Ever since I can remember, I've belonged at Possum Kingdom lake. My parents built a cabin at what was then Lakeview Lodge in 1959, the year I was born. As a baby I was on a blanket beneath a mesquite tree while my parents worked on the cabin. As a young boy in the 1960's we spent weekends and summers in that 3 room cabin. My dad would fish and set trotlines and I would swim in the lake and wait for the fish to be fried later that night. I learned to swim in Possum Kingdom on a summer day when I fell in the lake walking on rocks around the shoreline. Truly a sink or swim situation. Boathouses and boat docks around the shoreline were rare in those days. Those that were there usually were floated with barrels, were made of corrugated tin and contained what would now be a vintage teak and mahogany inboard that was the treasure of its owner. I remember a boat in a boathouse around 1966 with the name "mama's mink" on the stern, which I assume meant that she wanted a mink coat, he wanted a boat and he won the argument. There were a few crappie houses out on the water where you could pay to fish from the center opening inside the crappie house. The lake was much uninhabited back in those days and very quiet. There were some bars/bait shops/cabins around the lake, such as Rainbow Lodge, Possum Hollow, Bass Hollow, Fox Hollow, Log Cabin, Sand Bar, Baileys Camp, Rock Creek Camp and some others that have come and gone over the years. There were few houses and no lights on the lake so finding them by water required experience. There were no lights at all on the Belding Ranch across the lake. Our cabin faced the Belding ranch from the other side of the lake, and it was completely dark at night. Someday, that unlit, uninhabited ranch land would become Gaines Bend development. I can remember seeing that part of the lake as a wilderness. No homes, no roads. And no idea of the spectacular development it would someday become. Now it's the early 1970's and the 80's and an era of new growth for the lake. Gaines Bend, that vast wilderness that I remembered as a child was about to be my new home as a teen ager. My parents had decided to build a home on Gaines Bend and I couldn't have been happier. I was even happier when I found that the only practical way for me to get to school was to go a mile across the lake in the boat and catch the bus into Graford. Not a bad way to get to school. Living at PK is an ideal of life for a teen ager. My first summer job was pumping gas on the gas dock at Lakeview Lodge. Just imagine, my job was to wait for a boat needing gas, usually with several young girls in bathing suits to look at in those boats, a big plus for a teenage boy, and my uniform was a pair of cutoff jeans, tennis shoes and no shirt. I would love to have that job again. Even for the $1.95 an hour that I made back then. My friends and I spent summer days skiing, swimming, cliff jumping and riding motorcycles. My parents and neighbors fished almost daily, especially when Sand Bass schooled. When the weekend came around, we would find all of our weekender friends usually by going by their place by boat and seeing if they were "up" for the weekend. No cell phones, no texting. We just found each other. The local kids like myself and the weekend kids would all get together and throw a Frisbee around on Sandy Beach, ski a little, build a fire later that night at Sandy Beach or Bug Beach, and someone, it seemed like always had a guitar and some songs to sing. All good things must come to an end, or at least be interrupted. After high school I had to leave the lake for college, but I still managed to come back on the weekends. My father had died a few years earlier and my mom had sold our house, but had bought a small cabin at Sand Bar so I still had my connection to the lake. Possum Kingdom doesn't grow on you, the beauty and the feel of the lake are apparent; it doesn't have to grow on you. Possum Kingdom grows in you and stays a part of you for all your life. I've gone away out of necessity, and I've always come back out of a need to be home. And when I'm gone the lake is always with me. It was a part of my beginning, my growing up and all my years since. Everybody comes back to Possum Kingdom, I don't know of anyone who's only been here once. I always know I'm coming back; I'm just waiting til' it's my time again. My favorite memory of Possum Kingdom? In 2002 a girl on a jet ski came by behind Hells Gate and I yelled for her to stop and talk to me. She did. and two years later we were married. Possum Kingdom always takes care of you and gives you what you really want. It's always home and it always will be.