This afternoon, starting at 4 o’clock, a series of events to dedicate Humboldt’s new Neosho River Park will unfold just west of town.
Tours of the park, which includes a mini amphitheater and safe and easy-to-use fishing facilities, will start the festivities. Official dedication is at 5 o’clock.
More than half a century ago, the park was one of my haunts, but it was much different than today. A gigantic tree — I remember it as being a cottonwood — had a prominent presence and a circular road wove its way through the area of brush and other trees, giving access to the river dam.
In the spring Dad and I spent many an evening perched at either end of the dam dangling lines with live minnows for bait. That’s when small schools of big, black river crappie would work their way upstream, thinking about spawning and also looking for a succulent meal — minnows, we hoped — before getting down to business.
We seldom caught many. A good night would be eight to 10, but it didn’t take many for a meal. They usually weighed a pound or two.
When the weather heated up in July, with school out and few other things to occupy a kid of the ’50s, I’d traipse down to the dam hole, launch a hook baited with kernels of sweet corn and hope a carp took a liking.
I never carried carp home — Mom didn’t want to fuss with trying to make them edible — but it was fun to hook into a four- or five-pounder and have the tussle of landing it.
By August, when daytime temperatures jumped to triple digits, several of us would bicycle to the river, raced into the shallow riffle south of the dam and tumble along in water that never got more than two or three feet deep for quite a distance.
We were 10 or 12 at the time. A little later, in 1957 when we were 14, Humboldt’s swimming pool opened, and we shifted there. That a lot of girls also enjoyed the pool probably had something to do with our decision to forego the river.
Still later, when in high school, there were evenings when wife Beverly and I would take a little sashay through what today is the park, and stop for a minute or two to admire reflection of the moon on the river’s surface as it rose in the east.
Maybe she’ll go along with me to the park’s dedication this afternoon. That would be fitting reprise.
River park always was there
