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Cascade Park...back then

Back about 1944 my family along with another gentleman bought the boat concession at Cascade Park.

At that time we had 12 rowboats and a boat they called the launch.  It was driven by an old Chevy motor and transmission operated in the center with a steering wheel.  The automotive rearend was also used with paddle wheels mounted in place of wheels.  They would just put it in high gear and pop the clutch, and away it would go.

After a couple years the other gentleman was caught doing something illegal and my father would not have any thing to do with him any more. They decided that the other gentleman would take the boats and my father would keep the rental of the lake.  My father went out and had a man who had some steel sheets make us 12 new rowboats. He then went up to Meadville and purchased two, 16-foot motor boats that had been built for somebody else, but, who had canceled their order. Dad had them altered with three bench seats installed in each of them. We went out and bought two, 5-horse power motors -- one a Johnson and the other a Sea King from Montgomery Ward. A couple years later we went to Martin motors which were 7 horse power.

We operated each year from Declaration Day to Labor Day. A week before opening one year, somebody bashed down the door to our boathouse and stole two of our motors.  The one motor stolen was from a dealer up in Sharon who had loaned it to us for opening day while he had one of ours in for repair.  They were very nice about it and understood our unfortunate situation. They sold us another motor at their cost. This company was Heiges Brothers or something like that.

In order to attract people down to the lake,  where we were, my father purchased  a couple of monkeys, Pete and Repeat. They were very elderly and easy to take care of.  After they passed away my father sent away to Chase Wild Animal Farm in Egypt, Massachusetts and purchased two more monkeys.  The first were spider monkeys. These were ringtails and I still carry a scar on my finger from the first time I took them out of their delivery crate.  We kept them at home during the winter.  One passed away and we still had Duke for a few more years.  He escaped at home one day and spent three days up in the local trees eating mostly pears from our neighbor's tree. Finally my mother coaxed him down low enough to eat some doped up jelly bread.  He slept for two days once he dropped out of the tree he was in. This tamed him down quite a bit.  I was able to let him run free outside some days and he loved to plow across the rain spouts cleaning the spinners out from the maple trees and watching them fly down. When it was time to go back into the house I would go in and hide behind the door.  His curiosity would get the best of him wondering where I was and as soon as he came in the door, I would close it behind him and he would run for his cage and slam the door to his cage closed when he entered.

The big days of the year were Declaration Day, Catholic Day, and Labor Day.  We sold the boats in 1953.  There was a gentleman who lived in Ohio who would come to our house in the summer when we had Duke in a cage in our garage.  He liked him very much and wanted to buy him from us.  My mother found out that he was in the furniture upholstering business and they made a deal that if he redid my mother's couch he could have the monkey. He was still alive a couple years later but then that was all we knew of him.

It was a lot of fun growing up out there during the summer and I made a lot of friends, mostly those who lived in that area and who worked for us from time to time.  We had a deal that anybody who worked in the park that, mutually, we could take advantage of the other concessions free -- rides, swimming, etc.  I don't know if the other owners knew this, but it worked for us kids.  We lost the lake a couple times by floods but the dam was repaired.  The last time a flood took the dam it was deemed not worth replacing.  The reason the dam went when it flooded was because there was a release valve at the lower part of the lake and the city never gave it proper maintenance. When they needed to use it, it was all rusted and unable to be opened to relieve the pressure.

My sister Wanda's first job was working in the ticket booth at 15 years old and her boyfriend whom she later married and to whom she is still married  operated one of our motor boats on busy days. Since we were operating the boats for about 9 years, I could go on and on about the many experiences I had.  I can remember my dad chasing some big kid with an oar because he was feeding lit cigarettes to the monkey to burn him.  But that's another story.

Some of the kids who worked for us were Jim and Kenny Bridge who lived in Sharon; Carl Arnold who lived down below the park with his sister Ruthie; Ronnie Robinson (deceased)  Clarence (Poochie) Shields, later to be a preacher;  Chuck (Humpy) McClimonds and brother Harry (Chuck later a restaurant owner in the Boston area); Gene Craigle (deceased) and Leroy Clark still living in New Castle, both of whom tore down an old railroad car to get lumber to build our first boathouse. The lumber was oak and I can still hear the carpenter cussing when he tried to drive nails into it.

Some of the GIs recovering from the war in the Deshon Annex above the park would come down and would ride free.  There was a lady who brought her blind boy down to ride the motor boat.  He always received a double or triple ride for the 18-cent ticket we charged.  Row boat rental was 40 cents an hour.  Sometimes kids late at night would deliberately sink one usually in the middle of the lake.  What they didn't realize was they picked the wrong location because come daybreak they could easily be spotted since that was the shallowest part of the lake.

Usually the kids coming to the park were there to have fun and most of them never gave us any problem.  There were a few unruly ones because of alcohol, but at that time most of the ones getting high were the ones smelling model airplane cement.  My family decided to sell the concession when I decided to enlist in the Marine Corps. 

Paul Dewberry’s memories of the Boat Concession at Cascade Park.