Ten Things You Didn't Know About Lake Erie

HawkTheSlayer wrote:

Oh, my Cajun friend...

...as I look at your wonderful vids of Cajun culture, the families, the wholesome young people, the life, the landscape...

...Welcome to MY world. Lake Erie is my adopted hometown. Adopted, because I moved to Cleveland, at age four. But it was my roots - it was my German-American father's American home base. I know Chautauqua, the Adirondacks. Was born in Summit County, New Jersey.

But Lake Erie was what shaped my world, which, as I grew to orient myself, was Cleveland.

You cannot know. Not even living on the water, which I never did - but so many of my neighbors made a living out of. Not recreational boating, which was dangerous on Erie, the most-shallow of the Great Lakes. Chop and incredible swells could churn up in minutes' notice with a change in weather.

It was the life. When Cleveland-Cliffs, a shipping company, made money, Cleveland was flush. When the ore boats moved, things were okay. When there were strikes, or bad weather, or a sudden occurrence, as with the Mighty Fitz sinking...it depressed everything.

For a brief time in the early 1970s, my old man was a stockbroker. Things were much more local, then...and as the economy buffeted with the money manipulations, Cleveland-based industries really suffered, and his client book.

Of course, that was then. But that's off-topic.

Like so many other local economies, based on regional geographics and dynamics...this is well to study.