MOONEY POND

Mooney Pond, located on the east side of Mooney Pond Road, Davis Erhardt Collection

Ice-skating on Mooney Pond, Davis Erhardt Collection

Below are the remembrances of Mr. Elroy Edward Smith, whose family farm bordered Mooney Pond. Mr. Was born in 1911.

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"Moony Pond was my special paradise of catfish, goldfish, painted turtles, spotted turtles, dragonflies, green herons, bittern, cranes, muskrats, ribbon snakes, sandpipers, bullfrogs, leopard frogs, spring peepers, toads, box turtles, kingfishers, and red-winged blackbirds. Other familiar fauna were crows, robins, barn swallows, English sparrows, whip-poor-wills, bluebirds, blue jays, cow birds, starlings, field sparrows, song sparrows, red headed woodpeckers, grey squirrels, woodchucks, red foxes, skunks, golden chipmunks, possum, cottontail rabbits, blue racers, hog nosed snakes, red bellied snakes, water striders, water beetles, sow bugs, earthworms, red ants, black ants, wasps, hornets, yellow jackets, bumblebees, all sorts of curious beetles, and many kinds of butterflies and moths. Such was my early environment - a never ending seasonal array of Nature's variety, and a community of people of all sorts of nationalities and stations of social prominence."

The pond was also used in the wintertime to cut ice blocks and store them for summer use.

"Josephine and I were placed in a deep excavation with unscalable log walls built to store a supply of ice harvested in the winter from Moony Pond."

"We swam in the pond without bathing suits or conceded a maximum of underwear bottoms to chance onlookers. The swim was most refreshing on hot summer days, while the lying on the shores in the grass beneath the shade of a willow, served to transport us in spirit to unworldly bliss. Those were times of talk and contemplation or dreams of things scarcely within realization. Sometimes we fished, just for the fun of hooking them. It was done with a straight pin neatly curved into a hook with a string for line and a small willow sapling for a pole. To catch fish on hooks without barbs was quite a trick. Doughballs were used as bait. When the twig bobber indicated a good tugging bite a fast reflex action on the part of the fisherman served to send the fish flying in a great arc overhead to shore or even into the bushes. Catfish were allowed to die because they had stingers. These were bony spines, one extending dorsally and two ventrically. Once in a while the derelict catfish treatment backfired on us, for the stiff carcass with erect spine could be very painful on bare feet. Goldfish were exclaimed over for their size and coloration and thrown back in the pond. Some goldfish were so pale as to be like minnows. These we called silverfish."