Editor’s Note: Reader Diary is a periodic column written by local residents, Surry County natives, and readers of The Mount Airy News. If you have a submission for Reader Diary, email it to John Peters at jpeters@mtairynews.com
If you traveled the Blue Ridge backwoods back in the day, foot logs spanned almost every creek and stream and one of the finest hung high in the air over Stewart’s Creek in Surry County; a mile south of the Virginia border. We called it “The High Foot Log.”
Chained to poplar trees at both ends, it was the only foot log that never washed away when the floods came. With a handrail to hang on to and rough sawmill planks nailed on it to walk on, it was first class, as foot logs go: a great place to sit on hot summer days and watch the fish swim by down below. Best of all, come winter time, when it was too cold to wade, it was my highway to high adventures beyond the creek.
All was well until an August 1940 hurricane brought the biggest flood ever seen on Stewart’s Creek, “even bigger than the one in 1916,” so the old folks said. Then red-muddy water backed up a half mile to Grandpa’s house up the valley, all the bottom-land corn crops were wiped out and the foot log that “never washed away” did; along with the poplar trees it was chained to. For me, it was a major disaster and I think the creek quit running until it was replaced.
In the same time-frame, its poor cousin, the “Low Foot Log” spanned the creek a half-mile upstream. It was a simple round log that hung down just above the water. It had no handrail, no planks to walk on and it did not like people. When you got out in the middle, it bounced like a rubber ball. Even so, with a good sense of balance chances were good you could get across the creek without falling in. (I learned right away to zig when it zagged.)
Some unlucky souls had some navigation problems trying to walk the Low Foot Log, especially if they’d had a few snorts of moonshine. “You see you ain’t gonna’ make it across, Zeke, throw your jug into them honeysuckle vines, ‘cause they ain’t no use in wastin’ good likker’.”
Several un-wanted baths were taken when people fell off the Low Foot Log, sometimes in the dead of winter. For a chosen few, it was a much-needed bath; the only bath they’d had in a very long time; maybe their only bath of the year. As it was told, (by a reliable source, of course) “when one of our neighbors (who shall go unnamed) fell in, he lost five pounds when all the dirt washed off, the creek ran red muddy for a mile down-stream and all the catfish jumped out on the bank.”
Sad to say, “As the years passed, foot logs went the way of the covered wagons and won’t be coming back, not in our lifetime.”
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com
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