My First Canoe Adventure

Brings back some great memories. Must have been 1957. Our parents hauled 8 barely teenage boys to where Hwy. 72 crosses the Flint. We had four canoes. My partner, Owen Bennett, and I had built our canoe in his dad's garage. I lived on Pratt Avenue and Owen lived a block away on Ward Avenue. We had plans for a "canoeyak" that we had ordered from Boy's Life Magazine. Owen was enrolled in shop classes at Huntsville Jr. High, so he was the leader of our constructions project.

A view of the Flint River over the bow of a canoe

Took us a couple of months to complete the building project, but finally, it was ready. We hoisted it to the top of my folks' car and headed east on 72. At the bridge, we met the others who would be paddling down the Flint with us. I can't remember exactly who all was there - memory dims. But we were eight young men full of ourselves and ready to take on the world. We figured that a good canoe trip was just the thing to set us up for starting at Huntsville High in the coming Fall.

Neither Owen nor I had actually spent much time in a canoe before. Our expertise came from pouring over the Boy Scout canoeing merit badge pamphlet and finding an article or two in Field and Stream. Owen would paddle stern and I would take the bow position.

There had been a lot of rain the past few weeks, and the Flint was not placid! We struggled to get the canoes and our gear down from the road to the water. I climbed into place and then Owen pushed us off and jumped in. Immediately the current grabbed the canoe and we ended up being driven into a low hanging tree on the opposite side of the Flint. I could see a snake in the tree branches directly in front of me. Instead of paddling, I was screaming and using my paddle to swat at the snake. I imagine the snake was even more scared of two 14-year-old boys that I was of him because it skedaddled away from the canoe pretty darn fast.

Pretty soon, all four canoes and all eight boys were in the floating downstream. Our parents had been instructed to pick us up at Ditto Landing in three days. I think that a couple of the Moms were holding back a tear or two, but we were in high cotton as we headed downstream. I am certain that John Wesley Powell could not have been any more excited when he cast off the explore the Grand Canyon than we were to be exploring the Flint River.

Several memorable experiences stick to my mind about that trip. For one thing, the rain did not let up, and the river was moving along at a brisk pace. At one point a large tree had fallen across the river and before we could avoid it, three of our canoes had capsized and were trapped in the branches of the tree. All or our supplies, including the watermelon we had brought along as a special treat, were floating downstream. The fourth canoe had been able to avoid the trap. We lifted it over the tree on one of the fellows went in chase of our supplies while the other seven of us struggled to extricate the three canoes from the submerged tree branches. It took us several hours to do that, during which time no one noticed that the tree had a healthy growth of poison ivy vines entwined among the branches.

It was still raining when it was time to camp. We camped on the bridge abutments beneath highway 431! Wthoughtgh we would be dry beneath the bridge, but, no - water ran off of the highway and onto the flat concrete abutment were we were lying. Of course, all our gear was already wet from the poison ivy tree, so the water was not our major issue. For those of you who have never tried to sleep beneath the 431 bridge, I will tell you that a LOT of trucks use that highway! Every few minutes another truck would rumble across the roof of our not so cozy night's lodging. Not much sleep that night!

The most challenging part of the trip was the pull from the mouth of the Flint down to Ditto's Landing just upstream from the Whitesburg bridge. The rain had stopped, but the wind was up and that wind was blowing upstream while we were trying to paddle downstream. Those of you who have seen the Tennesee when the wind is up know that the waves can get to be a fair size, and I had some concern about our canoe being swamped.

And then the sun came out! A hot blistering sun that soon turned all eight of us, (we had shed shirts by that time) a wonderful color of sunburn red. That pull down the Tennessee was not the most enjoyable part of our trip.

Anyway, we all made it to Ditto's Landing. I believe that our parents were relieved! It was a great experience of the sort that every young boy should have. There were some after effects however. Several days after the trip, I was still feeling very itchy from what I thought was the bad sunburn blisters. Turns out that it was an extreme case of poison ivy from the time we spent extricating our canoes from the downed tree across the Flint. Ended up spending a week at Huntsville Hospital wrapped like a mummy in towels soaked in saline solution. But it was worth it!