THE LITTLE RED RIVER

(Run originally 3/23/04 on our old site)

Don Thompson

We're back from Californy and the insane traffic. I'm trying to place Echo Dell also. I can't remember going there, but my grandfather Thompson had a farm that bordered Little Red River at the area shown on the attached map.

I enjoyed floating down the river on a truck inner tube and climbing into trees along the river bank to get Muscadine Grapes to eat. I think Echo Dell must be somewhere between that farm area and Camp Wildewood. It was probably close to Wildewood. I might coax Paula into writing a story about roughing it at Camp Wildewood. She has a picture.

Another fun activity was trot line fishing on the Little Red. My father and I would start out early in the afternoon collecting crawdads in branches along the road to the river. The trot line was stretched across the river and weighted down with rocks. We made our way across the river by boat while pulling up the line and baiting the hooks with mud bugs. Pretty easy fishing.

The fun part was checking the line next day. What excitement, going across the river again and pulling up the line to see what had been snagged during the night. As we got near a hook point, the line might quiver with the pull of some denizen from the deep. What will be on that hook? We didn't want to see a snapping turtle or alligator gar. The preferred catch of the day was Buffalo, Drum, or Catfish. We removed the fish and re-baited the hooks for another time.

Usually the line was left unattended for several days. I don't know if there were other folks that checked the line. The tie points were pretty well concealed and the line went deep into the river.

Back to Echo Dell. I don't know if Bobby Scott Fuller plans to mention his plans for a book but he told me this yesterday: "When I write my mystery novel (novel noir?), one of the female protagonists will be named 'Echo Dell.' Isn't that a great name? When the movie is made of the novel, a very young Anne Baxter will play the part. Unfortunately, I never made it to our local Echo Dell; or at least not yet."

I think Echo Dell will be an intriguing name, and look forward to the story.

Cheers!

Tom Pry

Frankly, I never even heard of Echo Dell until Mary Kay sent me those photos. According to Ernie, it’s somewhere around the “upper dam” on the Little Red (the “lower dam” is that one just above the VFW).

I did, once, hear about a swimming/partying spot somewhere around here, unnamed, where on a sunny summer’s day, it was fun for a bunch of SHS’ers to go down there with a chilled watermelon. A plug would be carefully cut out of the end, and the heart eaten out of the melon. When that was done, it was buried in the damp sand so that only the open end was sticking out. A largish hole was bored in the plug, the watermelon poured full of gin, the plug put carefully into place, and then everyone pulled out their straws.

Of course, no one WE knew would ever do that … would they?

I suggested a few additional names for Bobby’s book: Higginson McRae, Augusta McCrory, B. B. Capps, Rosebud Hill, Joy Pleasure (the local hooker), good ole “Baldie” Knob, etc.

Betcha can come up with a few of your own.