Charles Creek

SOLD

9x12

Oil on Linen Board

On display at the Jaquelin Jenkins Gallery, Elizabeth City NC

At the intersection of Water Street and Southern Avenue is the Charles Creek Bridge connecting the Elizabeth City Downtown area with the Riverside Community.  Charles Creek empties into the Pasquotank River where these old rusting boat sheds lean on one another near the creek's mouth that sits just north of Riverside where my mother grew up with childhood and lifelong friends Clay Foreman and Virginia Hall.

Clay continues to live in Riverside, and in the summer as a kid I would often catch the Norfolk bound Trailways Bus in Windsor to visit Clay's son,  Paul who had the run of his dad's boat to pull all the neighborhood kids water skiing in the river.  Many times Emmett Winslow would visit too and hop on the bus in Hertford carrying a stack of rock albums under one arm and a slalom water ski under the other.  At the  Elizabeth City bus stop in the lumberyard pick-up would be one of Clay's employees waiting  to drive us to the Foreman house. There would often be another employee riding shotgun, so Emmett and I would hop in the back.  As the old truck would chug across the bridge over Charles Creek headed to Riverside,  I would always see these old boatyard buildings and shelters reflecting off of the water as boats sat tied up to the crooked pylons that lined the grassy banks.

After painting this yesterday, I drove over to Riverside once again and visited with Paul and Phil Hornthal, another Riverside resident and with whom I first became friends with on one of my Foreman visits as a kid. Phil would often ski with us back then and as we sat on Foreman's porch and had a beer late yesterday evening,  I saw the old pier (aka Foreman's dock) where we used to always wait in line to be pulled by the boat.  I will never forget one day, Phil and I had a disagreement about who was next in line and a wrestling match ensued jockeying for the number one position. I quickly ended up in the river with a back buster and had to crawl back on the dock to drip dry in the back of the line.