When my wife Rise` and I first moved to Magnolia in 1982, somebody -- Joe Conway on our street, Jackson Avenue ? -- led a large Otter Branch Creek / Alberston Park Clean-up campaign. Dozens of people converged on Albertson Park with heavy gloves, heavy-gauge trash bags, and car-powered winches. I never forgot that effort. I thought, "How timely! How noble!"
Since that time, I and my family have loved Albertson Park and Otter Branch Creek. We had a birthday party there once, under the pavilion, for my aunt, the nun, who was the President of the Dominican Order of Nuns in the Western Hemisphere. Once when I was buying milk at One Stop Shop at Evesham and East Atlantic, a big turtle was crossing the parking lot behind my car. I quickly picked it up and took it to Albertson Park to keep it from becoming road kill.
Recently, Rise` noticed that when it was pouring cats 'n' dogs during a terrifying thunderstorm, when I went out for milk to Wawa, I was gone way too long.
"Where were you?" she asked in her wifely fashion when I finally returned.
"To tell the truth," I answered, "I drove down to Albertson Avenue just past the borough hall and parked on the little bridge over the conduit comprising the source of Otter Branch Creek in Albertson Park, walked down the embankment, and enjoyed the torrential flow into the park, cleaning every molecule of pollution out of Albertson Park. It was really, really neat. Who ever thinks of Magnolia as having 'white water'? Magnolia has it now, at this moment."
Contrary to my expectations, Rise` appreciated what I did, rather than just laugh. And so, since that time, every day it's raining like holy hell in Magnolia, I run to my car, and drive down to Albertson Park, and watch -- and enjoy -- Magnolia's "white water."
Otter Branch Creek
In Albertson Park?
