Big Water Water Everywhere

            Then, it happened.  We got let out of school, and the whole family went downtown to our home church (the old building we used before the new church building on Avenue G was built in the early ‘60s), and there we waited to see something special.  We saw the bald head and smiling face of a man who was obviously very important to my parents.

            I didn’t understand it at the time, but I now know that on the day I was born, Dwight D. Eisenhower was President Elect.  I suppose that the vote for his election was my first ever – although I didn’t notice it much since I was 6 weeks away from getting out of my mother’s womb.  His inauguration day came along when I was just five weeks and three days old, and I’m sure that if he hadn’t been so busy saving the free world and the like, he would have sent me a little birthday present or something.  But I understand now that other things were a little more important.

            Years past after Ike came to see me before anything else seemed to happen, and when I was 7, 8, and 9 years old, years seemed to pass like huge eternities.  But the truth is, things were happening.  Take my dad’s good friend, John L. Dodson for example.  In those “quiet years”, he was apparently busy working on proposals that ultimately resulted in a great deal of work for himself and his employees.  My dad said on several occasions that “everything John L. touches turns to gold”, and I believe that Amistad Dam was a big part of that.  My understanding is that he sold every cubic foot of concrete that went into the dam.   That may be a stretch, but knowing John L. like I did, I would not be surprised. He also won the contract to build the long and winding road from Highway 277 to the Rough Canyon Marina.  That had to have resulted in some handsome profits as well, and why not?  He provided quality products and quality services that resulted in quality construction that’s still in use 40+ years later and will be so many decades, if not centuries, from now.

            And, of course, many other preliminary activities were going on all around us and in the capitols of our respective nations as the date for start of construction neared and as I busied myself chasing horny toads, building forts, climbing trees and wondering why the heck God made girls.  Little did I know that what was about to happen would change so much of my world  - mostly for the better, but some for the worse.

            My dad had also grown up in Del Rio, and once he was ordered by his doctor to quit working himself into an early grave, he began to take Saturdays off so that he could take me and my brothers fishing.  At that time, fishing meant going out to sweet little Lake Walk (which didn’t seem so little to me) where we either jumped into our 14 foot aluminum fishing boat with 5.5 HP Johnson outboard hanging off the transom or we walked down the hand-hewn rock steps to the Devils River just below the Lake Walk Dam.  Either way, I learned to love that country and that water.  I didn’t think it would ever ever go away, but I soon learned that it would. 

           The Lake Walk dam was built when my dad was a preschooler.  So, he didn’t remember the Devils River canyon below that water line, but he certainly remembered the lake and that dam from his earliest days.  Someone once told me that he (my dad) had run up the dam’s face and made it to the top.  That scared me to even think of it, but apparently he was somewhat of a dare devil in his younger days.  When I questioned him about it, he acted as if it was no big deal because he was with his Boy Scout troop and most all of them made it – With the remainder of the troop standing guard at the bottom lip to keep the failed attempters from falling off and into the river rocks below the dam.   I mention all of this to further elaborate on the losses represented by the installation of Amistad Dam.

            We soon learned that the Federal government was buying up thousands of acres of ranch land all around the area where the new lake would fill in with lots of water.  These were hard concepts for me to understand, but as I grew older, I heard tales that seemed to get bigger and bigger and then huger and huger!  The new lake was apparently going to be a Monster!

            Honestly, I don’t remember the beginning of construction, but you can see a video on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Idta00YFcjA&feature=youtu.be)  that provides a copy of a black and white news segment covering the ceremony that took place at the time of the first concrete pour.  That was in 1965, and Ike had visited us in October of 1960.  In between, I finished 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th and 6^th grades – and I was either pretty oblivious to the construction activities that were going on in that interim period, or I have forgotten.  Either option is a possibility I’m afraid.

            Once the new highway and railroad bridges were completed, we gained more and more access to the construction zone.  I guess that began sometime in about 1965, and I do remember making many a weekend family trip the short 12 or so miles out Highway 90 to the fork in the road that led us to the dam.  There, we drove down a dusty road through what had formerly been private ranch land, and we got out of the car to take a peak over “the edge”. 

            I remember a roughly constructed wooden open-air platform with a metal roof overhead and a strong wooden rail all around.  As I approached that rail, I always did so with great caution mixed with fear and excitement.  It was a long way down to the bottom of that canyon; and, although I’ve never had a fear of heights, I have been known to have a fear of falling and hitting bottom.

            Once we looked over, we were always always amazed at the construction activities below us, beside us and all across the river.  The most massive machines “known to man” were in use all around, the rock walls were being cut away in huge chunks, gigantic holes were being blasted and cut through solid rock, and unbelievable quantities of concrete were being poured and allowed to dry in place.  What had we done to deserve such a massive undertaking right there in our own back yard?

            It was at that point that I also got to see something that had always been there but had been beyond my reach  until that point.  I’m not sure that even my dad had ever seen it, although he did in his youth become friends with many local ranch families and therefore got to visit their properties from time to time.  I’m talking about the confluence of the Rio Grande and Devils Rivers.  Just a few hundred yards upstream from that observation platform we could easily observe the clear waters of the Devils pushing into and eventually mixing with the muddy waters of the Rio Grande.  That was a beautiful site – in a Texas desert sort of a way.

            Every time we visited that platform, we saw major progress on the dam site.  There was no shortage of funding, and the schedule was set.  Additionally, other beautiful and wondrous construction activities were taking place.  The new highway and rail road bridges were constructed up the Devils River canyon just a mile or two upstream from the Rio Grande.  As they were being built, we got a few chances to drive down the old Steam Plant road where we could look up at what appeared to be mile-high spindly concrete legs as they began to reach for the sky.  As we got closer, we realized that those “spindly” legs were actually monstrously large.  They just looked “spindly” because they were so very tall!  The river canyons around Del Rio are incredibly deep it turns out.

            I also remember that all along the way, the Del Rio News Herald published story after story and photograph after photograph telling us about the coming of the dam and lake. Being afflicted with “wiggly boy syndrome” in those days, I didn’t take time to read much, but I did look at all those pictures every single day that the newspaper boy delivered the day’s pages to our driveway (and sometimes to our roof).  The excitement continued to build.

            I guess it was in those days when the beginning of lake water retention drew nearer that a sad fact began to establish itself firmly in my psyche.  I was going to lose all those hallowed grounds of my early childhood around the Devils River and Lake Walk!  When my grandparents were forced to sell their Lake Walk cabin and property and we had to move out the furniture, etc. I began to realize that excitement is sometimes mixed with extreme sadness.  I had so much of my heart invested in those hills, crannies, waters and trees that I could hardly bare the realization of its pending loss.  That was tough and still tends to bring a tear to one or both of my eyes. 

            Well, after just a few years of heavy construction just upstream from my home in the middle of town, work on the dam did indeed arrive at the point of completion. The large and interesting architectural model of the dam that we had often visited at the International Boundary and Water Commission offices had become a full sized reality.  We had been told that our dam was the largest concrete structure (as measured by sheer volume of cement poured) ever to be raised up on the North American continent, and it was almost ready to capture water.  The flow of the Rio Grande would soon be limited to a set rate, and the extra water would begin to cover up the lands over which I had once happily frolicked.  Once again, excitement was mixed with joy, but I have to admit that at that point, the excitement and joy were beginning to overwhelm the sadness that resulted from the prospect of loss.  I guess I was beginning to sense that the gains would eventually far outweigh the losses, and I was certainly right on that particular account.

            I was in my early years of high school when the gates were adjusted such that water would begin to collect.  I remember that day clearly.  We had been warned repeatedly to not be too anxious for the lake to get full.  It was going to take, we were told, up to a decade to complete the filling process.  Of course, locals who had lived through many floods quietly snickered and said things like, “Yeah, right!  Just watch what a Southwest Texas thunderstorm can do!”  And they were, as always, right!

            For the first several days after beginning to collect water, the surface level of the Devils river (still captured within its rock canyon walls) rose a good three feet per day. Within days, friends of mine who had access to family boats were skiing across waters that had been wading depth from the earliest days of that river to that time of drastic change.  In no time, the Lake Walk dam (the first of two old hydro-electric dams upstream from the Rio Grande) began to disappear beneath the waves.  No flood was in progress, and the officials were not at all surprised at that rate of rise.  They figured that once the water filled the basic canyons and began to spread out, the rate of rise would slow dramatically.  That did indeed happen, but the slowdown didn’t last long. 

I don’t remember big storms, but they must have rolled through somewhere upstream because that lake was completely full before I graduated from Del Rio High School in May of 1971.  My dad had bought us a nice ski/fishing boat the previous summer, and we had begun to explore hundreds of miles of shoreline created by mighty Lake Amistad.  And fishing?  Heck, that’s a whole nuther story!  Fishing was beyond ”hot” and from what I hear, it’s still that way. 

On the topic of losses, I need to quickly relate a little story that I’ll eventually write all about on its own.  It has to do with my grandparents’ Lake Walk property.

Before the lake completely filled, my uncle and I and his young son, took our little 14 foot aluminum boat for an overnight camping adventure.  We took that boat that once had carried me and my dad all over Lake Walk up to the Rough Canyon Marina and launched there for a trip downstream.  That marina is located just above the position of the Upper, or Devils, dam which was also covered by quite a few feet of water at that point. So, from that launch site on down, we were traveling maybe fifty feet above what had been the surface of the former Lake Walk.

We found a suitable campsite not long before sundown and that was on a cleared off concrete slab on top of a mostly flooded rock cliff.  As sundown approached, we noticed lightening in the northern sky and knew that we could be in trouble if we didn’t act quickly.  We were a good 6 miles downstream from the safety of the car we had left at the marina, and killer hail was a definite possibility.  So, we hurriedly grabbed up a piece of metal that had apparently once been the roof of an antique travel trailer and with that, several short pipes that were partially encased in uprooted concrete and some salvaged bailing wire, we built a very low shelter on that slab of concrete that had once been the floor of a building.

My little cousin promptly fell asleep under the shelter, and my uncle and I watched the storm approach until we knew we better hunker down.  The wind blew, the rain fell, and a good bit of hail made us wonder if our little roof would hold.  My cousin, David, slept through the whole thing, but I spent the time holding onto my corner of the roof and praying that we would not get to meet our Maker that night.

The next morning, I got up before my uncle and little cousin and promptly captured a very nice tarantula that had been run out of its hole by the rains I guess.  Fortunately, I was able to find a nice sized glass jar with a lid, and that arachnid specimen went to my sophomore biology class on the following Monday morning.

Additionally, I walked down to our little boat with my trusty dachshund companion, Poochie, and bailed out the rain water.  A few pulls on the motor’s rope and Poochie and I were off on an early rain-washed morning adventure.

With Poochie perched on the bow of the boat as always, I steered us southward and then westward a little.  The lake waters were beginning to spread out nicely, but nothing like they would over the next two years.  What I then found was a familiar looking patch of road climbing up from the lake waters toward the top of a little hill.  Once Poochie and I arrived at the top of the hill, I realized where we were!

We had arrived in relative solitude on the hallowed half acre that had once been home to two flat-roofed, stucco covered cabins.  For many decades the cabin on the right had been my father’s parents’ lake cabin.  Along with my cousins, siblings, aunts and uncles and beloved grandparents, I had spent my earliest years being a cowboy, a jet pilot, an explorer, an adventurer and a happy little boy on those very grounds.  That place had been ground zero for my most treasured times on earth, and I was standing there for the last time.

The cabins had long been missing from that site, but I recognized the remnants of the yards, the low pipe fence/wall and even the peach tree my Pappy had nurtured and enjoyed not so long before.  I stood at the same place where, as a 5 year old, I had watched Pappy’s trained blackbird, “Charlie”, land on his shoulder and enjoy a nice cracker.  I could hardly stand to recognize the spot where I had so often watched my father and Uncle Bob barbecue dozens of hamburgers, steaks and chickens.  Talk about a bitter sweet experience.  After fifteen or twenty minutes, I had to call Poochie and leave that place forever. Lake Amistad soon claimed it, but I have never forgotten any of it.

Fortunately, in the years that followed, the waters of Lake Amistad and the beautiful sites and experiences afforded by its presence more than replaced my happy times on Lake Walk and the Devils River.  However, I choose to remember all of those times with equally high regard.

The old and the new are good for all of us.

Copyright 2014

William Richard Meredith