We lived on the edge of a swamp on a parcel of land beside the highway which was less than thirty feet above sea level I think. Often our vegetable garden would flood and perish as a result of too much water. My Daddy could make very shallow trenches across the yard and you would see the tiny streams make there way from one basin to another and gradually dry up a spot which had formally been standing water.  Daddy had a gift for seeing the rise and fall of terrain and I inherited that gift from him. Actually that is one of two gifts I inherited from Daddy, the other being the love for trees and the interest in planting them. Later I will dwell on planting trees but for now I want to tell about my water park which I enjoy still.
     As I've stated before the Homer and Irene Smith homestead was carved from the eastern portion of the Quarterman estate. Apparently the Quartermans decided to sell four lots fronting on the highway and each being one acre. They were each one hundred feet wide at the front and a little over four hundred feet deep. A square acre is 208.7 by 208.7.
     My Grandma lived in a house in the first of the four lots and we lived in a house in the fourth of the four lots. Fraser Lumber Co. Purchased the lot where my family lived sometime before my birth in 1943. Drinking water was provided by the well at the Quarterman house. A galvanized pipe line ran under the field which separated Grandma's house from the Quarterman place. that line supplied water to both Grandma and to us as well. We did not have an indoor bathroom until I was about four or five. It was somewhere around that age that Daddy purchased the two lots in the middle and we had a well drilled on the land beside Grandma's house. I've always been told that the well was seven hundred feet deep. It was heavily sulfur and I never knew that there was anything wrong with that. People who were not accustomed to that water often declined to drink it. Our family all enjoyed very good health and to this day I believe that well water contributed to that fact.
     At any rate when the well was finished we had an abundance of fresh cold water as the natural pressure forced a constant overflow which ran down beside Grandma's driveway and emptied into the ditch beside the highway. Our homestead had always been subject to hold water as the terrain was low and now there was a constant flow of water discharging into the ditch. It made for the absolutely most marvelous thing for a little boy to grow up with. I've spent my entire life playing in ditches and building toy boats and creating dams so as to make waterfalls.