The small, one-bedroom house I grew up in sat on my grandparents' property, right next to their house. Our house was the house that grandpa and grandma and mom lived in during the time he was building their current house. Grandpa Arlie built both of the houses himself, and he called them the "big house" and the "little house." They were on the corner of 5th and Chicago Blvd, but only the big house remains now. Many of the streets in Algona were of the tar & gravel variety. There were no curbs, and most of the roads in town were small enough that they weren't even striped. Our street was one of those.
Across the little road from us was where the Garcia family had a big blueberry farm. They had two kids, John and Marie, that were in the same age range as my brothers and sisters were, so we played together often. Having a blueberry farm right across the street from us meant there was yet another interesting place for kids to play. I'm sure their parents expressed displeasure more than once about us kids running through the neat rows of towering (to little kids) blueberry bushes.
There was a electric company access road that ran north and south through our little town of Algona, and the back length of the Garcia's blueberry farm bordered it. It was called the interurban road then, but has since been turned into a paved bicycle trail called the Interurban Trail. back then it was nothing more than a meandering, poorly-maintained dirt road that consisted mainly of twin tracks that vehicle tires had worn into the grass-covered ground. It was sprinkled liberally with dips, holes, bumps, and puddles. Running parallel to it was a set of railroad tracks running higher up on an elevated bed. Between those two there was an almost endless potential for exploration and fun. Things like exploring the sloping side of the railroad bed for snails and doing things along the train tracks that we weren't supposed to do. You know, like placing things on the rails for trains to flatten or searching for loose spikes to pull out of the rail bed. In the area that ran between the interurban road and the train tracks was a varied landscape of grasses, bushes, and marshes. One time we found a raft that someone had lovingly crafted out of short lengths of creosote-covered telephone poles. They were joined together with old lumber that spanned their width, and attached with old, rusty railroad spikes. We had a great time pushing that raft around in the marshes with poles in the manner of Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn.
There was a electric company access road that ran north and south through our little town of Algona, and the back length of the Garcia's blueberry farm bordered it. It was called the interurban road then, but has since been turned into a paved bicycle trail called the Interurban Trail. back then it was nothing more than a meandering, poorly-maintained dirt road that consisted mainly of twin tracks that vehicle tires had worn into the grass-covered ground. It was sprinkled liberally with dips, holes, bumps, and puddles. Running parallel to it was a set of railroad tracks running higher up on an elevated bed. Between those two there was an almost endless potential for exploration and fun. Things like exploring the sloping side of the railroad bed for snails and doing things along the train tracks that we weren't supposed to do. You know, like placing things on the rails for trains to flatten or searching for loose spikes to pull out of the rail bed. In the area that ran between the interurban road and the train tracks was a varied landscape of grasses, bushes, and marshes. One time we found a raft that someone had lovingly crafted out of short lengths of creosote-covered telephone poles. They were joined together with old lumber that spanned their width, and attached with old, rusty railroad spikes. We had a great time pushing that raft around in the marshes with poles in the manner of Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn.
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