Notes from Dr. Sam

Good Day,

I hope this note finds you well.

As many of you know, I was born and raised in Augusta, Arkansas in the White River Delta. The farm where I grew up was four miles west of the Cache Rive and three miles east of the White River. Just north of Augusta is an ox-bow lake connected to the White River called Taylor Bay. 

The Bay is five miles long and has very little current so that it is safe for even small kids to swim. I can remember feeling sorry for the kids of McCrory and Cotton Plant because they didn’t have this wonderful luxury. From May until early October, when we weren’t working, we were at the Bay. 

Sometime in the early 20th century, a group of local families built a clubhouse on the Bay at the mouth of Goose Pond Slough. The Outing Club, (the name had a different connotation than it does now) was a large wooden building built on tall stilts, well above the yearly spring floods. 

A deep, screened-in porch surrounded the building on three sides. On the front of the building were wide stairs leading to the ground. The interior of the building was one large communal room with restrooms and a kitchen. The Club sat on a modest bluff with steps down to the water. At the bottom of the steps stretched a small boat dock and ready access to the water. 

When I was a teenager, one or more of the kids in our group were members of the Outing Club and had a ski boat. Water skiing was one of our favorite pastimes. 

Also high on the list of our pastimes were parties at the Outing Club. These took place on the weekend evenings and were impromptu affairs, generally an excuse to play, dance, flirt with the girls, and drink beer (yes, some alcohol was regularly involved). I fell in love at least once a day during those summers. 

In the early 1960s, Percy Faith recorded and released an instrumental version of the song, A Summer Place, from a movie of the same name the year before. For the next two years that song became our anthem, and it played continuously at the Outing Club. I can clearly remember sitting on the front steps, watching the sun go down, listening to the gentle sounds of the music and thinking, “It couldn’t get much better than this.” 

Interestingly, Augusta was a town of 2,000 people, mostly farmers. After high school, we all went our separate ways and never returned to live there; despite that, we have stayed close. There is a group of guys from my class and the class below us who still regularly celebrate our birthdays together most years. There is also a group of girls, who call themselves the Augusta Girls, who regularly travel together. 

There is something to be said for that idyllic time and place in history.

Have a good journey,

Sam

 Dr. Sam Taggart is a retired doctor/writer/marathon runner who practiced in Benton for 45 years. He recently released For Every Family, A Family Doctor: a history of the modern Family Medicine Movement in Arkansas. His other books include Country Doctors of Arkansas, The Public’s Health, With a Heavy Heart and We All Hear Voices.