I followed with some interest news a few years back that scientists were taking a close look at the quality of water in Bull Creek and Swan Creek in Christian and Taney Counties.
I crossed both creeks during a jaunt two weeks earlier and noted their clarity and cleanliness. The water which flows in the upper stretches of these streams is as clear as glass, their gravel bottoms polished like gemstones. They look almost exactly as I remember them untold years ago, when I visited and waded in them as a youngster and marveled even then at their clarity.
Hopefully, the researchers found the same fish and other aquatic life as a half century earlier, and none of the chemicals and silt which have tainted many other Ozarks streams.
When I was a boy the Niangua River near Charity was itself unrivaled. Fed by big springs, the water was always cold (we speculated that it could have supported trout) and teemed with fish.
In summer we fished upstream from the old steel bridge and swam upstream from the big spring where watercress grew rank.
Sometimes Dad parked near the bridge, but as often as not we left the truck by the slab over Jones Creek (where cottonmouths were found) and walked downstream to the big hole where Jones joined the Niangua.
Summer evenings we parked by the bridge and waded to a small gravel island just upstream.
Casting toward the far bank – where the Department of Conservation access is now located – we caught hefty stringers of suckers on worms, though we didn’t actually “string” them. We put our catch in heavy burlap feed sacks which we closed at the top with our wire stringer snaps. If fish baskets had been invented, I didn’t know about it. Tow sacks worked better, anyway.
After the new bridge was built the little island was gone and fishing there was never the same. I don’t know what it’s like now. A second “new bridge”replaced the first one this past year. Been aiming to go see it.
I haven’t fished those waters in years, but I’ve been to their edge and they look nothing the same. Jones Creek is just a slimy trickle were a deep eddy once lay, and the Niangua a shallow, lazy stream,
Yet, the Niangua has fared better than other rivers of my youth – the Finley, the James and the Pomme de Terre.
The Pomme I remember best, for it was the river I fished most – my “River of Used To Be.”
The waters I knew best – the Lost Bridge to Potter’s Ford – have long been closed, the old fishing holes posted and warning signs put on the fences. It hardly matters. The river I knew belongs to no one, but in memory.
Green moss and algae grow in tainted waters. Cans and bottles litter the banks where glow worms once glowed. The old swimming hole tree leans forlorn and forsaken over a silt-laden puddle.
It may be that the Pomme de Terre never ran clear as falling rain, that it was never as clean as Bull and Swan Creeks, or other mountain-fed streams. But, remembering all my “rivers which used to be,” it’s frightening to imagine what our last, few clear Ozarks streams could become.
A former feature writer for Ozarks Farm and Neighbor, Jim Hamilton is a retired newspaper editor/publisher. Hamilton was reared on a small dairy farm in Dallas County, Mo. Contact Jim at [email protected].
