Of Woods and Waters: A Kentucky Outdoors Reader

A Place of Noble Trees (2005)

SILAS HOUSE A Place of Noble Trees (2005) FOR THE PAST forty-five years, my family has been spending at least one week out of the year on Dale Hollow Lake, straddling the Kentucky-Tennessee border. Mine was a family that, in the 1950s, had just begun to crawl up out of poverty and was still decidedly lower middle class. They were coal miners, factory workers, lunch ladies, and waitresses. They were farmers and milkmen, gas station attendants and truck-stop cashiers. They were people who had known the deepest poverty but had never been mired down by that. Instead, they had kept their eyes focused on going forward, on bettering themselves. So, when my family first took a vacation, in i960, it seemed only natural that it would be a camping trip. My Uncle Dave was a great adventurer and had made his first fishing trip to Dale Hollow in the early 1950s with some of his coworkers from the coal mine. For years, the family heard Dave talk about the crystal -clear water ("You can see all the way to the bottom in fifty feet of water"), the fish ("So many they practically jump in the boat. You catch them before your hook is even wet"), the miles and miles of shoreline and the tall cedars that shaded the campsites, and the bobbing marinas with beautiful names: Wisdom Dock, Cedar Hill, Wolf River Marina. For ten years or so, Dave tried to talk the family into going to the lake with him. He dreamed of everyone going together, pitching tents on an island, and staying an entire week. Many of the others found this laughable. If they had a week off from work, they couldn't just run off to laze about 120 on the water. A week off from work would more likely be devoted to working around the house or yard. But Dave was a determined man who exaggerated and bragged about Dale Hollow Lake as if it were some kind of promised land. He never stopped trying to convince them. In 1955, when the world-record smallmouth bass (11 pounds, 15 ounces) was caught on Dale Hollow, he carried this news to them. He spoke of the clean air, the 30,000 acres of water , the 620 miles of shoreline. Finally, they were all convinced. They loaded up practically everything they could fit into their trucks and lit out. That first trip there were about fifteen family members. Only two of them owned johnboats. No matter, though. They'd get everyone across the water. They traveled about 130 miles on winding mountain roads, through Hyden and Manchester, London and Somerset, Monticello and Albany, and finally came to Wisdom Dock, where they piled their tents and stoves and Coleman lanterns into the little yellow boats. Two at a time, they crossed the water until everyone—and everything—had been safely deposited on a small, cactus-covered island that stood in the water on the Kentucky side of the lake. It was important that they camp in Kentucky — a matter of state pride. I first went to Dale Hollow in utero. My mother was seven months' pregnant in June of 1971, and by that time, the lake vacation had become a family tradition. Both my parents worked—my father was a celebrated mechanic at the Shell station in London (his talent with engines and compassionate service to customers got him written up in the Louisville Courier-Journal), and my mother worked in a refrigerator factory. They didn't have the money or the desire to go to Myrtle Beach or even the Great Smoky Mountains, but a vacation at the lake was doable. I picture my mother there on the shale banks of the lake, lounging in a recently purchased lawn chair, one hand on her belly as she lay in the sun, the waves washing up to nip at her toes. Some parents sing to pregnant bellies. Some play Mozart to their waiting baSILAS HOUSE 121 bies or read to them through the layers of skin and muscle. But my parents gave me something even better. While I was in my mother's belly, I was soaking up the spirit and beauty of Dale Hollow Lake. Maybe that's why I love it so much. When I look back on my childhood, I feel as if I practically grew up on the lake. By...