To the Rescue

The home where I grew up on Third Street was only a stone's throw away from a rock quarry.  I remember my Mom telling the tale that when some blasting took place at the quarry, a large rock went through the roof of a house in the neighborhood and narrowly missed a baby in a playpen.  I don't know if this story is truth or rumor.

Mom's experience with the quarry was quite different than blasting.  Mom had very acute senses.  Her sense of hearing and smell seemed way above average to me. She told me that one day she was hanging clothes on the line.  As she hung out the clothes she heard a cry of "Help! help!"  She stopped what she was doing and followed the sound to the rock quarry.  She found a boy who had fallen from the rim of the quarry and broken his leg.  She splinted the leg and got the young man help.

We were not allowed to play in the quarry.  I never played on the high rims of it, and I never mentioned playing in the quarry. I take the fifth on my other activities concerning the quarry.

 When I was about thirteen, the neighborhood children and I heard through the grapevine that the fire department would fill part of the quarry with water in the winter to make an ice skating rink if we pulled weeds.  In the fall we pulled weeds, and that winter we had an ice skating rink in the quarry which we enjoyed immensely.