Cutting Ice

This is a recent - 05Ma4'14 - photo of a river that has been running into the Chesapeake Bay for a long long time.  So in a blink of time ago geologically speaking, but some few years before I was born, a man by the name of Harry Harvey owned a fish-landing building just past where the present day Upper Bay Museum now stands (large building upper left) which played a part in a story told to several twelve to thirteen year-old boys, myself included, by Virginia Shepperd our Sunday school teacher at the Methodist church.  She was a gorgeous young lady at the time probably late twenties or so and we all adored her and her patrician manner.  At this time of my life the river looked very similar to the above photo but was probably fifteen to twenty feet narrower - before numerous dredging ventures had widened and deepened the waterway to about the location from which I took this photograph.  In shortened form her story was about when she was in high school and on a full moon wintery evening the boys and girls had gathered here at the 'wharf' to ice-skate down the river for a mile or so and then return.  The boys being like all boys of all ages immediately took off down river in grand display of speed and form intended to impress the young ladies that more decorously skated slowly after.  Unknown to the skaters Harry, owner of the fish-landing, had been cutting ice just below his building that very afternoon.  Ice of at least a foot or more in thickness that would be stored in his Ice-House with layers of saw-dust covering each layer so that he would have enough ice to keep his fish cold and fresh throughout the summer ahead.  As Virginia and the girls came round the bend they could see and hear the boys yelling in icy voices as they scrambled frantically to come icy-wet back from the open waters onto the ice.  Very luckily indeed nobody was lost under the ice and all had a story that has lasted at least two generations in the then little town of North East.