Dry Run Creek

I had a Tom Sawyer kind of childhood. We lived close to the edge of town, only a couple of blocks from my home. Beyond that, just across 27th Street, was pretty much open farm land, and running through that land was Dry Run Creek.

The source of the creek was in Grundy County, some thirty miles from Cedar Falls, the town where I grew up. It twisted its way through country farmland until it eventually flowed through Cedar Falls and into the Cedar River.

For an eight-year-old kid it drew me like a magnet. With my friends, Chuck and Gerry, who lived across 27th Street, I spent long summer days at the creek. It was a place of wonderment for a kid like me.

My dad bought me a fishing pole, and along with my friends I spent hours along the creek with a can of night crawlers and a line in the water catching northern creek chubs and the occasional carp. We would catch them, throw them back in the water and catch them again.

After a good rain the creek would run full to its banks. We stood back in awe as the water roared by. As the the water level dropped we stripped off our clothes and went swimming. Of course our parents told us not to go into the water because it was dangerous. But the temptation was overwhelming and we swam anyway. I got more than one tongue-lashing from my mother about those swims.

While the water stayed up we built a raft out of an old door and a couple of tire tubes and floated down the creek like Tom and Huck.

As the summer progressed the creek nearly dried up so we went crawdad hunting in the remaining pools. Sometimes we caught a bucketful. Most of them were pretty small, but occasionally there were some really big ones. We kept them just to show them off.

When we got a little older we got braver and ventured farther up the creek to a mysterious place called Three Bears' Cave. It wasn't really a cave and there weren't any bears, but it was a great adventure and we could brag to our friends that we did it.

As the summer wore on and we got bored with catching crawdads we would try our best to snare gophers because there was a 25 cent bounty on gopher tails if we took them downtown to the feed store. We never caught any and I never heard of anyone getting a 25 cent bounty. But we kept trying.

The creek froze over in the winter and we could go ice skating for miles. We had to watch out for large stones or we'd have a big crash. More than once I went home with some major battle scars. Skating at Prexy's Pond was a better place to skate. But, that's another story that goes along with "Walnut Street Hill."

Many of my friends ran trap lines along the creek hoping to trap some muskrats or an occasional beaver. Jack Dodd, Bill's older brother, ran a trap line and did pretty well. I tended the traps with him a couple of times and learned several good lessons: You have to get up real early in the morning, your hands get really cold pulling traps out of freezing water, and skinning a muskrat was nasty.

Bill Stout and I built Indian shelters out of willow trees along the creek, searched for arrow heads and caught a snapping turtle.

The creek is still there, but it's all built up around it now. There's a huge church where there used to be a big cliff we climbed. The cliff got leveled by bulldozers.

I loved Dry Run Creek. I loved the adventures I had there. Somehow every little boy should have a "creek," someplace that is just for him to lay on his back and watch the cloud formations float by where a red-winged blackbird clings to a fluffy cattail.