Little Zipporah Buffaloe (Born/Died 1893) never lived to see the thousands of children who played in her yard, but her ghost did. On muggy summer evenings, an unseen Wood Thrush singing its melodious waltz, groups of uniformed boys would gather, their stiff baseball mitts still smelling of new leather. Through the woods I could see the trunks of pine trees backlit by the sunset and the field lights; cries of “hey batter batter batter…sswwing!” mingling with the chirping crickets.
My Brownie troop once had a city-wide scout roundup there. Scores of little girls sat Indian-style on the “sit-upon” mats we’d woven from strips of plastic. As we sang songs we’d rehearsed in our troop meetings, my eyes were inevitably drawn down the hill through the woods to the flat, silver rocks and thin strip of water running below: Crabtree Creek. There was magic in its water and at least a hundred orange crawdads waiting to be caught. Sometimes there was a salamander, its slippery blue-black body wriggling through my fingers, unlike the crayfish I would only take gingerly, lest I be pinched by a snapping claw.
On its wide, flat rocks I would lie, feeling the ambient warmth of absorbed sunshine seep back up through my body, listening to the murmur of trickling water, staring at the glossy, green ferns. I imagined the world must have looked like this during the time of the dinosaurs: wet, warm, green, and quiet. More than once I followed the creek’s trail, skipping stone-to-stone when I could, often walking some distance on an expanse of rock before jumping back up on the bank. Eventually the creek widened and led to a series of ominous concrete tunnels, where the musty smell of standing water combined with damp moss growing up the dark walls. Usually fear would overtake me when I reached this point, and I would excuse myself by saying, “It’s time for my parents to be home; I’d better get back before my Dad starts whistling for me” (which he always did, Navy-style).
Behind the ball field a large swath of trees had been cut down to make room for the Beltline. No trees had yet regrown, and there was an expanse of tall, yellow grass overlooking the direction of distant Glenwood Avenue and Hillsborough Street, toward the N.C. State dairy farm’s rolling pasture land. Kelly and I would sit together on a log atop “Grassy Hill,” as we’d christened it, and make up ghost stories, which seemed appropriate given the lonesome, rustling sound produced by the dried reeds as a southwest wind clambered up the slope and blew back our long, unbrushed hair. Little did we know then that Zipporah Buffaloe’s ghost stood behind us, watching long after we’d ambled back down through the woods to our safe, brick houses on Yadkin Drive.
Beautiful story, I could feel like if I’m over there listening to the murmur of water.
Oh Zipporah! How we miss ya!
Thanks for the walk down memory lane. And the view from the top of grassy hill was fine. The funny thing is the hours and hours of unchaperoned time we had back then at such a tender young age. Thank goodness we didn’t do anything subversive with all that freedom. 😉
I’m tempted to believe we were supervised by “Zippy’s” ghost. It’s probably what saved us.