Julia Elsee's love affair with
the lake started
with a friend's talking about "moonlight
nights"
Gary Ridout has been compiling personal
memories of Holt Lake's residents for a
number of years. We're sharing selected
samples from time to time with readers of
the Sun. Here's a transcript from Gary's
August 2008 conversation with Julia
Elsee, who who passed
away March 26 at age 96....
Julia
on her deck overlooking Holt Lake
with daughter Allison on the Fourth
of July in 2018.
|
Before Walter and I were married in 1957, he
had worked on the tobacco market in Smithfield
for eleven years for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco
Company. He loved Smithfield so much that we
decided that this would be the place to call
home. We bought a house on First Street in the
South Smithfield area.
Our connection with Holt Lake began when we
joined the Episcopal Church and met Sara and
Frank Skinner. Actually,
Frank had operated a tobacco warehouse, so
Walter had known him for several years through
tobacco circles. Frank told Walter that he and
Dick Reynolds (R.J. Reynolds Jr., one of four
children) became fast friends when they were
students at North Carolina State College.
Dick owned a lot of land on the south side of
Holt Lake as well as a house on the
prettiest point on the lake. He struck a
bargain with Frank: that he, Dick, would bring
the liquor if Frank would bring the girls, and
they could party every weekend in his house on
the lake. This
was in the 1930s. Happy days!
Some years later, when their "wild oats
sewing" days were over (somewhat!), Dick sold
the house and all the property on Holt Lake to
Frank Skinner for $1.00 --- one dollar! Talk about a
close friendship. This land
was the origin of Berry Downs.
In
1965, I was collecting for the United Fund and
I went to the home of Winifred and Norman
Shepherd. Winifred
was Allen Wellons’s maternal aunt. The
Shepherds' house was on Holt Lake across the
canal from Frank Skinner's. It is now
Steve Bryant’s house. Beautiful
then and beautiful now. When I saw
that house, it really made me want to live at
Holt Lake.
I just thought that living on the water would
be great fun. I started talking to Winifred
about living at Holt Lake and forgot all about
collecting for the United Fund! She told
me that the moonlit nights were so pretty on
the lake. Then I got that in my head --- those
moonlit nights.
Up
the lake from the Shepherds' there was a piece
of property covered with azaleas. I learned
that it was owned by Reuben Johnson who lived
in a shack on the property (now owned by Pete
and Dana Johnson). I fell
head over heels in love with that property. I
got the impression that Mr. Johnson would sell
but he would never say for how much. In the
long run price didn’t matter because Walter
wasn’t the least bit interested in leaving our
wonderful neighborhood in South Smithfield.
A couple of years went by and I could never
get it out of my head how much I wanted to
live on Holt Lake. I loved the views from the
golf course and the clubhouse. I
especially loved the sunsets. Finally,
Walter began to realize how important Holt
Lake was to me, and I could tell he was
beginning to get excited about finding
property for us.
Property on the north side of the lake was
almost non-existent. People were either living
on their land or had future plans for it. In 1967, we
heard that Dalma and Jean Adams might be
interested in selling their wooded lot (the
lot I live on now) that they used mainly as a
getaway place for fish fries. But they
weren’t going to give it away. Soon Walter and
Dalma started talking money, and we finally
won out. We bought the lot on November 16,
1968. We finished our house and moved in on
September 29, 1971.
The house was perfect for Walter because it
was close enough to the golf course for him to
be able to keep his golf cart at home and it
was within hollering distance to the pro shop. It was
perfect for our children because we built a
pier and bought a boat and they and all their
friends learned to ski. Every
afternoon from spring 'til fall our pier was
cluttered with kids skiing and swimming in the
lake. At
last! It
all made me so happy and it still
does.
I loved to swim, too, and used to swim late in
the afternoons.
The water seemed so soft in comparison
to pool water.
But I had to keep a special bathing
suit for lake swimming because the water
stained our bathing suits. Long before we
bought our property, homeowners had the water
tested by people at N.C. State to see why it
was so dirty. They
learned that the water was not dirty but was
tinted dark brown by the bark of the cypress
trees.
For a while, I was not able to swim in Holt
Lake. In the early 1980s the dam broke and all
the water leaked out. The lake looked like the
surface of the moon. You could see Black Creek
in the middle of the lake bed as it probably
flowed in the 1830s (before the first dam was
built). A
lot of people came out with metal detectors to
look for rings and coins that might have
fallen off piers or boats.
Members of the homeowners association
contributed $5,000 each to build a new dam. Soon we
had a fine new lake. But with
the water came another problem.
One afternoon, we were sitting on our terrace
when a huge snake went barreling down toward
the lake. Apparently,
while the lake bed was dry, the snakes had to
find water and they made good use of the ponds
on the golf course. In all, we saw about six
or eight big snakes travel through our yard
and into the lake. That did it for me --- no
more lake swimming.
Walter kept telling me I didn’t have anything
to worry about, that snakes were more afraid
of me than I was of them. So I said:
"I’ll go in again right after you do." He didn’t
like to swim anyway so that was the end of
that.
But that’s OK, because Holt Lake still has the
moonlit nights and the most beautiful sunsets
you will ever see.
Previous installments in this series may be
viewed with these links:
2-28-19 / 3-28-19 / 4-25-19 / 7-11-19 / 8-8-19 / 9-12-19
/ 1-2-20 / 10-22-20 / 1-28-21
