Tom's trip to Billy's Island

[Tom]

When I was about 10 years old, my granddaddy took me to Billy's Lake in the Okeefenokee Swamp.   I had a cousin who was working there as a guide who made sure that we had a good time.

Billy's Lake and Billy's Island was a logging camp before the Federal Government closed the swamp and turned it into a reserve.  We stayed in a cabin and ate in a long hall that were remnants of the old logging camp and now were used for the fishing camp.  The picture is of me standing in the bow of a Cypress board boat in the canal that connected the camp on the island with the lake.   You can see the lake opening in the background.  It is not a large and open lake, as most folks are familiar with, but is a long narrow lake filled with black (tea-red, tannin-stained) water, alligators and moccasins.  

On one side of the lake was a slough with the sun-bleached limb of a sunken log sticking up.  On this limb was a human skull.  My cousin said that the movie crew who had recently filmed "Lure of the Wilderness" left it.  (A 1952 remake of 1941's "Swamp Water")

There was a tourist in another boat that had been swishing his hand in the water at the alligators.  I thought that looked like fun so I did it to.  A large alligator started moving toward our boat and Granddaddy, realizing what I was doing, made me stop.  The Gator wasn't stopping so my cousin stood on the seat in the back of the boat with oar raised and, when the gator got within range, slapped it on the water next to his head making a noise like a high powered rifle.  We felt the gator rub his back on the bottom of the boat as he went under it and I got one of life's lessons.

It was a wild lake and you wouldn't have caught me in it for anything in the world.  My cousin and the other guides regularly had to dive in it for motors that jumped off of the back of boats.  It didn't seem to bother him.

We had cane poles and fished for bream.  Granddaddy had a rod and reel that he used on occasion.  It was a Pflueger reel mounted on an octagonal steel rod.  The guides were wrapped with wire and soldered.  Granddaddy would throw his favorite lure, a Johnson Silver Minnow with a strip of pork rind attached, to the deep recesses of the shoreline.  Sometimes he would work it slow, as we do a plasic worm, and sometimes he would whip the rod on a fast retrieve, making the lure dance under the water.   It made me want to grow up so I could have one too.

There was a period when Granddaddy would take us on trips like this.  I looked forward to the time with him and will never forget the trips to "Kill Devil Hill", the play about Jamestown and Virginia Dare, Williamsburg Va., the Marble mine in Tate Georgia, the Hannah Bat Factory in Athens, Ga., Copper hill Tennessee, panning for gold in Dahlonega, Ga., the cattle auction in Okeechobee and lots of other places he took us boys.

[Bibbyman]

I don't think I ever had that kind of outing experience when I was a kid.  Although I did go fishing with Dad quite a number of times on the Missouri river and the local streams. And sometimes with my uncles.  Seems like we had time about every week to do something besides work.  

I remember my Uncle Roy pulling into our drive one winter day when there was about 10" of snow on the ground.  He was driving his old Farmall C and pulling an old car hood loaded with Aunt Ruby and their four kids.  Me and my sister climbed on and we went to their house about 3 miles down the road.  We got to their house and made taffy and popcorn balls.

Now the kids want to go to McDonald's.  We do a pretty good job of distracting them.  This evening we set around the TV watching sumo wrestling and singing "Old McDonald had a farm."  They really got into it.  We were quacking and mooing and onking everywhere.