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have been in front of the old smoke house. There is no trace of the
double arbor grape vine remaining. The grapes were so good, all the
relatives and all the local wildlife liked to pay us an extended
visit when it was grape time. One of the vines grew up to the arbor
in such a way we could easily climb to the top and sit and pigout on
grapes. The barn was sold and torn down soon after we moved, it had
seen better days but it still had some good lumber in it. The old hip
roofed equipment shelter has long ago fallen down, with no trace of
its existence. Even now when standing in the road, where the slight
curve is, when you look north or south, ’ except for low trees
overhanging the road it looks much as it did when we moved. The old
log tenant house (we called the Waldron house)has fallen down, with
very little remaining that even looks like a house. There is no sign
of the two chinaberry trees once in the front yard. This kind of tree
actually served no real purpose, except a lot of them were around
houses there. Vines and bushes have covered just about all that
remain of it. The remains of the well is just a hole in the ground a
few feet deep with the sides caving in slowly. The garden by the
house is all grown up, with no clue of what we grew there.

The pond at the curve between our home and the Mills home is
completely dried up. There are a lot of pines growing in the middle
of where once was always covered with water. The bridge was replaced
by a culvert many years ago. It didn't seem right to not have water
there. The underbrush is dense now, it just didn't seem like the same
place anymore. When we stopped there I still wanted to look for the
ole gator, even knowing without water he would be long gone. This
place like all the others where the bulldozers had not pushed
everything down, has gotten a very dense undergrowth of vines and
other bushes. Just another part of the past rapidly fading into
history and memory. Many of the other ponds have met the same fate,
and the fragile environment has changed so very much. All the water
birds once plentiful have disappeared.

The road south of Highway 6 is closed with no access to the old
Melton and Harrell place or where the Bay Creek School stood. They
are probably long gone with just about everything else. The Harrell
house had two holly trees in the front yard that had a big crop of
berries each year. We would get a lot of boughs for decoration at
Christmas time the two years I attended the nearby school. There once
was a long wooden bridge across the creek by the Harrell place. It
was replaced in about 1950 with a shorter higher bridge with an
embankment approach. In doing so they destroyed what used to be a
good swimming hole. It had a sand beach, a shallow part that slopped
off to water deep enough to dive into. So many of the signs that an
active community was once

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