Tuesday, February 7, 2012

A few local pics



Here's our iron bridge.  As you can see from my first post and the street banner below, we use this old, single suspension relic as identification for small town promotion.  It's very narrow and I swear I remember (I am NOT making this one up) being a passenger in the car my sister, Stacey, was driving when she PASSED a car on this bridge.  For real!  I'm 95% sure it happened.


This gazebo is on the river front, as you can see, and was the brain child of one of our local men many years ago.  He wrote an article about being a boy and attending concerts in this area.  That idea sparked a movement to enhance the river's edge and we now have two other gazebos and a board walk that stretches for quite a ways in two different parts of town.

Our river used to be a stinky mess when I was a kid and many, many people have worked tirelessly to change the condition over the years.

Several years ago there was a water ski team that performed during our 4th of July celebration.  As we lined the railing along the boardwalk to watch the young girls with smiling faces ski their little hearts out you could tell who was a local resident and who wasn't by the looks on THEIR faces.

People my age had looks of horror frozen in place and many were praying those darling skiers didn't fall into what we remembered as toxic water.  The others were cheering and loving every moment.

No one's swimming in this river these days, now that it's cleaner, but the houses on the river banks aren't turning yellow anymore.

People walk along the board walk all the time now and come to this gazebo every summer Saturday night to listen to live music.
Life is good here.

3 comments:

  1. I love the bridge. And I can't believe the water used to be that bad. My husband wants to canoe it sometime and I haven't exactly encouraged the idea. I think Allegan is lovely and shows so much promise. ~~Bliss

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  2. A canoe trip on the river is great. If it's not your thing tell him to find a friend.
    When we lived up on Thomas St. we watered the lawn with river water. Dad told us we had to shower immediately afterward if we played in the sprinklers.
    We have friends who live on Lake Allegan (better known to locals as the Kalamazoo River) and they swim in it all the time.

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  3. Hey, you forgot to mention that the live music at the gazebo includes SASS from time to time!

    We're transplants from afar, and we really love living in this town. Well, I guess technically we live in one of the townships. The waterfront and boardwalk are lovely. Now, if we just had a few more restaurants downtown!

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