Growing Up On Muddy Creek:

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The word 'drag' has come to have several meanings. Much depends on the age of the person uttering the word. Great-granddad used to take a 'drag' on his 'pure Havana cigar'; Granddad would 'drag' his date to the prom; while his son fired up the '57 Chevy and headed for the 'drag' strip, all the while thinking those who used to be known as 'squares' were now 'drags.'

Down on Muddy Creek in those long ago days of my youth, the old Webster's dictionary listed 'drag' as in dragging the road.

Most of my readers cannot fathom the idea that the 'hard' road, 'the slab,' was created in our lifetime. Henry Homer was elected governor of Illinois on a 'good roads' platform less than a lifetime ago, in 1920. Even as late as in the mid-fifties, 1950, that is, there were myriad miles of dirt roads still serving the public in many of our counties.

When the settlers came into this area, they found wide paths (or traces) made by the buffalo. With small hooves, the buffalo were forced to travel the ridges, and instinctively chose the solid ground for their traces. One such ran from the Ohio River at Louisville, up past the salt licks of Indiana to Vincennes and on past Red Hill clean to the Mississippi River.

Route 50 pretty well follows that two-century-old 'cow' path. It is recorded that this trace was 'wide enough for two wagons to pass.'

As the Native Americans moved westward, the pioneers found the need for a wider track than the trails the Indians had first walked. After the horse was introduced, they widened the paths enough to let the horse drag a couple of poles that were lashed together to pull a small load-carrying device.

There was little 'in between' condition on the early roads. In the summer, the clay loam would soon be beaten into powder and become at least a foot deep, kicked up by trotting horses, hang in the air, and settle over the occupants of whatever conveyance was being pulled.

The early open automobiles listed among the necessary accessories: goggles for the eyes, a silk scarf to cover the head and hold the hat in place, and above all, a full-length 'duster.' It was bad enough when buggies and wagons met or were passed, but with the advent of the automobile, the clouds of dust produced became a real problem.

In winter or after the rainy season started, all that changed. The first rain converted this foot-deep dust bowl into a loblolly of mud, mud, mud. Unless one has actually lived through a bout with mud, there is no way that he can truly appreciate the glue-like consistency and leaden weight of boots packed to the knee with just plain mud.

It is difficult to imagine mud so deep that a horse would have great difficulty struggling through it, let alone pulling or carrying a load.

The nearest one can come by such a sight in today's world is to watch an oil drilling rig being towed into place in mid-February when the frost is just 'going out'.

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