The OLd Dredge Hole Ain't What It Used To Be

A good friend of mine keeps his sailboat in the docking area off the small canal that runs from the river on the far side of the house in view.   This is a far cry from the days of my youth when the water that you see now as part of the North East river was then a stretch of rough cow pasture not yet to be dredged night and day for several years for enormous supplies of gravel that were carried away constantly by barge to Baltimore and beyond.  And the cow pasture gave way to a natural marsh that would be inviolate under today's conservation laws but which has long since been back-filled with the spoilage from the gravel operation to become an extensive tract of expensive water front homes.  To most it looks lovely today, and even to my eye this home in particular seems scaled to the waterfront  but I sorely miss the rural expanse of pasture, marsh and woods that stretched from the old Ford home (then later the town office ) some four to six thousand feet to the old mansion at Shady Beach with its' Point House and Boat House and Windmill structure where my old honorary Uncle Dee Dee would patrol the shore to chase away the scoundrels that were building camp fires as they sport fished along his shore.