The crossing

This is the place Richard and me crossed dry creek to go to school at coin. Daddy cut a tree and fell it across the creek and we walked on this tree to cross the creek.
We carried our egg sandwich in a Karo syrup pail and one frosty morn Richard lost his bucket in the water. We ran down the creek and caught up with the pail , Richard waded out to reprieve his lunch getting his feet wet so we returned home to get a sever scolding from daddy. At the time I thought it was over the loss of the sandwich but now I know he was afraid we might drown.
Many years before our life on the creek a man died here at the crossing. He was our neighbor's brother. The opinion at the time was that his horse threw him and then kicked him in the head but my grandfather believed he was murdered. This was Flint Stone's brother.
My uncle Floyd owned the land along the creek here and when he bought the land there was the remains of a canning factory just below where Floyd built his pond. The crossing is where the old road going from Springfield Mo to Carrollton Arkansas ran and was used by the Union solders in the civil war perhaps our great great grandfather Elie Cooper went across these waters on his horse Bullet.
It is also a possibility that our great greatgrandfather Henry Powell crossed here on his way from Little Rock to northern Mo. during the civil war. Could Henry have spent the night beside a camp fire at the mouth of the cave on the side of our rock quarry looking over the land where in a hundred years we would play?