Ralph,  They paved the creek bed??????  Why?  Isn't that illegal???  Did
the fish like it that way??  Ruth




At 10:44 AM -0500 2/6/03, Ralph Walter wrote:
In a message dated 2/6/2003 10:27:07 AM Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

My earliest construction memories are of the hydro dynamic. Great fun could
be had damming up the slow meandering flow of French Creek in the summer.
We would build communities along the edges of the flow and then flood them
by damming the creek. Little did I realize then that I would make friends
in later life with Crow Indians whose past relationship with our government
had yielded the same results with their long houses and sacred lands.



I, too, engaged in hydrodynamic activities in my yout', in La Ballona ("the
whale, for our non-Spanish speaking friends) creek behind our house in LA.
What had been a natural creek with banks probably 25' high (which is to say
the creek bed was about 25' below grade on either side had had its banks
paved (but not it's bed) before I toddled on the scene.  We made dams,
built walkable bridges, threw  large numbers of rocks, etc.  Then when I
was probably about 10, they decided to pave the creek bed and it was never
so much fun anymore.  Sometime's we'd take fluorescent lamps (not the
fixture, just the lamp) and hurl them, Zeus-like downhill. THAT was fun;
didn't have no damn EPA telling you what little boys could throw in them
days, no sir. Looks like the Los Angeles River now, which is to say a large
concrete-lined trench, with a little water down there somewhere.  Sigh.

Ralph

--
Ruth Barton
[log in to unmask]
Westminster, VT

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