Charlie's Dump and Drag Racing!

When I lived in Jenison Michigan as a kid, it was a great time. 1974-1977. We used to walk to school, and there were never many worries about getting in to any danger. Hell, we used to walk across 4 lanes of traffic on Baldwin Avenue just to get a can of Scot Lad soda in the heavy steel cans from the D&W grocery store. I went to Sandy Hill Elementary, and drove my teachers nuts. My first grade teacher retired after she had me in class.

Where we lived was a cool little subdivision that had a HUGE grove of pine trees, and open field behind it. We used to play guns and hide and go seek in those woods. When we wanted to sled in the winter, we walked to a place called Charlie's Dump. It was basically a HUGE gravel pit type place that had a pond and old cars and stuff lying around. It was cool because you could collect tadpoles in the summer from the pond, and raise them yourself. The slopes were AWESOME for sledding down, oh oh MAN was it dangerous. There was always people with dirt bikes climbing the hill during the warm spring and summer. I'm pretty sure that the entire place has been filled in, and is now a soccer field. Such is the way of progress. The huge field and pine trees are also gone. It's nothing but houses and businesses now.

WGRD played nothing but rock, and we used to go to Hager Park to play on the swings. The park had this really cool lookout that you could climb up and look down to see a map of the USA done with white rocks that was not visible from the ground. We played little league baseball at Georgetown Park. The field has been around for over 60 years. I loved to get Lick-N-Dip candy after games, and our coach always had a case of Sun-Glo soda for the players. We won the championship 3 years in a year.

Our neighbor, and family friend across the street from us was Frank Seibert. He worked for Kendall Motor Oil , and was always getting us cool stickers and stuff. His daughter Martha used to babysit us with her friend Jody Dekkinga. I loved them. They were always the coolest girls I knew. Frank was a helluva nice guy. He passed a few years back, and I was saddened to hear this. He was such a nice guy that always made us laugh. I remember we spent the 4th of July 1976 with his family grilling at the park, and then watching the fireworks in Grand Rapids. He used to also get pit passes to Martin Speedway, and we always went to The Popular Hot Rod Championships there. We watched and got to meet several drag racers. Don "Big Daddy" Garlits, Don 'The Snake' Prudhomme, "TV" Tommy Ivo, Shirley "Cha Cha" Muldowney and more. I still have pictures that I need to find, but what a time to be young. I mean, we got to walk the pits and have Frank introduce us to these legends!

Jody's brother had a kick-ass Camaro that was featured in Hot Rod Magazine. We always got to watch them work on cars. All hours of the night we would hear engines rev as they would build these monsters.

I loved living in Jenison, and I look back fondly at my time there. My Aunt Linda lived just down the road from where we were, and we could walk there and hang out. I remember watching the World Series once on her TV when the Oakland A's were playing. Reggie Jackson was batting and I think he hit a home run.

Now the entire area we used to play around is fully developed. Frank has since passed along with his wife Bonnie who was a saint. I never hear much from Martha or Jody. It has been several years in fact, but I still think about them. There are several other memories I have about living in Jenison that I will talk about later. Man do I have some stories.......