My Back Pages - Green Lake

It may be fair to assume that one does not live in the nicest part of town when your nearest wilderness contains a 10 acre chemical dump.

Such was the case in my idyllic childhood where, a few blocks from my house, a lake of caustic lime (sodium hydroxide) existed for many years, a by-product of an air-reduction plant that manufactured industrial gases for welding and other uses. Children were warned to stay away from the pond. With its eerie cyan-green hue and stifling odor, we were aware of the hazard but this is where we liked to play. If there had been a lot of rain, the lake was big, if it had been dry, the lake bed was exposed—a gooey mess of chemicals said to cause severe burns if left on the skin for any length of time. There were also pipes of super concentrated chemicals; they ran right into the river.

If you were careful, you could walk all around this pit on the firmer areas (wear boots just in case) somewhat similar to walking on another planet, or so we imagined. There were no fences, only a rusting warning sign. People would dump tires in the alkaline lake, earning it the name of “The Tire Farm.” After a while it seemed as if the tires were emerging from a primeval ooze. No one had a sense of the environment in those days. A photo of mine depicting this mess ended up on the front page of the local newspaper and a lot of tsk-tsking was done so the pit was eventually cleared; the lime was used to treat fields that had become too acidic. They built a freeway over the whole area, so now this place is completely obliterated. Lord knows where the tires ended up.

Located close to the Mississippi River, with subsidized housing (and lots of kids) nearby. It was their nearest playground. When it was finally drained and filled (in the late 70s) I-94 was built over the site.



I spent a good deal of time there, it was my “gateway to nature”.

Children can imagine a paradise out of next to nothing, if they have to.

“But now… when that world is no more… the spirits rise up from the well of oblivion. People and pictures from a vanished world are reincarnated and assume a significance which was hidden at the time.” ~ Halldór Laxness, The Fish Can Sing