March 3rd, 2020 : A Connecticut Yankee

No not King Arthur's turf, in Hartford CT, which was built at the confluence of the Park(has also been called Little and Hog), and
Connecticut(called the Great early on), rivers. The Park was only 2.3 miles long but ended up right through the middle of town so
a natural trash and garbage disposal system.

In 1925 the Yankee (formerly Dixie) Gas Station on Wells street a couple blocks from the State Capitol, shows where they dumped
used lubricants down the bank.
That'll show them damn weeds.



Starting in 1940 up to the 80’s the Army Corps of Engineers moved the river underground, ostensibly to curb flooding.
Now it’s completely buried you can’t see the nasty things it carries.


link

Must have been about 1978, and I was 10. My friend up the street had a cool sandbox right next to her house, in a narrow area between the house and garage. Not so much a deliberate sand box, but just that a load of sand was dumped there to help with drainage or something. As far as we were concerend, it was a sandbox and we played in it all the time.

But then the father started dumping used motor oil in the sand and tell us not to dig in those areas. It became too hard to keep track of where he had dumped the stuff, and I dug into the mess once. So we stopped playing in that sandbox.

You tell kids today that times were different back then, but they have no idea. Not one part of that experience would sound familiar to them. Playing outside? Sandbox? Used motor oil dumped on the ground?

"H. G. Murk & Co." on the building is a nice touch.