A Big Quarry in a Small Place Named Genoa
By Jeremy Schnee
July 15, 2023
July 15, 2023
Our mother forbade her children from swimming in the former limestone quarry, and she was not the only parent in town with such a rule. Genoa had two whole traffic lights, a gas station, and even a town hall with a steeple reaching over a hundred feet tall. With houses short and land flat as glass, one just had to climb a TV tower to see endless farms surrounding the area. The quarry, the enormous hole in the ground, was by far and wide the biggest landmark around.
On hot days, the quarry added extra humidity to the air in any place three blocks adjacent. On cold mornings, ice snapped and clapped loud enough to wake sleeping people in homes near the park. Each summer, kids and adults swam, fished, and gathered to picnic near the quarry. A place of many milestones, the quarry had a history that seemed to get bigger not because of passing years, but from stories and rumors that abounded from the depths of water. These stories were perhaps part of the reason my mother didn’t allow me and my siblings to swim in it. One such story was the fact that no one actually seemed able to remember just how incredibly deep that hole of water actually went.
By the time I reached kid-hood in Genoa, several generations had come and gone. Many buildings preserved part of town history—homes handed down by parents helped create a capsule of décor from decades prior, and the sturdy brick buildings of Main showed wear of harsh weather, even sometimes infamous fires. The quarry was older than any of the oldest buildings. The quarry was older than town itself. Extracted stone had gone into a few town buildings, and much had helped to build the nearest city of Toledo. Digging into the ground had expanded the quarry’s perimeter to near a mile. My grandpa grew up in town and his own grandfather told him of a time when fire hoses stretched down sidewalks and across streets. Hydrants ran full-blast more than three weeks just to help fill the quarry in.
Kids who swam in the quarry came out smelling like a basement. Little chlorine was used since fish were abundant. This meant that water shone green at the end of summer and only turned clear again come winter. In these clearer times, many people looked to those lower depths on brightest days only to see rippling shadows that still concealed the bottom. It was in these shadows that people of Genoa knew the quarry held many wondrous things.
There were cars. From Model A’s to Mustangs, a whole museum rested down there. Kids claimed they knew of someone, friend of friend or such, who swam down with a flashlight and spotted the rusted glint of metal. If doubts of such feasibility emerged, all us kids needed do was ask an adult. My dad theorized that at some point a drunk probably drove a car in, or, the quarry was closer and cheaper than a junkyard. Any adult who’d been in Genoa a few years would say similar explanations applied as to how the abundance of farm equipment, bikes, tools, coins, and probably all manner of antiques deemed worthless when tossed, had gotten into the quarry and sunk to the bottom. The town barber often said someone might make good money by learning to scuba dive, then opening a shop to sell such retrieved items.
Visitors from outside towns and cities sometimes came to our park for picnics or family events. From young to old, they had a difficult time accepting our stories about the quarry. We’d show them straight and smooth drops off spots in the path where a horse or cow may have fallen, cite testimony we’d overheard about water pressure and preservation. Then we’d get to winning them over by speaking of the vehicles and such down there.
Of course, Genoa was sometimes thought to outsiders as a place likely to gossip. Townspeople took pride in knowing their local history, in truly knowing the facts, except, even the very name of our town fell between the blur of myth and lore. Genoa was originally called Stony Station. When the settlement became a full-fledged village and elected a mayor, he travelled to the county courthouse to record the name. Many insist that the original chosen name was actually, Venice. The day the mayor travelled was cold, the buggy ride long. He was trying to keep warm and did so with whiskey. By the time he reached the courthouse, he could barely remember his own name, and not the name chosen for the village. The Italian similarity in title was triggered by an accompaniment on the journey other than whiskey, Genoa salami.
Aside from stories of things falling into the quarry, we had surprising things that came out as well. One day, a neighbor carried a carp near as tall as him home—intending his mother could grill it. He hadn’t fished it out, but found it on a trail. I saw the thing in a garbage bag and it filled the whole sack. Funny enough, there were similar occurrences that summer of several giant carps leaping from the water onto trails. Some man supposedly came from a nearby university to study the reason, but he found no explanation for the giant leaping fish event. Unrelated, probably, two years later a boy caught a piranha in this isolated freshwater quarry. Photos and newspaper articles record the event. The theory was that a former pet shop owner dumped the fish. This seems a logical explanation. That shop owner originally had three piranhas for sale though, and after news of the predator fish spread, no one swam in the water again until the following summer after winter ideally killed the others off.
Despite the water depth, a swimming area large enough to need two lifeguards on duty during open hours, no tragedies befell Genoa due to the quarry. My siblings and I, others in a similar boat of having been denied swimming rights, we always half expected a child to be swallowed by those shadows and never found again. I worried for some of my friends. At the same time, I joined my brother in an attempt to get our mother to relent and allow us to join the daily migration of kids in swim trunks on bikes, or to walk with the flocking groups with beach towels over their shoulder and flip-flops slapping. Some summer heat could not be quenched by a backyard sprinkler or plastic pool only big enough to sit inside. She never relented.
Although I never had the pleasure to swim in the quarry, memories remain of throwing stones in, catching fish, walking the perimeter path under crunching snow, even the sounds of baseball tournaments skimming over the water’s surface. Especially strong, is the memory of an annual kindergarten picnic on the last day of the year for my class, where we kids ate, played, smashed a piñata, and at some point, where many of us stood at the chain-link fence and looked across waters so huge and so boundless. Here, maybe for the first time, we got to hear something incredible of cars, bikes, buggies or anything and everything between, concealed in the depths of that water. Whether such things really reside in the water or not, anyone who grew up in Genoa will tell you that in that quarry, there is certainly a great deal of history preserved.
On hot days, the quarry added extra humidity to the air in any place three blocks adjacent. On cold mornings, ice snapped and clapped loud enough to wake sleeping people in homes near the park. Each summer, kids and adults swam, fished, and gathered to picnic near the quarry. A place of many milestones, the quarry had a history that seemed to get bigger not because of passing years, but from stories and rumors that abounded from the depths of water. These stories were perhaps part of the reason my mother didn’t allow me and my siblings to swim in it. One such story was the fact that no one actually seemed able to remember just how incredibly deep that hole of water actually went.
By the time I reached kid-hood in Genoa, several generations had come and gone. Many buildings preserved part of town history—homes handed down by parents helped create a capsule of décor from decades prior, and the sturdy brick buildings of Main showed wear of harsh weather, even sometimes infamous fires. The quarry was older than any of the oldest buildings. The quarry was older than town itself. Extracted stone had gone into a few town buildings, and much had helped to build the nearest city of Toledo. Digging into the ground had expanded the quarry’s perimeter to near a mile. My grandpa grew up in town and his own grandfather told him of a time when fire hoses stretched down sidewalks and across streets. Hydrants ran full-blast more than three weeks just to help fill the quarry in.
Kids who swam in the quarry came out smelling like a basement. Little chlorine was used since fish were abundant. This meant that water shone green at the end of summer and only turned clear again come winter. In these clearer times, many people looked to those lower depths on brightest days only to see rippling shadows that still concealed the bottom. It was in these shadows that people of Genoa knew the quarry held many wondrous things.
There were cars. From Model A’s to Mustangs, a whole museum rested down there. Kids claimed they knew of someone, friend of friend or such, who swam down with a flashlight and spotted the rusted glint of metal. If doubts of such feasibility emerged, all us kids needed do was ask an adult. My dad theorized that at some point a drunk probably drove a car in, or, the quarry was closer and cheaper than a junkyard. Any adult who’d been in Genoa a few years would say similar explanations applied as to how the abundance of farm equipment, bikes, tools, coins, and probably all manner of antiques deemed worthless when tossed, had gotten into the quarry and sunk to the bottom. The town barber often said someone might make good money by learning to scuba dive, then opening a shop to sell such retrieved items.
Visitors from outside towns and cities sometimes came to our park for picnics or family events. From young to old, they had a difficult time accepting our stories about the quarry. We’d show them straight and smooth drops off spots in the path where a horse or cow may have fallen, cite testimony we’d overheard about water pressure and preservation. Then we’d get to winning them over by speaking of the vehicles and such down there.
Of course, Genoa was sometimes thought to outsiders as a place likely to gossip. Townspeople took pride in knowing their local history, in truly knowing the facts, except, even the very name of our town fell between the blur of myth and lore. Genoa was originally called Stony Station. When the settlement became a full-fledged village and elected a mayor, he travelled to the county courthouse to record the name. Many insist that the original chosen name was actually, Venice. The day the mayor travelled was cold, the buggy ride long. He was trying to keep warm and did so with whiskey. By the time he reached the courthouse, he could barely remember his own name, and not the name chosen for the village. The Italian similarity in title was triggered by an accompaniment on the journey other than whiskey, Genoa salami.
Aside from stories of things falling into the quarry, we had surprising things that came out as well. One day, a neighbor carried a carp near as tall as him home—intending his mother could grill it. He hadn’t fished it out, but found it on a trail. I saw the thing in a garbage bag and it filled the whole sack. Funny enough, there were similar occurrences that summer of several giant carps leaping from the water onto trails. Some man supposedly came from a nearby university to study the reason, but he found no explanation for the giant leaping fish event. Unrelated, probably, two years later a boy caught a piranha in this isolated freshwater quarry. Photos and newspaper articles record the event. The theory was that a former pet shop owner dumped the fish. This seems a logical explanation. That shop owner originally had three piranhas for sale though, and after news of the predator fish spread, no one swam in the water again until the following summer after winter ideally killed the others off.
Despite the water depth, a swimming area large enough to need two lifeguards on duty during open hours, no tragedies befell Genoa due to the quarry. My siblings and I, others in a similar boat of having been denied swimming rights, we always half expected a child to be swallowed by those shadows and never found again. I worried for some of my friends. At the same time, I joined my brother in an attempt to get our mother to relent and allow us to join the daily migration of kids in swim trunks on bikes, or to walk with the flocking groups with beach towels over their shoulder and flip-flops slapping. Some summer heat could not be quenched by a backyard sprinkler or plastic pool only big enough to sit inside. She never relented.
Although I never had the pleasure to swim in the quarry, memories remain of throwing stones in, catching fish, walking the perimeter path under crunching snow, even the sounds of baseball tournaments skimming over the water’s surface. Especially strong, is the memory of an annual kindergarten picnic on the last day of the year for my class, where we kids ate, played, smashed a piñata, and at some point, where many of us stood at the chain-link fence and looked across waters so huge and so boundless. Here, maybe for the first time, we got to hear something incredible of cars, bikes, buggies or anything and everything between, concealed in the depths of that water. Whether such things really reside in the water or not, anyone who grew up in Genoa will tell you that in that quarry, there is certainly a great deal of history preserved.
Jeremy Schnee's stories are recently published in Snarl Journal, Neo-Opsis, and Dark Horses Magazine. Aside from writing, he likes to garden, practice martial arts, and spend time with his family. He recently completed writing his first novel. For more information about his writing, and to read his articles on random nostalgic topics, check out www.jeremyschnee.com. You can find him on Twitter at @JSMYOPIA.