The Ridgewood Duck Pond

by James K. Sayre

One of the great expeditions for little kids in Ridgewood, New Jersey back in the late 1940s was a visit to the local duck pond. It was located just a few blocks away on the other side of Ridgewood Avenue from our house on Kenilworth Road. We got into the car and drove down there every now and then. It was totally undeveloped and thus natural: no signs, no paved pathways, nothing. In little pondlets nearby, you could see frogs and tadpoles. There were large flocks of ducks, probably mostly Mallards, that stayed around the pond most of the year. I have no recollection of ever visiting the pond in the cold of winter. The pond seemed very large to my young eyes, but of course, I also thought that the kitchen in our house was very gigantic: it took several roller skating steps for me to cross its linoleum floor. Later, some ten years after we had moved away, we can back to New Jersey and visited the house and its new owners, and I was totally shocked at how small the kitchen floor had become...

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Web page last updated on 22 September 2007.