Mississippi River: Drowning in Black Water

I had the honor of knowing my great grandfather before he passed away. The stories he told from his memories as a child are well over a century now. I have grown to understand the significance of remembering the history of my family because the events of their lives shaped my own. I will one day share these stories with my own children in hopes they will come to learn as I have the sacrifices and hardships endured that resulted in their existence. Had the events of this particular story occurred any differently my history would never have been and I would not be here now.

My great grandfather, John Oscar Tingle, lived to be 92 years old. He owned over 100 acres of prime timber land in Neshoba County Mississippi that his father had acquired and handed down to him.  He earned his living by clear cutting timber from his property.  He rolled his own tobacco and had a taste for sour whiskey. John Oscar Tingle attributed his long life to hard work; good tobacco and rot gut whiskey. "The day they finally get me to stop drinking, smoking and working I'll go on to my grave. When they are able to get me to stop, it will be time for me to go."

His wife was a devout woman who tolerated his smoking but forbid him to drink. One late summer afternoon John Oscar entered the house complained that the mule had wandered off again. Taking his worn hat and satchel he told his wife he was taking the horse to bring it back. She pointed to me where I sat at the table and said, “Take the boy with you for company.”

We saddled the two horses and entered the trail into the woods. We had only ridden about 20 minutes before we came upon the mule. I was confused as we continued to ride past it.  Look to the mule and then to my grandfather but he continued to look forward and ride onward.  It wasn’t long before we reached the other side.  Beyond this point all the timber had been cut from miles.  We stood upon the hilltop peering down at the valley below.  My grandfather pointed ahead of him. "This was once a river.  You can tell by how the hillside on the far side is dug out. Strong running water did that."

I told my grandfather I was a strong swimmer and that I could easily swim the distance. He begged to differ stating that treading river water is not the same as treading still waters. If you don't do it correctly you can swim all day and not get anywhere. And if you're not careful to watch the movement of the water ahead you can even get pulled under by the current never to be seen again.

I grandfather dismounted and overturn a large stone nearby. Beneath it was a wooden crate with three bottles of whiskey and a leather sack of tobacco. He instructed Mia to gather some wood for a fire.  The sun was getting low over the hillside and my grandfather and I sat by the fire.  He sipped his whisky from a tin cup and smiled at me as a peered to the next hillside. He knew I was still thinking about the swim. He took another sip and said, "Let me tell you a story about swimming river water.”

A family had come here from Little Rock, Arkansas in the 1900’s. The father, his wife and three boys traveled by covered wagon to settle in Mississippi on the property the father had purchased. Two of his boys were young teens and his youngest still an infant. They had reached the banks of the Mississippi and decided to camp for the night. They would cross the bridge farther south in the morning. A storm brewed in the early afternoon and began to downpour during the night. Miles behind them a dam had broken releasing the water from the reservoir. Their wagon was overtaken by the rushing water carrying the family into the river. 

There was little time and nowhere to run. The man tied a long rope around himself and looped it around his wife and boys. The infant was carried by his wife. The wagon and all their belongings were taken by the river. The man began to swim the turbulent water of the Mississippi River.

As hard as he tried, the current would not allow him to stay near the bank. The river was carrying him further out. He had no choice but to swim with the current and risk the undertow. He was a large man with strong arms and he tugged his family toward the center of the river. He called back to them to stay above the water warning his boys if they got dragged under the whole family would drown. They had been carried miles down the river but the father diligently swam with the current. He was strong and a good swimmer but he had been pulling the weight of his wife and boys for hours. He was losing strength and would soon be taken by the current if he didn’t reach the other side soon. He began to swim toward the bank.

The other side was within reach and it looked as if they would make it. Then the wife screamed in terror to her husband. “John, I’m losing the baby!” The father continued to swim with all his strength as she struggled to hold on the child. Her thrashing was threatening to pull him under. He called back to her, “Let him go.”

His oldest boy, William had already begun to pull himself along the length of the rope toward his mother. As the infant slipped from her grasp, young William grabbed the baby’s leg before the river could take him. They made it to the river bank alive. The mother turned and saw young William had saved the infant.

The family from Arkansas had lost everything but they owned the land they lived on. In those days, owning your own property meant everything and was worth the risk of traveling great distances. The father was John William Tingle and the infant young William Tingle had saved was my great grandfather, John Oscar Tingle.

Previously Posted on FullofKnowlege.com

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Occult: The Witches of Ravenhope

It was the kids that discovered the truth of the matter. We all knew there was an old cemetery in the woods off Poplar Springs Drive. We had all visited the small structure in the woods to see the ornate paintings on the walls and the large stone pillar at the center. We went there at night. Those caught going during the day would be ran off. And there were tales that eerie signs were conveyed from the dead to the living that could only be witnessed at night. All the kids knew about Ravenhope.

The paintings were ancient occult symbols written above graphically detailed depictions of women being burned and hung by an angry mob. Their arms outstretched toward the ceiling. Other images could be seen on the ceiling showing black shadowy figures reaching out to receive them. At the front of the structure was a painting that looked much older. This painting depicted a hand rising from a pit that bore the sign of the inverted pentagram. It took two strong boys to dislodge the pillar at the center. Beneath the pillar was a deep pit. Dropping a stone into it returned no echo of an impact.

Behind the structure were dozens of stones sharpened at their tips. No words were written on these stones. There was some obvious scribbling where other kids had superimposed Slayer lyrics on them. But each stone had authentic occult symbols dug into them. The etchings were as weathered as the stones themselves and not done by any novice. The craftsmanship of the etchings suggests they could only have been engraved by a stonemason. We had known about Ravenhope because the older kids had told us. Our parents knew about Ravenhope and their parents knew about it. To suggest it wasn't there was simply ignorance.

The company that hoped to place their car lot on the site where Ravenhope existed doesn't matter. Suffice it to say you have probably driven their cars and trucks. The city council acquired the property rights to the site because the last surviving relatives of the original owner had died over 40 years before. The city agreed to clear the site as a part of the company's agreement to place their new dealership in town and the manufacturing plant near Meridian. This promised to bring prosperity and money into the town's economy. Everyone seemed to be happy with the proposal and no one opposed it. It was approved unanimously by the city council. It wasn't until the sign went up that the problems started. The dealership was to be built over Ravenhope.

The kids stirred up the drama that would soon become the news of the town. What about the witches buried there? You can't simply put a car lot over them! It was preposterous and we were shushed off. We had no understanding of what the arrival of this business meant for the economy. True, we didn't have any clue how important it was to progress. But we were certain that no car lot would ever be built there. If we had to lay on the graves under the bulldozers we would defend Ravenhope. We flooded into the next city council meeting to voice our protest of the car dealership. They had to put it somewhere else!

The city council members assured us there was nothing on record to suggest there had ever been a church at the proposed build site and certainly no cemetery ever existed there. There was an old well house left there by the previous owners and that was all. "Then how do you explain the headstones behind the structure?" We protested. These were not headstones. They were only a group of randomly placed rocks used to form the walled edges of the well. One of the council members pounded his gavel on the table and we were again shushed out of the meeting.

A local contractor was hired by the city to clear the site for building. No one was allowed to go on the site. Signs warned that trespassers would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Dump trucks, heavy digging and earth moving equipment entered and left the small road leading to Ravenhope. The trees along the road obscured the work being done. Someone said all the old headstones were loaded on a truck and hauled away. Surely they would have unearthed the bones when they started digging. Days went by and nothing was said to suggest anything strange was found there. Then a horrible realization occurred to us. The contractor had to have been carrying off the bones! There was no other possible reason for the silence. A few of us agreed we would go search the site under the cover of night. There must have been something left to find. They could not have gotten all of the bones.

The next city council meeting was relatively quiet. Nothing of great importance was on the agenda to discuss. We stood along the back wall as the meeting began. There were always one or two people from the newspaper or television station in attendance in case news happened. We weren't sure how we were going to approach this or how we would be perceived afterward. But we stood quietly hoping to have a say at the end. One of the council members stared at us with mild impatience and finally addressed us. "Is there something we can help you kids with?"

A pretty girl about 15 years old nervously peered at us. We gave her a nudge forward. She walked slowly to the long table before the city council and placed a human femur on the table. She said nothing and turned away. Gasps issued from the adults seated in the council room. Another boy about 16 years old stepped forward placing a fractured bone segment that was clearly the eye socket, nose cavity and upper teeth of a human skull. One by one, we continued to make our way single file toward the table. By the time we were done the council room was filled with people and the table scattered with the remains of the witches of Ravenhope.

The contractor was charged with desecration of graves but not convicted. We had thought there were only a dozen or more graves on the site but the examiners suggested over a hundred. They were found in the clearing and within the ground beyond the tree line as well. Graves were not typically arranged in this manner and the city council could not explain it. The bones were dated back to the 1800's.

But all was not lost. The company still built their plant nearby in Canton, Mississippi. Many people in Meridian make the 30 minute drive to and from there to work. Unfortunately, Meridian missed that opportunity to advance progress. But there will be other opportunities. One of our many mottos is "Building a better future!" We have another motto as well, "Just because there is no one left to remember you don't mean you should be forgotten."

Every time a historical landmark is threatened by the advance of progress, someone mentions Ravenhope. So you could say the witches of Ravenhope haunt the city council until this very day!

Previously Posted on FullofKnowlege.com

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Old Man River

While working for an Emergency Medical Service, I completed my training for the Dive Rescue Team (DRT). The technical training for the DRT is not very difficult if you can retain an understanding of the math, the proper usage of the equipment and the safety precautions. The fear is what you have to overcome.

Diving is inherently confining. The gear you wear can cause feelings of claustrophobia even if you have never had a fear of confinement. I did well during training while diving in lake water, off the coast in the ocean and even our simulated cave dives. Each of these pass/fail field course required the completion of tasks in various environments. I easily completed my training in each of the scenarios. I only had one fear related to diving and was thankful it was not included in our training requirements. River water dive training was considered covered by our dives in the murky lake water. It should have been done in actual river water.

As if by fate, my first actual dive required that we search a river spillway for a submerged vehicle. A man had lost control of his small compact sedan and broken through the barrier. His vehicle had rolled into the river beneath the open spillway. The tributary spillway was open and the rushing water quickly pulled the small car under.

The driver was lucky to have escaped through his open window and was rescued miles down stream. But his vehicle had not reemerged. You can't simply drag the spillway for the vehicle. It could become dislodged and enter into the Mississippi to snag itself on a shallow region of the river bed. A passing vessel could be damaged by it. It was up to us to go down and secure a line to the vehicle and recover it.

Our dive planning suggested the riverbed beneath the spillway had been wallowing out by the massive amount of water rushing through over the years. We speculated this caused a swirling updraft of currents that simply tumbled the small vehicle into this depression in the river bed preventing it from washing downstream.

River engineers agreed and we set a date to search the area beneath the spillway. As we suited up in the early morning hours, the spillway had been shut as much as possible. This would allow us to dive the area more safely but it could not be shut completely. The tributary spillway must remain open to prevent the river level rising above the spillways safe pressure limit.

I had hoped the water rushing over the spillway would be calmer than it was. Even closed, 60 percent of the tributary rushing over the spillway was a raging waterfall thundering down into the water only a few hundred feet from where we were to dive. The current boiled and twisted like huge black snakes just beneath the surface. Black water has always been my greatest fear. It has been the source of my nightmares since childhood. Now I was voluntarily diving down into its depths.

We rode out to our first designated search zone and anchored the boat. This was only a tributary which fed into the 3 mile wide Mississippi River downstream. But our search area was still wide enough to dwarf the tugboats on the scene prepared to drag the vehicle out. I was mildly reassured by the nervous faces of my fellow divers. I wasn't the only one frightened near out of my wits by the thought of entering the turbulent water.

We stood by as the thick cable fed into the depths. We would be tethered to this cable and free to slide up or down along its length during our search. Our tether line could be fed out or reeled in as needed. We would have no communication once submerged. Our only methods of signaling each other were via our powerful high beam dive lamps, and tapping the guide cable with our grappling tools.

In the past, the bottom diver was selected by drawing straws. But this was now regulated by a more safety conscious system. One would think the most experienced diver and least likely to panic would be at the bottom. But it was actually the most experienced that would be the top diver on the guide cable. He would be the one most qualified to retrieve us should we get into trouble.

I was the least experienced and selected to enter the river first. The guide cable had rolled out 40 feet before touching bottom. I turned on my lamp and directed it downward. I only had about 10 feet of clear visibility in the churning black water. When I let go of the support railing my weighted belt pulled me under. I sank like a stone.

I could only hear the roar of the water rushing over the spillway and the sound of my own breathing. I peered into the murky depths with my lamp directed downward. My ears popped and I used a technique of forcing air in my throat to cause a positive inner ear pressure. My dive watch indicated I was 30 feet. I locked my tether and struck the guide cable three times with my grappling tool tied to my belt. I felt the guide cable give me a gentle tug as the next diver descended.

The current was pulling me from the guide cable and I felt the gentle tug at the end of my tether. I fed myself out 3 feet at a time until I was about ten feet from my cable. I began peering into the murky grayish blackness surrounding me directing my lamp in all directions. I was searching for a reflection of metal or glass that would indicate the location of the vehicle. I peered off to my left. After 20 minutes of searching I heard the sharp tapping on the guide cable. We were moving to another location.

Again we entered the water and I was more comfortable now. I felt relieved to have conquered my old childhood fear of the river. We had laughed and joked in our excitement after each rotation. Our initial fear had turned to jubilation and we couldn't wait for the next dive. We each felt a bit of pride as the boat crew stared at us like we were crazy. We were diving nearer to the bank now.

I caught a glimpse of something to my left in my high beam. I swam over and saw it again. It was a small reflection but could possibly be the side mirror of our vehicle. Perhaps it had gotten lodged in the submerged drift wood. I fed my line out and was shocked as the thing came into view. It was a massive river catfish sitting on the river floor. I had caught the reflection of its eye in my high beam. The fish was at least 4 feet long from nose to tail and nearly two feet wide at its center. I had seen large catfish hauled from the river but none this large. They were too massive to move once they got to this size and caught their prey by simply opening their large mouths in the passing current. I recovered myself and reeled my tether back. I shared my fish story with my fellow divers and we joked about how good it would be to secure one of the big cats and haul it up.

Our last dive was very close to the spillway. The thundering current was deafening and we bounced precariously on our tethers. It was a struggle to keep our balance this close to the spillway. Again I saw a reflection in the water directly in front of me. I felt certain I had found the headlight of our vehicle. I fed tether about 4 feet and reached out to remove the muck from the object. I was still too far from it. I directed my lamp at the object and first saw the massive opened jaws gaping at me. Its mouth was large enough to fit my entire head inside. Only moments earlier I had my arm outstretched to it. As the current bounced me at the end of my tether its jaws widened to catch me. It was the largest river turtle I had ever seen. I panicked.

My thrashing began to snatch at the guide cable and I could hear my fellow divers tapping at the cable. They were signaling me to reel myself back in. I managed to get back to the guide cable in the strong current while keeping my lamp on those massive jaws. I was certain it was coming after me. I had recovered from the shock somewhat but my heart was still racing. It was getting difficult to breathe. I tapped the cable twice quickly and then once again signaling I needed to come up.

I explained to my bewildered team what I had seen. The older boat crewmen said a turtle that size had been spotted over the years but no one had ever gotten close enough to it. It must have been feeding on the large river cats unfortunate enough to get trapped in the current. We speculated the turtle to be well over a hundred years old to reach that size. My fellow divers were intrigued but no one wanted to go down and see for themselves. A voice issued over the radio. The vehicle had been found by the second dive team down stream.

As we packed our gear and headed toward the bank we recounted our river adventure. We tagged the massive turtle with the name Old Man River, providing him the respect he deserved. My healthy fear of the river had returned stronger than ever.

Previously Posted on FullofKnowlege.com

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