We were three high school buddies from Lewisburg. Dave, Harold, and I had played ball together, we had gone to school together, and as boys, we had spent hours and hours fishing on the Greenbrier River. Through the years, Dave and I have stayed in touch, but I lost track of Harold about 60 years ago. He contacted me through CvilleBuzz and we have been great pen pals for the last 7 or 8 years. A couple weeks ago, we decided it was time for the three of us to get together and what better place than a cottage on the Greenbrier River at Caldwell, just a few miles from our boyhood homes.
When I had moved from Beckley to Lewisburg, one of the first things that struck me was the beauty of the Greenbrier River and the lush valley though which it flowed.
The Greenbrier is a gentle river, not very deep, not very fast and it remains the last major river in West Virginia to flow its entire length without man-made impediments or dams.
The Greenbrier River kicks off its 162-mile journey in Pocahontas County and ends its journey in Hinton, connecting with the New River. Its major tributaries include Deer Creek, Knapp’s Creek, Spring Creek, Anthony Creek, Howard Creek, Second Creek, and Muddy Creek, all great trout streams, so the water flowing through the heart of limestone country is clean and fresh and pure. The Greenbrier is primarily known for its smallmouth bass – plentiful but not exceedingly large. An 18-incher is considered a trophy.
On our second day at the cottage, we piled in my car and revisited our old haunts and homes in Lewisburg. We took a trip through the local cemetery as name after name of old friends, teachers, parents of most all our friends brought back memories. It had been nearly a lifetime that Harold and I needed to catch up on.
We all agreed at the end of or short stay that we were among the luckiest people in the world to have lived in a small town like Lewisburg in the 1950s and to have had the added benefit of fishing and then returning to the Greenbrier River.
