish, making it a frequent afternoon and evening fishing retreat for Uncle Claude and me, often joined by Mr. Ed (not the tv talking horse, the man that rented the little house on the front of Mr. Earle’s property out by the highway). We’re talking long cane pole, worm, cricket and minnow fishin’ here, nothing fancy whatsoever. But to me it was pretty darn cool.
To keep it useable, the clay pit required a fair amount of maintenance. We tried to keep a good ten to twenty feet around it mowed, primarily to eliminate hiding places for snakes, which enjoyed the clay pit as much as I did. I had a moccasin that had to be six feet long and as big around as my arm slither right across my feet one evening as I made my way around the edge. Yep, I was definitely down with the mowing! Weed eaters weren’t invented yet, so we had to use a sling blade and / or a sickle to clear the edges of the bank. Occasionally, when the growth and debris got too determined, we’d burn the inside edges of the bank down to the water line. It was a constant struggle, but all well worth the effort for the treasured opportunity to wage war with a scrappy bluegill on a limber cane pole.
The more troublesome issue was vegetation growth down in the water itself, primarily lily pads. The pads are a good thing for the pond in controlled quantities (and pretty when the lilies bloomed), but left unchecked they choke the surface and can eventually kill the pond. As I mentioned, the banks of the clay pit were very steep, so climbing down there to work on the pads just wasn’t in the cards. But cracker ingenuity is real, particularly if fishin’ is at stake!
We took some rusted triangular steel tiller points off of an old mule drawn plow that was never going to be used again, sharpened them on the foot powered grind stone and bolted them (about five or six) to a length of flat iron bar. To the ends of the bar, we attached a long piece of metal, bent to a V shape, where we could tie a long nylon cord (one of the technological wonders of WWII). This allowed us to stand high on the bank of the clay pit, throw the bar of sharpened plow points attached out into the middle of the water, let it sink, then pull it back (not easily I might add), cutting the lily pads down deep as it came. It worked great and after an hour or two of pitching and pulling the surface of the water was covered with cut pad stalks and leaves.
But now what? You couldn’t fish through that mat of cut lily pads any better than you could live ones. It was a mess! Again, getting down those steep banks to the water to reach and gather the debris wasn’t in the cards. Another as yet un-invented implement was needed. Back to the cracker drawing board.
We took a length of 2x4 lumber and attached the same kind of V shaped metal rig where we could tie another long nylon cord (lots of war surplus items readily available in those days). Into one side of the 2x4 we drove a row of ten penny nails, forming teeth like a common rake. The idea was that when tossed out across the water the wood would float and the nail teeth would snag the cut lily pads, raking them to the edge where we could drag them up out of the pit. Genius!
Now, this is all happening when I’m probably 7-8 years old and while I’m right there in the thick of things helping in any way I can, most of this ingenuity is originating from Uncle Claude and Mr. Ed. I’m the helper, the “go fetch it” and “hold this right there” arm of the enterprise. I hadn’t been elevated to skilled labor or design consultant as yet, though I did get to hammer in some of those nails.
The long reach water rake invention suffered from a serious design flaw. At least 50% of the time we tossed it out it landed with the teeth pointed up – not good. Uncle Claude and Mr. Ed puzzled over the problem, devising solutions that involved adding weight to the tooth side of the 2x4 to encourage it to land on that side when tossed, bending the V attachment point for the rope to try to control the toss better, any number of complex strategies to eliminate variables, increase control and improve the odds of the thing landing tooth side down as intended. As they were muttering and scratching their heads I said simply, “why don’t we just put the nails on both sides of the 2x4?” Uncle Claude and Mr. Ed had never looked so sheepish. They seemed genuinely torn between hugging me and drowning me. My position in that cracker crew was elevated a bit thereafter.
With the problem of periodically cutting and removing the lily pads from the clay pit solved, we happily fished that little water hole for years to come. Dad and Aunt Etta sold the farm to a commercial developer in 2007 just before the big real estate bust came and I haven’t been on the property in decades, though I’ve driven past on highway 44 now and then. I recently used Google Earth to check on things and while not much has really happened to develop the property, the buildings have fallen into very bad condition. The big oak trees, however, are healthy and thriving. Consequently, the birds eye view of Google Earth does not let me see down through the canopy to the old clay pit, though without the constant maintenance we provided I suspect it has long ago overgrown and essentially disappeared.