FISHED IN DUCK CREEK

Away Back in the Years Gone By

And Landed Many Strings Out of It, Too.

Particulary Interesting Chapter in the Early Day Series

Potato Field Where the Office of The Enterprise Now Is

A clipping from The Norwood Enterprise newspaper,
September 12, 1918

   French's dairy was a big affair of the times. Lengthwise with Edwards Road the stable extended. It was a very long building and had a water tank on a tower to supply the stock and give pressure for washing the stable out. On either side of the building was a row of stalls. The center was occupied with a track over which a car was moved containing the cut up clover, bran and malt feed, salted and dampened I presume with water. Thus from the car the feed was shoveled right and left to the cows. An engine to grind the feed or cut the hay or clover was used also to pump the water from the deep well.
   Oakley or that part of it formerly used in the ball course, with portions of Duck Creek included in the field by the crooks in the creek, was used for pasture land, Duck Creek water being pure and clean, mostly spring water.
   As a remarkable change let me say from Ridge ave. and Duck Creek road the road lay in the creek bed, a nice solid gravel bed, and the stream abounded with fish, where as a boy I fished up as far as Edwards Road.
   Under the B. & O. Ry. at Duck Creek is a tunnel, also one for the road which has changed very much from the early times of which I write. In the tunnel under the railroad, where the creek now runs, was the roadway and on one side was a little pool along the wall somewhat deeper where fish five and six inches long could often be caught. Between Lester Road and Ridge ave. fish weighing ½ to 1 and 1½ lbs. could be taken often.
   But to get back to the dairies, etc. On the site of the Globe Wernicke buildings was another dairy, Niehoff's I think the name.
   Also before I pass by and forget it, just below the church coming south from Feldman's were three houses. Conductor Redland of the B. & O. lived there in one and also Rev. McKee, a tall old man with a plumb face and kind loving eyes, hair snow white as was his long beard, once in my time a supply to the Pleasant Ridge Presbyterian church. He later moved south to Thomasville, Georgia, from where I recall a visit to our home at the Ridge. Then Henry Sanker lived in the third house, a stock and cattle dealer and a brother to John of the Sanker House. The next was the home of Stratemeyer, then the shop, then the home of Detloph, where I worked and boarded, and the toll gate last.

   To the left just before you get to the bridge and between Harris ave. and the railroad Marion Langdon had a store where he was depot agent. This burned down once and a new building, part of which is still in evidence, was put up.
   The home of Marion Langdon was on Harris ave., a little way in from the Pike on the left and in time he put up an office and ran a coal yard business. Mrs Langdon (Rita Card) mother of Stanley, and Helen who became the wife of Frank Workman, a former editor here in Norwood.
   It will be interesting to you readers to just draw a line of each of those mentioned homes and dairies as a means of developing an idea of Sharpsburg then and now as far as streets and homes are compared; or take Stewart's map of Norwood, if you have one, and study out these locations.
   After leaving Sanker's House, on the left going toward Cincinnati, we find the old Central School with the present Elm ave., a lane or alley, a short cut from the Pike to Smith Road; the property of Squire Bell a well-to-do man having a home that was artistically finished off inside and nicely surrounded with orchard fruits and shrubbery; from here we see open fields to the old Smith home. No man ever could find a thing out of place on this farm, neat and trim and its owner always busy.
   Across the Pike, from where The Enterprise office now is, he did some farming. It was while on an errand one day last spring, in The Enterprise office that the editor and I met for the first time and in a conversation he asked me the length of time I had been a citizen. I replied that I had been a citizen for 20 years, but knew Sharpsburg when Farmer Smith had his potato patch where The Enterprise office is now located, and in my mind's eye I could see the old rail fence running along where the cement sidewalk now is.
   That's the cause of this story. Blamed if he didn't just push me up into one corner, and—oh well, I just had to say "Yes, I will," and "yes, I will," and again, "Yes, I will," for what chance was there for me to say no and get out of that print shop safe and whole. So if the story goes why give me the credit, and if it don't why blame him. I'd like to get even some way.