The Woods, the Gullies, and the Muddy Hills

In the mid-fifties, the civilized world ended at the pine log fence that stretched across the back yard of our house on Gregg Street. Beyond the fence was what we called “The Woods”. As far as I knew, the woods extended forever.

The Whiteville Park area of Fort Mill was in its infancy and only a few houses were sprouting up, past Gregg Street mostly on the other end toward the old Unity Cemetery. Pine Street, where the pavement ended was one house and a wooded lot away from our house. Pine Street had been scraped out all the way up to the top of the hill at what was to become Summersby Street but it was not yet paved.

Along with my first friends, Michael, Billy, Chipper and Joe, I spent many summer days digging foxholes in the “Muddy Hills”, the red clay bank along Pine Street and creating bike trails through the narrow stretch of woods beside the Davis house and into the deeper woods behind us.

As we grew more independent our borders expanded. We were bounded by the Southern Railway tracks that ran through the woods parallel to Pine Street, the stream that is barely a trickle of water at the bottom of the hill past what is now Ballard Court, and the foreboding stone walls of Old Unity Cemetery.

Everything enclosed by these landmarks was ours to explore. Our first forays into the wild would take us across Pine Street where we made our winding way through the woods to the steep bank beside the railroad tracks. We were warned time and again of the dangers of being caught on the tracks when a train made its run toward Pineville or back toward Main Street but we were train savvy. When we heard the growing rumble of an approaching train, we would scramble up the red clay bank just in time to wave at the engineer, watch the boxcars, gondolas, flatbeds and tank cars roll past and wait for the red caboose and the wave of silence as it disappeared around a turn.

Trains were our fathers’ dream transportation and when we were riding in the car with them and had to stop at a crossing, we could hear the reverence in their voices as they taught us the types of railroad cars and the names of railroad lines painted on each. We were told about the forest green Southern Railway engine and about the cars marked with the names Norfolk & Southern or CSX or even Pennsylvania Railroad Line, just like in our Monopoly games. We listened to our fathers because we were interested and because we were in a car stopped at a crossing and had no escape.

At the top of the hill, before Pine Street makes a steep drop down by where the Episcopal Church now stands, a field of broom straw and scrub pine saplings stretched down to the tree line at the bottom of the hill. We would stand at the top of that field and fly kites over the open area or ramble through the field as cowboys or soldiers with cap guns blazing at each other or firing imaginary rifles with the repeated “Pew, Pew, Pew” sound we imagined they made.

As houses began to invade our territory, we added them to our adventures. In the late summer afternoons, after the carpenters left for the day, we would sneak into the skeletal framing and climb among the white pine two-by-fours. We weren’t there to vandalize, just to explore. Once the brick walls began to go up, there was one prize we found irresistible…brick masons left behind thin metal spacers, about the size of a piece of fried bacon. If folded in a forty-five degree angle the spacers would soar like miniature boomerangs. In those pre-Frisbee days we fashioned flying toys out of paper and even popsicle sticks woven into a triangle shape and launched sidearm across the schoolyard.

As new houses on Close Street and Lockman Street overran our territory, we moved deeper into the woods. Following an overgrown path we would wander back in time. Squirrels and rabbits and even deer would break from their cover and disappear into the underbrush as we made our way along. Quail were still abundant in the area and would startle us with the sudden whoosh of a covey taking flight and an occasional snake would rustle the leaves beside the path. Woe be unto the snake who poked his head out or crossed in front of us. If it was a copperhead, we would not hesitate to kill it but if it was one of the harmless varieties it might spend the afternoon wrapped around one of our arms until we let it slide back into the obscurity of the forest.

At the bottom of a long incline through the woods was a quiet little stream that held its own wonders. We would sometimes camp overnight on the bank and on summer days we would take off our shoes and explore the stream, occasionally creating pools by constructing rock dams. Minnows and salamanders shared the water with crawfish and turtles.

There were older things there. Once along the trail, beside the stream, we came upon an alligator snapping turtle as big as a hubcap and covered in moss. It defied us and chose to stand its ground rather than attempt escape. Its scaley head was pulled back as far as possible but it would strike out like a snake when we poked a stick near it. When we saw how easily it snapped a sapling in half, we chose to let it be and went on our way. We knew we were not the first people in our woods. We would sometimes find an arrowhead in the stream or half buried in the bank and there was, along one part of the bank, a vein of the gray and black clay that was so prized by the Catawba potters.

We would, as we got a little older, eleven or twelve, make the journey through the edge of the woods all the way to Old Unity Cemetery, the little abandoned graveyard with its lichen covered stones, many of them broken or lying on the ground in neglect. We knew such a place must be haunted. The iron gate, pitted and brown with rust, opened on its iron hinges with a moan that made my skin prickle in a thousand goosebumps, and I would never have explored it alone.

We dared each other to go inside and look into the raised sarcophagus with the corner of the top broken off and we frightened ourselves with speculations of what must happen inside the low stone walls after dark. We were never there past dusk. When shadows grew longer, we made our retreat toward home and supper and family.

Usually we gave the cemetery a wide berth as we traveled to an area of gravel washouts behind it. The “gulleys” was a favorite place, Like a huge washboard, the gulleys were perfect to crouch in and hide from outlaws and enemies or even to sit in and talk about school and of dreams far beyond the boundaries of our limited lives. The Gullies was a place of refuge where we might smoke rabbit tobacco in a pipe discarded by my father or even a real cigarette purloined from an unwitting parent. We would discuss the things we were just beginning to know about and there was much speculation and misinformation.

We felt safe. Sometimes in our rambles we would meet other boys from another world, boys our age but from the Paradise section of town. We didn’t know these boys because integration had not yet brought us together but we stopped, facing each other at a respectable distance, like two primitive tribes and nodded our respect. They were, like us, learning about the world. We shared the common bond of being young and curious but we didn’t know how to breech the social rules of segregation.

I know now, that outside our woods, the world was full of fears. Polio was ravaging children, fathers were returning from war in Korea, the Cold War was heating up and the leaders of the black community were beginning their long road toward ending segregation. Our refuge was being engulfed by the expanding town. But for the time, we were ten years old and the forest and gullies and hills were ours to explore.

So much has changed. The “Muddy Hills” and the “Gullies” and the “Woods” exist only in our memories now, engulfed by suburban sprawl. Sometimes I feel compelled to walk through old Unity Cemetery on a quiet afternoon and think about those days. But when the setting sun stretches the shadows of the trees and dusk chills the air, I am ten again and make my way through time to the safety of home.