Growing up on the Belle Jeff Thomas The Belle River was mostly mud. Sure, a couple okay spots for fishing, some creek bed offshoots with ringneck pheasants, deer and rabbits hiding on the banks, but what stayed with you was always the mud. Mud in your boots, on your skin, under your fingernails. The wet clay smell in your nose hairs, the grey-brown flavor coating your teeth. My childhood was covered in dirt. I wonder if they still let kids wander around with loaded shotguns the way I used to. I might have been the last eight year old in Michigan to get in on that action. I grew up in a modular home. We had ten acres on the north side. After eleven years, my parents bought five acres one road over. My dad built a house and we all moved to the south side of the river. After Hurricane Katrina, insurance companies started requiring us to have flood insurance which drove my dad crazy. He told the insurance man “I’m paying for flood insurance and 11 months out of the year I can walk across the fucking thing.” He soured on it, he soured on a lot of things.
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