THE WAY IT WAS…
…Going to the river
by Al Eicher

Growing up in a town with a river to the south and west and less than a mile away was a place where my friends and I spent a lot of time in our childhood days. The town is Pigeon, and the river has the same name. The Pigeon River actually snakes around the community and flows northward making its way to Caseville. There are seven bridges in the vicinity, and over the years we fished off most of these structures. The river was more than just a place to go fishing; it was a place for 12-year-olds to do things you couldn't do at home, and we didn't get in trouble. Keep in mind in the 1940s and early 50s we didn't have swimming pools or an ice rink in town. We created our own fun and games.

Back then kids got together and organized a neighborhood baseball or softball game in just 10 or 15 minutes, and many times the girls played ball when we didn't have enough players. My group of seven boyhood friends organized our trips to the river in much the same way, especially during the summer months when we were on school vacation.

One of my friends by the name of Sherman got an idea of building a boat in his backyard. The plan was to haul it to the river on our little Radio Flyer red wagons when fully constructed. We didn't have any money, so we went to get wood at several grocery stores as orange crates had thin boards and were easy to cut. We also went to the junk wood pile at the lumber yard to get boards of any length. You may wonder how you can build a boat to hold two or three boys out of scrap lumber. We had one other element that made it possible: Tar was the key to making the boat float. We went to the road commission office in town and asked about getting a block of tar, which we knew was just laying in a pile at a fenced in area by the building. The supervisor, when he heard what we were doing, gave us some pieces of tar, which we hauled to Sherman's house in our red wagons.

It took about three days to build the boat, which was about seven feet long and four feet wide. When it came time to put the tar on the boat, we turned it upside down to make the application of tar. A small fire pit was dug in Sherman's backyard, and above it we hung a bucket full of tar chips, which were broken up with an axe. I remember an old broom handle was used to suspend the pail of tar over the fire. It took forever to heat the tar, but eventually it was ready to pour. Our first problem occurred when removing the pail from the fire pit and carrying it to the boat. As Sherman and I were carrying the broom handle with the hot pail of tar between us, the pail slid down the broom handle toward Sherman. The hot pail of tar now spilled on Sherman's tennis shoe giving him a very bad hot foot…try and get a laced up tennis shoe off when it is covered with tar. I tried to help, and I, too, got splashed with a big drop of tar on my right hand, of which, I have a scar to this day. Sherman and I recovered, but we lost about half the tar on the ground. That night we climbed the fence at the road commission office and got more tar. We all had a few guilt feelings taking the tar without permission. The next day we finished putting tar on the bottom. You can imagine on a hot day in July what a dripping mess of tar we had in getting our wagons under this upside down boat hull. We were anxious to get the boat to the river, so with two or three toy wagons four of us hauled it to the river south of town. Several farmers with pickup trucks slowed down to see what we were doing, but nobody offered to haul it the rest of the way. They probably didn't want dripping tar in the truck.

As we reached the road to Elkton we decided to haul it through the road at the cemetery to the riverbank. Eventually we got it to the river's edge and in the water. Sherman was first to try it but paddling was difficult; when a second person got in there was only about four inches of free board. It also tipped over quite easy, but that gave us an excuse to go swimming. Naturally, we were always afraid of the big snapping turtles getting a hold of us. There were also a lot of leeches in the river, which we had to scrape off with a stick. We were aware of another danger: There were often times dairy cattle down by the river and sometimes we had to watch out for the big bull mixed in with the herd. Someone told us to never wear a red shirt around a bull, so we never did.

We did a lot of exploring in the woods by the river especially west of town. Large wild grapevines had grown into the canopy of many larger trees. We cut the vines loose about three feet from the ground and with a running start could swing like Tarzan, some times for 30 to 40 feet. It was great fun!

We fished the river in the spring and summer for pike, bass, catfish and sometimes we caught a perch. In the summer we would get on top of the old cement bridge on the Pigeon/Owendale road to watch the large 10 to 20 pound carp swim back and forth. One day while fishing for bass, a big 10 pound carp hit the night crawler bait and nearly pulled me in the river. It took about 20 minutes to land. It was the biggest fish I ever caught! I had a hard time carrying it home on my bike, but I had to get a photograph and see if my mother would cook it. I got the photo, but she wouldn't cook it. I cut it up in small pieces as my mother said it would make better fertilizer than a meal for the family.

West of town, by the river, the giant oak trees on the Harry Leslie farm were 80 to 100 feet tall. Our gang often carried a brown bag lunch on our five to six-hour trips to the river. We would climb to the tops of those big trees and eat our lunch, with a bottle of orange pop, and what a view we had of the town and farmland in the summer. Back then a bottle of pop was a nickel.

During the winter, Saturdays were about the only day to go to the river. I remember several times when the weather was just right we could crawl under the river ice that had developed when the river flooded in January. When the river was back to its normal level, it was about three feet lower. We ate our lunch between the two layers and crawled around for a hundred feet or more under the ice...it was like being in another world.

I mentioned we didn't have an ice rink in Pigeon. As a kid, playing hockey, we found some of the best ice was under the bridges over the river and we didn't have to shovel if off. When you fell down, you could also see through the clear ice and see small fish below. The river was like a nature center and a classroom for our gang…no one ever got hurt, no broken bones, the most dangerous thing we did was float down the river on large cakes of ice during the spring breakup of ice. We occasionally got in trouble with our parents when we came home covered with tar whenever we used our homemade boat… and That's The Way It Was Going To The River.

Al and Dave Eicher provide television production services to corporations, ad agencies, and nonprofit organizations. They also create Michigan town histories and offer lecture services on a variety of Michigan History Events. You may contact them at 248-333-2010; Email: info@program-source.com; Website: www.program-source.com; Address: PSI, P.O. Box 444, Bloomfield Hills, MI 48303.