Granny's Pantry # 39: The Voice in the Culvert

Before the Tuckertown Dam was built in 1962, the land along to Yadkin River belonging to Granny and Granddaddy Cole was very different from what you see today. Between the railroad tracks, which bi-sected the farm, and the river was a veritable paradise of dense forest growth. A narrow pathway ran along the river bank and provided a glorious view looking down on the wide and rocky river. A tributary ran away from the main stream back toward the farmhouse. It was in that stream that Granddaddy placed his fish traps that yielded the delicious fish that Granny fixed with homemade french fries.
If you left the barnyard and followed the "lane" toward the pig pen, then veered left through a meadow, kept walking through a small stand of trees and into another meadow, you would eventually wind down to the place where a large culvert led under the railroad track and into the wonderland that was beside the river. It was not a place you wanted to enter, as it was often partially filled with water from the stream that flowed into it. The cows didn't mind and they would use the culvert to move from one part of the farm to another.

What you wanted from the culvert was the voice of the culvert...the Echo. The culvert would "talk back to you" when you called into it. To the young visitor out on a Sunday afternoon walk, this was a Destination. The voice in the culvert held a magic like that of the faeries that populated the faerie walk beside Mama's house over in High Rock proper.

My guess is that the culvert doesn't hold the same magic any more, just as the land beyond the railroad track has changed. The coming of the new dam brought with it bulldozers that cleared the landscape near the river and left it stripped and barren. As the water rose in the reservoir now formed between the Tuckertown and High Rock dams, some of the High Rock land was gone. 

Tuckertown Reservoir

I haven't been back in a long time to see if the voice in the culvert has been silenced. Maybe it's best not to know.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (II Corinthians 5:17)