The Quarry

Ray and Pegs pictures included a number from December 1949. As I get more pictures I’ll add it but here is 1949. There are a number of pictures identified as west bank. By that they mean shot from the west bank which would be from behind  area of the second electric pole in this picture. The incline to drive down into the pit is between the first and second pole. This picture was taken from outside the old office scale building. By the time I was old enough to hang out at the quarry it was no longer in use but it was full of all kinds of great junk.

This picture is taken just a little south of the first one (see the gas pump in both pictures) looking back to the northeast with the Naas canning plant smokestack and water tower across the river in the distance. All of the building shown would be torn down and replaced by a large block building and quonset huts in the next few years. Certainly by the time I could remember things as I don’t remember these buildings.

Looking into the pit toward the southeast from the west bank.

This picture is in pretty bad shape but I did some photoshop to at least bring out the shovel used for digging the rock.

The shovel ultimately would be in this general location form many years. In one of the floods that happened during the 50’s it didn’t get out of the pit befor it flooded and was unfixable. It set near the pumps and as kids we would play on it. I also have somewhere a series of pictures showing Grandpa Smith on the shovel. Dad on the shovel. And finally me as roughly a 10 year old. They looked like they were working, I didn’t.

This is a picture from a couple weeks later later showing what happens when the pumps quit working and teh river breaks through the dyke. This happened quite often during the 50’s a couple times I can remember filling it completely up and taking a couple months to pump out.

In this case this is where the river broke through the dyke. The pipe is the pipe from the pumps to pump water back into the river.

From the time RAy and Peg moved into town from the family house there no longer was anyone living at the quarry and as a result dad would, on weekends and many times after dinner, go to the quarry to check the pumps. As I got older I’d go and we were in the quarry in the pit restarting the pumps the night of the tornadoes that destroyed Berne Ind. Mom was a little concerned by the time we got home. She was never very comfortable with quarry stuff.

Here’s dad and Ray from Aug. 1949 with the pumps. The same pumps I spent a lot of childhood around.