The Stock Tank Mystery

“The Stock Tank Mystery”. Sounds like the title of a Hardy Boys book, doesn’t it? But in reality, it’s an on-going mystery I’ve been meaning to do a post about for a while now, and it’s finally deepened to the point that I have to.

For those of you unfamiliar with stock tanks, they’re ponds that are usually created by bulldozing up shallow walls of dirt on three sides of some gently sloping ground to form a reservoir in which rainwater collects. There was one in the field on the other side of the creek from where I grew up. I nicknamed it The Volcano. They’re used for watering livestock, hence the name, but this being Texas, more often than not they’re dry. You can tell how much rain we’ve gotten by whether or not there’s any water in the stock tanks.

There’s one about a mile and a half up the road from where we live. The image above isn't the actual tank, it's just one I found online, but the one I'm talking about looks similar. A few years ago, I was driving past it when I noticed a small boat sitting in the middle of it. I’m not a boat guy so I can’t go into details, but it looked to me like the kind of boat you’d take out fishing on a lake. It sat there, and the next time it rained and the tank got enough water in it, the boat floated and drifted around a little. But then the water dried up, and the boat sat there on the dry, cracked dirt.

Time passed.

And then, out of the blue, a second boat appeared, very similar to the first. Now there were two of them sitting in the dry stock tank, floating a little when there was water in it, and then sitting some more.

More time passed.

Then, about a year ago, something else appeared in the stock tank, but it wasn’t another boat. No, it was the tail assembly of a small airplane. Just sitting there with the boats, but it doesn’t move when water collects. I guess because it’s built to fly, not to float.

Now we come to today. I was driving by this morning and I noticed something new had been added to the collection. Sitting in the middle of the dry stock tank is a four-or-five-foot-tall replica of the Statue of Liberty, uplifted torch and all. I just kind of shook my head and drove on because I had places to be, but when I went back by later I checked again, and my eyes hadn’t played tricks on me. The Statue of Liberty was still there, beckoning the huddled masses to the other side of the stock tank.

I have no explanation for any of this, but never mind what I said about the Hardy Boys. This is starting to feel more like I’m living in a Harry Stephen Keeler novel, for those of you familiar with his work. Maybe someday I’ll find out the connection between two fishing boats, a small airplane tail assembly, and the Statue of Liberty. But for now, I’ll just have to remain puzzled.