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My home town of Barrackville West Virginia was settled in the 1700's. From the wild days of Indian raids and burning bridges it had become a quite little town nestled between four small wooded hills. Through my community flowed the Buffalo Creek, a bass steam whose head waters started just above Mannington and meanders some 30 miles through these hills. It continued through our little town where it eventually merged with the Monongahela River at the Fairmont Round House. Throughout my childhood years, 50's and 60's, I fished most every summer day catching small mouth bass, bullhead catfish, and a ton of sunfish. My source of bait for catching these fish were night crawlers from my dad's lawn and crawldads found under flat rocks in the stream. It was along this stream during the days of late summer that I had a very terrifying experience. I recall that it had been very dry and hot for an extended time and that night crawlers were hard to find, so my neighbor and I had settled on catching crawldads for our bait. Near the Iron Bridge was a shallow area with many hand size flat rocks where we usually caught our bait, and then wade up stream to a deep hole. At the down stream edge of each of these deep pools existed Islands of small flat rocks. With little to no rain in August these holes would not exist without this damming effect. It was during the Dog Days of summer that this story takes place. As with every fishing trip, the first few hours are very exciting. On this day the water was bath water warm and the fishing action slow, so we decided to lay down on a large flat rock near the edge of the Island. The sound of the water pasting by it's edge and the warm sun on our faces was soothing and mesmerizing. Soon we had closed our eyes and were falling in and out of a half sleep, opening our eyes just long enough to see if the fish had been biting and then closing them once again. Fishing that morning had come to a stand still and then for some reason, I opened my eyes to look directly into the diamond shaped eyes of a snake whose body was half out of the water at the rock's edge. I could feel the hair on my neck stand straight up and beads of sweat on my forehead. The next under control move was to yell snake and jump straight into the air. With my scream, I had startled my friend, Rod, who was also dancing the jig beside me. However, Rod was notorious for accurate rock throwing and had already reached into the water and had several rocks clutched in his hands. With his first throw, he clipped the snake right on the head. I screamed, did you get him, did you get him? Yeah I got him, Rod answered me. At about that time, I looked behind me and two other snakes had raised their heads just above the rock. I instantly gave out a war hoop and both of us leaped off the rock. Landing on the Island we both picked up rocks and began slinging them wildly in the direction of the snakes. This barrage continued until we brought ourselves under control. Examining to determine what damage we had inflected, we saw one of the two snakes floating up side down in the water. We continued to wait quietly surveying the area when all at once I saw something out of the side of my eye moving. Very slowly I turned to see seven or eighty small night crawler sized snakes curled up ready to strike. Rod and I backed into the water and then put some heavy hurting on the those little critters. We put them through a cross fire that the best rock skippers in America with have loved. When the smoke had cleared, our count was eight for eight. We had wiped them out. Moving back onto the Island, we began to move around surveying our work. Then Rod, never being satisfied, started lifting other rocks. On the first, he found three more snakes which he pounded into the stream bed. I then begin lifting rocks with a stick, with each new rock turned over, two or three more snakes would crawl out to greet us. We then began to lift them quickly and started to move in the direction of the big flat rock. It was at about this moment that Rod screamed, "RUN FOR YOUR LIFE"! Without hesitation we both started jumping and running across the Island like, we were to fast and quick to be bitten by one of the snakes. With one large leap, we landed on the large rock, picked up our poles and jump onto the creek bank. It looked something like the Olympics Run, Skip and Jump. As we made our way up the bank through seven foot tall pig weed, to the old Street Car Track, we could hear several people talking. Breaking our way out of the entanglement their stood several of my brother Tony's classmates. The fellow in the middle, Billy Coach, held a large snake by the head. As he held it above his shoulders, it's tail was swinging back and forth and dragging in the cinders. When he saw Rod and me, come climbing out of the Pig Weed he yelled what in the heck are you guys doing in there. Don't you know this is the forth Copper Head that we have killed on this roadway today. Yes you got it, the Island was full of baby Copper Head Snakes. We told our story and as we started the climb up Tony Sergi's Hill towards home, we could see Billy and his friends wading into the Pig weeds. With our nerves a little shot, I need not tell you that we did not go fishing on snake Island anymore that summer. From that day on, the rocky area just about the Iron Bridge was called snake Island and to this day my skin crawls a little when I talk, pass or look up the creek bed and see snake Island. | Back to Story Menu |
