Morning Drive around Grand Lake

This morning dawned clear and cold...no wind to speak of, and that added to the 26 degree temperatures, left a nice hard freeze...It appears though things will warm to the mid 60s tomorrow, then maybe hit 70 sometime next week, for the first week of November. Election day next Tuesday, November 4th, is forecast to be 71 and sunny...November? Must be that damn Global Warming???? I say, the more the better......

After hitting the basement weight room for about a half hour this morning, I decided to take advantage of the cool but sunny weather and take a drive around Grand Lake, and see just how things have changed since we moved to the small berg of Montezuma, located on the lake's south side, 45 years ago November 1st. After moving to Ohio from Venice, Florida, back in the fall of 1962, dad and mom finally got around to buying a house...They still owned the one in Venice, but had that rented, and after a year of being "renters" in Celina, they purchased a home near the Lakefield Airport(a small field on the outskirts of Montezuma). We moved in on the first of November 1963...I was a Freshman at Celina High School.

Montezuma was a cliquish little German Catholic town that I really never warmed to, and never considered it "home". By the time I returned from Vietnam, the folks had moved to Celina. I did meet classmates and life long friends, Bob and Jerry Jones during my time living in Montezuma. The Jones' family were our next door neighbors...we would hang around together for the rest of high school and beyond. Bob still lives in the area, Jerry in southern California...funerals are what usually gets us together, sad to say.

Montezuma, located on the south shore of Grand Lake, has not changed much since the mid 60s...the same cannot be said for the surrounding lake shore area. What was once shacks and trailers, with adjoining "out houses", along the shoreline, has now turned into expensive Lake Front Properties, with houses and gated communities to match. The lake itself, which was once teaming with pan fish and catfish of all varieties, is now not much of a fishing lake at all....I gave up tossing in and wasting time and bait in it years ago. It is now almost exclusively a boat, and ski lake, still dotted with a couple dozen bars and clubs, making it a good party body of water as well, if you are so inclined.

The area, especially around Grand Lake, continues to grow. Property values and taxes continue to soar, I doubt however, the coming Depression(aka Deep Recession for those that hate the "D" word), may not be kind to the yuppies and others living along the lake. Properties not anywhere near in value what has been paid for them over the past 2 decades, cannot be good.

As for the lake itself, I seldom venture out on it....maybe once or twice a year on Nick's pontoon boat(The Bar Stool Open being the most memorable occasion), is about it.....I would much rather fish off the Venice Jetties in south Florida, or head north to Michigan, where the fish are actually worth working, and drinking beer, for.

5 Days left until D-Day-- will it be O-Day, and even bigger disaster?

back later>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

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Description of photos below:

Top Left-A small inlet off the Windy Point area, back in the mid 1970s, I would take my 2 Airedales, Rags and Max out here to swim...in those days there was a small beach rather than the rip rapped shoreline. Rag and Max treeing a back yard squirrel in the early 1980s.-- The bottom photos top left to right--The resident Sea Gulls(rats with wings) sitting on the spillway catching some sun....A small group of cabins sitting on the Montezuma Inlet, about the only thing still standing on the shore line from my High School days, all else is gone in the name of progress--Although the fishing is lousy these days, the waterfowl hunters have plenty of Canadian Geese and Mallards, hunting season is underway on the lake.

Far bottom, left to right--Windy Point, spent many hours fishing off this jetty, a few boats and some lives lost when alcohol met these rocks at night--Safety Island, just off Windy Point, a rat infested haven for boats caught out during storms--and finally the house on State Route 219, I spent my High School years living at....much the same 40+ years later, except a new garage has been added, Chuck Jones, the 3rd of the brothers lives next door today.