By: Stan Jordan
While sitting here at my desk in March 2017, my mind and body is down by the park, in the river and the date is around the summer of 1934 or so.
Like every other summer day, we three boys have a can full of worms or night crawlers and we are fishing for carp, bullheads, catfish, red horse or anything that will bite. We keep all we catch.
We knew the water well, all the way from the riffles and the east curve to Knights Deep Hole. We knew where you could wade or have a dandy sandbar and swimming hole, but past the over head wires was a no no.
Those wires was the electricity from the end of Wilcox Street, across the river to the Snook Farm. The water gets a little deeper on past the wires and we were to stay east of them.
In the summer, the water all the way from the end of Wilcox St. straight to the big east bend of the Maumee is plenty safe for wading or whatever, but across the river on the north side, down by the big east bend is very deep and dangerous.
Back in the 1860 to 1880 the Antwerp Furnace was just up over the hill across US 24 and the railroad and they dug limestone out of the river and made lime for the smelting of ore. My dad always warned us of that quarry.
In my time, there was a lot of boys who enjoyed the Maumee River and I hope that a lot of all ages will come and use the recreation facilities, as I certainly have a lot of fond memories.
See ya!
