Martha’s Ditch

This house. The house I grew up in. As I stand in the very same living room, I realized that it is in this same living room that I once opened presents on Christmas morning, watched football with my dad, and conference with my parents when I got in trouble. So many memories were built in this house, but at that point I looked out the back window; all I saw was woods and that ditch. Those woods behind my house are home to so many memories, more memories than even my house can hold. The tall cypress trees,  the murky swamp water, and Martha’s Ditch. The base of all memories I had as a child.

Martha’s Ditch wasn’t just a normal ditch. It was the main ditch of all of Marion. Every drop of water in the city of Marion somehow some way traveled to this ditch. The story behind it’s name is quite an interesting one. There was a girl named Martha a long time ago that was on her way home from work when she ran off the side of the bridge and died instantly. From that day on it was known as hers.

            As I walked back to the ditch I step in some mud. As I went down to clean  off my shoe I had a flash back. I was 14 and my friend Spencer was 16. One night we were young and reckless, influenced by our girl friends. We decided to take his truck back in the woods behind my house. Just as we got in the woods, we realized that we were stuck in the deep black Arkansas mud. It took three trucks and cutting down a tree to get us out of that mud… the same mud that is now dripping off my shoe.

As I approached the ditch I notice a beaver dam. I was 15 at this time, and every day after school I would sit in my boat, crank up the motor and would just ride. Beavers were always a problem daming up the ditch and blocking me from going far down it. I guess you could say the beavers had a bit of a war going on. I would tear down the dam only to find the next day that they had built a bigger and better one. So, I decided to this time move over it with my boat. The easy part was getting over it; the hard part was getting back. I literally had to drive full speed and ramp the dam. I would later send myself air borne from the boat, landing in the cold water. I swam to shore as a watched my boat sink to the bottom.\

As I come back to reality I realize that my girlfriend Diane is trying to cross through the woods to find a filed, freshly harvested. At this moment I remember riding my four wheeler on it when I was a kid hunting for coyotes. I vividly remember chasing a coyote with my friend Alex. Earlier that day we changed a flat tire on his four wheeler. We went to test out the tire in the field. We spotted a coyote and started chasing it. Just as we were gaining on it, a four wheeler tire came rolling past me. I turned around confused to find Alex sitting with only three tires. We forgot to tighten the screws that held the tire on. I pulled up to Alex and said,

“Are you alright?”

He replied with,

“I think we forgot to put the bolts back on the tire.”

After a few laughs we headed back to get help, entering the woods at the exact same spot I’m standing at with Diane now, ten years later.

As I once again return to reality, I hear Diane asking if I’m okay. I laugh and at that point I realize how I took my childhood for granted. There isn’t enough money in the world to take me back to those precious memories in the woods behind my house.

Diane and I are walking back down the back, on our way back to my house, when Diane trips over a metal bar sticking out of the ground. After helping her up, I pulled the bar a few times until it finally came up. As soon as the end thrust through the top layer of dirt, everything in the world went away. Every worry, every thought disappeared. It was my great grandfather’s shotgun I dropped nearly 13 years earlier. Alex and I were duck hunting when I was 14. It was Christmas break; Alex and I loaded the boat after noon and started to head to our duck blind. I was standing at the head of the boat while Alex was driving. There was a lot of debrief in the water due to the logging that was going on upstream from us. We were riding, watching the ducks fly. I had my great grandfather’s shotgun, waiting for a duck to get close. Little did I know a log twice the size of our boat was a few inches under the murky depths if the water. In a split second I went from joy riding to the boat coming to a complete stop. It was like shooting a bullet of a gun. I was the bullet and the boat was the gun, thrusting me forward into the abyss.

I hear Diane’s voice calling my name in the distance, and my thoughts go back to the present. It amazed me how little things like mud and a gun can bring back so many wonderful memories.