Lake Carmody 1969 - 1970

It was the winter of 1969 - 1970 in Shrewsbury Massachusetts. Duke was gazing out the front window of the house when he noticed the water on the stream down the hill was getting wider and wider. As it got colder and colder it created a huge frozen area near the trees. Duke and John Collins A short little wise-guy went down there on their hockey skates and were able to skate in and out of the trees. The water rose until the fire department figured out some beavers had built a dam down stream that created the whole interesting mess. It was a great time for a month or so skating in and out of the trees with a hockey stick and puck and shooting it down the ice for 100 yards or so until the water subsided.

The next year the beavers must’ve been on strike and the stream never overflowed so Duke and John figured out a way to hack saw steel bars in a cage where the water flowed under a dirt road and plugged it up with some heavy lumber. The water immediately started backing up and in about a week or so later was as high as it was the year before. As it froze , more and more people went down to Lake Carmody skating between the trees and playing hockey more towards the street. The next thing you know many from the high school hockey team were practicing down there. The water kept rising and was heading towards the main street. A week or so after that Duke noticed the fire department down there watching how close the water was getting to the street. The view from Duke’s window up the hill looked just like a new lake had formed in the valley below thus calling it Lake Carmody ( of course no one knew we called it that). The city had to pay for scuba divers to dive down to release the lumber before the water rose as far as the neighborhood houses. After they released the water the ice literally stuck to the trees about 10 feet up, and as it as it got warmer you were able to hang on the trees and get a few people to jump up and down on their own trees and create these huge sheets of glass that would cave in and fall to the ground. You could then walk to the next set of trees and do the same thing. Shhhhhh!!! Don’t tell anybody.