Fish Creek was more fish crick by the time summer rolled around and the parentals, sensing an opportunity, deposited offspring with the grand-parentals and went on something called "vacation" for a time. This was fine. We really didn't want to go on vacation with them. Besides, there was Fish Creek to explore, and sometimes even fish in.
There are a number of Fish Creeks in Kansas, so don't worry if you can't find this specific one on any map. It cut through walnut groves and limestone slices with the spirit of an off-road racer, arching back on itself many times over in its continuous search for a route to the Mississippi--it's not just people who want to get the hell out of Dodge.
You had two ways to get to FC, the easy and the hard; easy being the county gravel road to the bridge that crossed the creek, and then scramble on down to the shoreline; hard being a switch-back path behind the dairy barn, full of sticktights and garter snakes and any number of biting flies and other atrocities.
The second path of course was choice--the first path was for babies. There is many a skinned knee and elbow reeling from the war with hydrogen peroxide due to this second choice that would love to tell their story. There was sun or sweat in my eye, you see, and that's why I slipped on the sandstone, honest. It had nothing to do with the nightcrawlers becoming airborne in an entanglement with irritating cousins, honest, Grandma.
You made it to the creek bed eventually. You'd have no real way of figuring a path back to Flapjack Land for the trees along the creek's path were as tall as the creek was switch-backed. You had walked downhill all the way, too. Kansas is considered flat, but it is surprisingly mountainous when you are all of three feet tall, and the water has ground itself through several geological ages of limestone.
This, of course, marked the end of the prelude. The end of the nice cuts and bruises from walking a path down to what, for the nightcrawlers, was very much the River Styx.
What a way to go, in lieu of two coins for the ferryman, you get a hook up the butt and end up in the belly of a catfish or crappie or, more often, box turtle.
Adventure had gone and left it's golden glow back way closer to the farmhouse. The water was cold even in the hot sun. A little tiny bit of Death had snuck its way into Elysium. Four out of the five grand kids certainly didn't like it. We screamed in horror as squiggling worms, held tight in long wrinkled fingers, met their fate. The land above is bright and full of terrors!
The fifth grandchild, who was much older, had no problems with the worm-hook paradox, nor with rolling his eyes at us babies. Oh, to have such wisdom, such sagacity. Oh, to have such vocabulary when most you need it.
Grandma had no problem with the issue, either. She was, if anything at that moment, a swift executioner, devoid of any cruelty in fulfilling the promise of Ouruborus.
“Don't worry,” she said, sliding worm after worm onto proctological nightmare fuel, and parceling off four ready-made lighting rods of cause and effect, “The worm shall have its revenge when you eat the fish.”
I loved this! Especially the River Styx for the nightcrawlers... poor dears.