Fishing at Sugar Hollow
In Northwest Arkansas, there is a
small valley where Sugar Creek enters the White River. This is a fine
fishing spot. During the summer months, it is a nice place to camp and
enjoy a peaceful day of fishing. I had four main friends during my high
school days: Rich, Hubert, Ross, and Joe Bob Mercer. Now, if you
have read my blog about the summer job, you might remember Joe Bob. He is
the football player who fell into the vault, went crazy, killed a man, and was
never found again. At the time, he was okay; falling into that dead
woman’s goo drove him crazy. We decided to go to Sugar Hollow and spend the
weekend fishing and camping. One thing I must emphasize is that Sugar
Hollow was a remote area during 1963. Very seldom would you see anybody
there. It was an ideal place for five underage boys to fish and drink
beer.
An older friend bought a couple of
cases of GB beer and a gallon of Concord grape wine. GB was a rather
cheap beer compared to the premium beers like Falstaff. There
was nothing wrong with it as a beer. The actual name distinguished the beer.
No one could say the name with a straight face, so everyone just called it GB. This
is sad because “GB” is just the brother’s last name, but it was German. It was a
rather common name in Germany, just as common as the name “Frankenstein,” but
in America, people would give you a second look if you stated that your name
was Frankenstein. In Tony Town, a local winery makes the Concord wine.
Some churches that realize the wine in the Bible is not grape juice bought
Concord wine, which is not considered a fine wine. Concord is the
type of wine that liquor stores give to the winos who sweep their
sidewalks. For five young men this is not a lot of alcohol for three days
and two nights. Do not get me wrong, that is not all we had. We had
a cooler filled with ham and cheese sandwiches made at Ross’s favorite
place. The guy who made the sandwiches was not in business very
long. The sandwiches were delicious but at about eight inches thick and at
least a half-pound for a dollar, he lost a lot of money. You could not buy the
ingredients for a dollar that made up the sandwiches: meat, cheese, tomatoes,
onion, and pickles were about an inch thick. We had several of those and
we had a gallon of apple juice. We were eating healthy.
There are two ways to get to Sugar
hollow. There is the road that most people take and there is another side
road that we usually use because it ends at a better camping site. The
other side has a rocky beach that was great when you went swimming but not so
good for camping. In addition, our campsite was located around a bend
from the good swimming hole, so we had more privacy in case someone came to go
swimming. Nights in Sugar Hollow were always peaceful. Friday night was rather
normal. We set up tents and sleeping cots. We actually had time for
a little fishing. We found an abandoned boat and used it to run the
rapids on White River. We were just having a lot of good American boy fun.
We spent the night fishing, sitting by the riverbank and sharing jokes and
stories while eating sandwiches and drinking GB beer, Concord grape wine and
apple juice. We were very unaware that our young lives would soon be
changed forever.
Here we are, five 16-year-old boys,
friends relaxing on our loungers, drinking GB beer, eating half-pound ham and
cheese sandwiches, and sharing a gallon of apple juice. What could be
better? However, things were about to change. We heard the sound of
cars approaching first. Someone yelled, “Damn! Someone is coming down! Thank
goodness it is on the other side of the river.” Joe Bob Mercer said,
“Maybe it is some girls going skinny dipping.” Soon it become apparent this is not
the sound of just one car, but several. I said, “Maybe they are having a
baptizing.” If they leave us alone, we will leave them alone. We
can tell by the voices that there are men and women and they sound as if they
are grown-ups. Have you ever noticed how sound carries over water?
We can hear them, but we cannot make out what they are saying. Joe Bob Mercer
could not stand it any longer. He said, “I am going to cut through the
woods and see what they are doing over there.” In just about no time, Joe
Bob Mercer returns, running and out of breath, he exclaims, “Holy shit! It is
the Klu Klux Klan!” I say, “No way, it is 1963.” Therefore, I have
to go look to prove Joe Bob Mercer wrong. About the time I got out of my lounger
chair, all hell broke loose.
Through the woods, we heard the loud
boom bam, boom bam boom bam. I
grabbed my binoculars and took off through the woods to see what is going on
across the river. With that, we all decided to have a look. We were
in the woods across the river from the people so they could not see us. One
person was pounding on a big drum, which seems a little strange, but the strangest
thing was that he was butt naked while doing it. He did not have a stitch
of clothing on and he did not act a bit embarrassed about it. He was just
standing there, in all his glory, pounding on that big drum. He was
really into that drum beating; he would throw up a leg and bring down that big
drumstick and BOOM! Then he
would kick up his other leg and hit the big drum and BAM! I was wondering if he was going to have a heart attack
because he was moving so fast. He was an older man, I would guess him to
be about fifty or so. He had a dark tan and his skin looked like
leather. Eventually, I realized he was the substitute English teacher who
wrote script for the Little Rascals program.
Well, I never thought I would see an English teacher doing something like
this. The way he was jumping up and down, I knew before long, he is going
to hit something and that will put an end to his drumming. I remember thinking
that he should have been wearing a jockstrap if he is going to do all that
swinging. The reason Joe Bob Mercer thought it was the KKK is that all of
the others were wearing white robes, and had their heads covered. They
had a pig on a stick and they were building a fire under it. Others were
gathering up all the wood they could find and were building a large
campfire. We would probably have just left but watching that old English
teacher beating on that drum was simply intriguing. We knew they were up
to something big because of all the firewood they had collected. Shortly,
we decided to gather our loungers and while still hiding in the woods, watch what
was going to happen.
The other people got a big bonfire
going, and started singing. Now, whatever they were singing was something
I had never heard at church or on the radio. The whole group started
skipping and dancing around that big bonfire. The old guy, who I have
forgotten his name, but I remember him as my ninth-grade substitute
teacher. He would tell about his years in Hollywood writing for the Little Rascals show. We could not
identify any of the others because hoods covered their heads. This went
on for over an hour. The poor drummer seemed to be getting more and more
excited all the time. Suddenly he stopped, and went and joined hands with
the others. It looked as though they were praying. Then they all
threw their arms into the air and let their robes fall to the
ground. I will be damned, but every one of those people were
stark naked. There were five men and five women. To add insult to
injury, we knew every one of the men. There was a banker, a car dealer, a
sporting storeowner, a coach, and a member of my church, and none of them were
with their wives. The women did not appear to be local; they probably
came from Springdale. My mother always warned me about the girls in
Springdale; I thought I might be about to find out why.
By this time, we were having trouble
with Joe Bob Mercer. I think if we had let him, he would have gotten
naked and ran across the river and joined those people. The drummer and
his girlfriend began beating on the drum together while the others continued to
dance around the fire singing dirty songs. All this time, we were taking
turns running to our campsite to fetch more GB beer and ham and cheese
sandwiches. Looking at all those naked bodies started getting a little
boring. After about an hour of dancing nude, they stopped again. I
thought they were going to eat their pig on a stick, I thought wrong. They all
paired up and started hugging and kissing and clear across the river, you could
hear them breathing. Well, it was not too long into heavy breathing, that
they flopped down on the sand and started doing it right there in the
open. They were on the ground grunting, screaming, and shouting and it
was a sight to which five young men should not have been exposed, but here they
were. They did things we had only read about in Playboy magazine. When they finally finished, they all got up
and ran into the river and I was afraid they were going to come to our side of
the river and murder us for watching. They stayed on their side, played
for a while in the water, and washed each other’s parts. After bathing,
they got out, went back to the big bonfire, and threw some more logs on the
fire. They then got their pig on a stick and commenced to pulling that
roasted pig apart. They were eating as if they were starving and ripped
that pig into a hundred pieces and ate with their hands and no napkins.
They were getting grease all over their naked bodies and the greasier they got,
the louder they got. They would chase one another, throw each other on
the ground, and do things I have never heard of people doing to each
other. They jumped back into the river and washed off the grease and put
their robes back on, covered their heads, loaded up the big drum and
left.
We then went back to our solitude to
find some peace and try to make some sense of what we had just witnessed.
Joe Bob Mercer kept us awake while rehashing the whole thing for half the night.
This is all true, and there are three people alive today, other than me, who
knows it happened one summer night in 1963. We went our separate ways the
next year. I doubt if this night had a lot to do with Joe Bob Mercer
losing his mind after falling in that grave, but you never know. Things
like this will bother a boy for a long time. All of us went to college except
Joe Bob Mercer, who as I mentioned went crazy the next summer. Three of
us joined the military after college. Hubert got a medical deferment. We
have not seen each other for many years, but rest assured, that if this story reaches
one of them, they would confirm it.
©Michael L. Wright
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