By Chip Gates
A well-known feature of Reader’s Digest is a section called It Pays to Enrich Your Word Power. Thanks to Alabama Power and a recent event, I have enriched mine, at least by one. I’ll pass that word on, and just in case you’re not up on your Latin phrases, I’m going to throw in a bonus. In the early part of October, 2018, the Alabama Power Company executed a planned but temporary drawdown of Lake Mitchell, something they usually do every 5 years. Among other reasons, the drawdown allows property owners to take care of construction and maintenance on boat docks, piers, seawalls, and so forth. APCO’s Shorelines app referred to this drawdown as dewatering, which in this case is simply the uncovering of land that is normally under water. The app went on to caution against entering the dewatered area to prevent harming protected habitat and wildlife.
Well, mea culpa. I’m guilty. I did it, and with a co-conspirator too, but only with the best of intentions. Area 1A HOBO Representative Chan Aldridge, an avid crappie fisherman, came along as habitat/wildlife monitor and assistant beachcomber. The dewatering allowed us to walk over to the former island just before the mouth of Blue Creek and scour it for plastic and glass bottles, drink cans, flip flops, Styrofoam, snuff cans, broken plastic buckets, etc., etc. It was a preemptive strike ahead of the upcoming fall Lake Clean-up, and it was a profitable trip indeed.
After toting all the trash back to the mainland, we returned to a sandy strip near the northern end of the island, now peninsula. Normally under two to three feet of water, there was now exposed an orderly arrangement of hand-made bricks (see photos by Chan Aldridge).
A well-known feature of Reader’s Digest is a section called It Pays to Enrich Your Word Power. Thanks to Alabama Power and a recent event, I have enriched mine, at least by one. I’ll pass that word on, and just in case you’re not up on your Latin phrases, I’m going to throw in a bonus. In the early part of October, 2018, the Alabama Power Company executed a planned but temporary drawdown of Lake Mitchell, something they usually do every 5 years. Among other reasons, the drawdown allows property owners to take care of construction and maintenance on boat docks, piers, seawalls, and so forth. APCO’s Shorelines app referred to this drawdown as dewatering, which in this case is simply the uncovering of land that is normally under water. The app went on to caution against entering the dewatered area to prevent harming protected habitat and wildlife.
Well, mea culpa. I’m guilty. I did it, and with a co-conspirator too, but only with the best of intentions. Area 1A HOBO Representative Chan Aldridge, an avid crappie fisherman, came along as habitat/wildlife monitor and assistant beachcomber. The dewatering allowed us to walk over to the former island just before the mouth of Blue Creek and scour it for plastic and glass bottles, drink cans, flip flops, Styrofoam, snuff cans, broken plastic buckets, etc., etc. It was a preemptive strike ahead of the upcoming fall Lake Clean-up, and it was a profitable trip indeed.
After toting all the trash back to the mainland, we returned to a sandy strip near the northern end of the island, now peninsula. Normally under two to three feet of water, there was now exposed an orderly arrangement of hand-made bricks (see photos by Chan Aldridge).
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Other single bricks lay nearby, possibly dislodged from this group. Though my middle name is Mason, I am by no means an expert on bricks. But I can tell hand-made brick from more modern day ones, and these were most definitely in the former category.
So what was the purpose of this grouping of bricks? Their location closely coincides with one of the 15 or so structures indicated on the 1919 APCO survey map, structures that would have to be removed before the dam was completed. Perhaps they formed the base of a hearth, or maybe they provided support for a heavy piece of equipment. There was a story here to be told. There were few boats about and it was a nice quiet day, but if the bricks were trying to communicate, their voices were muted by time. 
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Lake Mitchell HOBO, P.O. Box 1324, Clanton, AL 35046
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