 Stump the Chumps. On this 21st day of April 2022 and it's been quite a while since we've matched up. COVID-19 set us back, set us all back and I sort of stepped aside for a while and so here we are with the refurbishing of the Stump the Jump program. And my name is Bill Cale and I've been around a long, long time. But these guys have been around a long time, not as long as me, but this is Al Sharon and this is Roselle Lawrence. So Al, give us your Burlington pedigree. My pedigree. Your pedigree. Well, I'm a lifelong resident of Burlington. I worked for the state for about 40 years and I've enjoyed every moment I've had in Burlington and I'm glad that we're going to be talking about Burlington parks close to my heart. Okay, Roselle. I've been around Burlington government a long time and I think you're the one who worked for so many different departments during your service to the city. Is that true? Well, a couple three of them or so. In 1959 I went in as a full-time fireman in Burlington for 10 years and at that time, 10 years later, I partnered up with someone and started Queen City fire equipment, selling fire equipment all over the northern half of Vermont, including fire stations. And then I sold out my half and went to the legislature for a couple years until the mayor, Paul Kat, asked me to come to work for the city, which was as assistant city clerk for about two and a half years. Then he asked me to go down to the assessor's office, where after a couple years I was city assessor until 1990. Prior to going to work for the city, I actually was on two commissions in Burlington, what was called at that time the street commission. They were all separate and also the sewage disposal commission and was chairman of each of them for a year or two. I had to leave that when I went to work for the city, but then after I left the city, I always for, I don't know, 15 years or more was an inspector of election out in Ward 4. So I've been around the city doing different things for a number of years. Wow. Okay. Viewers, if you have a question to something's jumps and you want to call in, call 802-862-3966, you might have a question for us, or you might have to share an incident, because we're going to talk about the, I'll talk about the Burlington Parks and Recreation System and I even brought my hat. I had lunch yesterday with Cindy White, who is the current director of Parks, Recreation, Waterfront and anything else that floats. So if you have an incident you want to share with us, give us a call. Again, we're going to talk about Burlington Recreation Areas, our parks, our beach, our bike path. So, Rosaire, what were you growing up in Burlington or being in Burlington? What's your favorite park and what did you do in that park, your favorite thing? Well, in the early to mid 50s or so, I grew up in the Old North Inn and almost every night in the winter we were at Roosevelt Park where they had a good-sized warming hut with a pot belly stove and I skated there every night and about nine o'clock after the young kids left they would put on music and you could actually skate with the girls and back then it was like a rhythm type of skating that you did, almost like a dance and that was a lot of fun and then when it was time to close up there was two or three of us that skated pretty well we would help the maintenance guy to use the shovels and clear the ice off of all the snow and stuff so that he could put out the hoses and freeze it and that's kind of what they did. Down at the south end what was South Park back then started from Flynn Avenue, I mean Pine Street, all the way up to what you know as Kellahan Park now, that upper part was all part of South Park and up in that upper part is where they had a warming hut and ice skating just like Roosevelt during that time. Years later became Little League and as you know it does today. Down below was the baseball field where a lot of softball leagues played there was a big big grandstand there that got taken down several years ago but those were the two primary parks in the city outside of North Beach in the summertime for going out there for swimming. Well I like South Park, I played football, baseball down there, the high schools played down there. I also like Smalley Park because I hit a grand slam homerun off from Julie Melanson's house which was down the left field line and so that's always been dear to my heart but no and Battery Park I've always liked because of the sunsets there. Rutger Kipling said if you want to enjoy a sunset go to Battery Park in Burlington and he's right and my wife Ann and I go frequently to see sunsets at Battery Park. Well as I said I had lunch with Cindy White and this one of my causes is to open Battery Park again to the public but that's not very popular but right now there's no way to get to Battery Park you have to park it the closest park he is in the parking garage so I go by Overlake Park once in a while in South Burlington and there's more people looking at the lake from Overlake Park in South Burlington as more than Burlington you get only people within the park. Well you're way up yeah yeah so it's now the nice part about Battery Park was when I when we were in our young age there was a lot of kids that spent a lot of days in the summer there and the cannons were always popular to jump up and sit on the cannons as if you were riding a horse walked a stone wall that was around there it had a lot of activities which now you don't see any activity because nobody can park there and it got spoiled because a few people with young people with cars would park there and there was things that the police didn't appreciate going on in those cars and the solution was to shut down the park in there and keep people out instead of making good use of something that was a great asset to the city and let me just follow up you mentioned Smalley Park and for the audience that might not know where Smalley Park is it's it's it goes a lot it's on the corner of uh St. Paul Street going up Adams Street it's not real big but that's where the Burlington High School when Burlington High School was down on main in South Union Street the baseball team every day would go down there and that's where they did all their practicing some of the softball teams leagues would play there too um but that that park had a lot of use but it was very rough if you went if you were doing baseball there or softball and you slid chances are you might be going against some rough stones and something else I remember I remember uh being a catcher there for softball one night and a guy rounded third and was heading home and he wasn't going to get across so I stood in front holding that ball and man he nailed me like a bulldozer and I went skidding in all that rough terrain so I remember it real well well I went also you could hit a home run in the center field couldn't you what was the name of that street that came down Elm Terrace Elm Terrace I saw a guy we were playing a game with the UVM freshman and Jack LeMabe who later pitched for the Pittsburgh Pirates he was on the freshman team and he hit a ball he was playing first base that day for the freshman and he hit a ball up there on Elm Terrace wow and uh I'll never forgot you know when hitting that ball up there I never saw anything like that before I mean that's about 400 feet yeah wow you know that's 400 feet I was playing I was playing with the Mud Alley Midgets uh in Smalley Park remember the Mud Alley Midgets maybe you folks remember the Mud Alley Midgets explain where Mud Alley is right Mud Alley is Marble Avenue Hayward Street down sort of the halfway south end but anyway I was playing for Lenny Lafayette and I was being a smarty somebody hit me a fly ball and I said oh I'll try and catch it behind my back you know like this the ball's coming and bent over like that I missed it I didn't bother to go back to the dugout because I knew I wouldn't have a long life the rest of that game but getting back to the ice skating thing that's that's really was a very popular sport and uh was uh they did a lot of South Park and when they put the lights on that was a big deal and it helps and uh I was Park Superintendent about that time when a lot of that was going on and as soon as I got that job as Park Superintendent I found out that the employees there was there was a an alderman in in Burlington at that time who sold soda and he had glass containers and what he the deal was made with the city that whatever this the soda whatever they sell was profit to the person who worked there they didn't get paid for it but they get they sold soda and candy with the profits going in that well I stopped that big time but that wasn't Champlain beverage was it yes it was we know who the element is that you're talking about so but also had another run in with that person as well because uh we'll get to North Beach in a while but uh you don't want glass at North Beach oh my god no and uh that's the last thing your city alderman uh selling a container that's glass he's not very supportive of banning glass but that was an issue that some of the pressures sometimes that these city officials or state officials have pressures for people with special interests we know that all the time but anyway that was my experience with the glass containers and of course we don't do that today anymore but we did it that day I can verify what happens because we were frolicking down at North Beach one time uh with a ball and somebody threw the ball out and it went out over the water some so I run out and I kind of did one of these flying things for it about six or eight feet out into the water and when I landed on that one foot I caught a piece of glass and on the bottom of my foot and it was at the hospital that they had to clean it out wow yeah so that is that is dangerous how about the new north end new north end has two parks now and one the shifoletti park there's shifoletti park and we have a park what's the other one uh there's a park uh down by uh where I live apple tree point yeah by apple tree point uh and it's been dedicated to uh David Brikowski oh yeah and it has basketball court and also a play play area and it was dedicated to him because he lived close by and he used to go over there on his own and mow the grass uh at the park oh so uh it was a great thing you know when they dedicated that to him but you can go down there and uh and watch these kids play basketball at this park yeah and and so that's a great park of course shifoletti park charlie had been a you know uh great uh organizer for little league yeah I was there when charlie and bill peacock and bob rosenberg and some of those people all they had was two dugouts that's that's how they started that was all volunteer work and the city didn't give them any any money or any support now today there's what two three good nice ball parks out there's a really nice ball park there's three major ones the third one that when you were talking about there were two and then when they I was involved as a vice president of the little league at the time when we built the third one and we did all the work ourselves yep all volunteers all volunteers yeah yeah and that made it very successful that'd be umpire and baseball games though you the fans are real close to the players and one of the big issues was you're behind the plate calling balls and strikes and the parents would be griping both the media umpire and they tell the kids oh stand closer to the play get your feet together put put your all that advice that a poor kid playing baseball he was harassed by that eight nine ten years old yeah so now I think they put the fans out in center field right well they got a couple of uh real nice stands out there now they're the new aluminum kind that meet the safety standards and everything else yeah okay yeah now about one of our lesser known parts called shaman'ska shaman'ski viewers if you get some input here give us a call 802-862-3966 now Sharon knows a lot about Burlington that does rosary launch they've been around give us a call 802-862-3966 well shaman'ska park shaman'ska park was named that's where it is it's uh down by um where curvy sand pit used to be down around uh chase chase street and that area and uh ireland has built some uh big uh quite a development in that area almost the city and so shaman'ska was owned by uh the land was owned by shaman'ska and then was uh donated to the city and it's about 123 square acres it connects to centennial centennial field uh and uh mormon the cemetery you got a cemetery up there uh i don't know if there's a cemetery there yeah there is well there is up up the hill up the hill oh yeah going towards it yeah centennial field um anyway you used to have softball games here so just see if you're playing at shaman'ska park right field is a steep hill right so i don't know how you play softball when playing right field when it's on a slope it didn't play that very long but softball was a big thing in burlington we had the continental league and uh a couple leagues that you were talking about the rose air yeah the continental uh if i remember right they they were the uh the younger crowd you know uh probably shortly after after getting out of high school and up to well they couldn't go to any age but most of them were like in their 20s and early 30s and it was serious ball that they played uh the league i i played in a couple years was i think there was a minimum age of either 30 or 35 um it wasn't as serious and certainly not as fast um but we played at south park uh at letty park sometimes at uh smully but the softball was pretty big back in oh the 60s and 70s quite big and in the 50s when they had fast pitch no slow pitch and fast and you had uh you had disheines and you had mcgregor's and uh you know you had a number of different uh teams and uh they would go out of state and play um and they could you know fast pitch it was really fast pitch it really is yeah and and and people think of it kind of as a public part but uh centennial field is really belongs to uvm but a lot of other things going on there and if you want to talk about baseball way back in the 40s you had the burlington cardinals which was a professional team that played there and and players from that uh uh were associated with the st louis cardinals uh so there was a lot of good baseball but remember when we're talking about those times even in the early to mid 50s when i was talking about going out skating every night it wasn't every household that had a tv it was minimal it was minimal because tv's were kind of expensive and uh you might you were only getting like three channels so you weren't sitting home watching tv every night so you went out and did things watching tv especially uh especially on saturdays you were always out doing something at watching tv through the snow yeah i remember some you some of the skates you had the certain three kinds of skates there was ice hockey skates there was regular skates racers you had racers yeah which one with the ridges on it and the toes those oh figure skaters figure skates yeah i'd be i always use the racer skates yeah oh you were the smarty with the long blades huh yeah like roosevelt park uh there was always a big crowd there but there was uh two of us that were probably the uh they considered probably the better skaters and one uh you remember uh police chief art caron sure well he had a set of twin boys and one of them boys was the other guy that uh skated with racers with me and uh we'd break up uh after all the young kids were gone we'd break up and make two groups and play what was called dungeon uh which you you you tag somebody and they had to go into this little ice area that we set up and if somebody else could come through there and tag them they'd be free that that was the kind of simple entertainment that we had back then there was no hockey played hockey was played down in lakeside with the lefty joe and and you know i'm strong cloud arms strong and and the and you know those guys down there who actually found uh founded the uh kids hockey in in burlington but uh yeah and you're right you raced over at uh over at roosevelt park and when you want to talk about old parks at leakside that's one of the old parts that's around yeah now when when in those days they were talking about the the fire wood and and you you know no matter what the temperature was the wind you went out and skated oh yeah and you came in and you warmed up again it was sometimes really hot and you put your take off your shoes and put your shoes underneath the bench and you make sure that after you get through uh skating that your shoes are still there and of course after everybody left right some kids forgot their shoes under what they how they went home but that was that was a situation but uh of course they used to flood that whole area you know they'd get out there with their hoses and that was quite an area there at rosevelt park oh yeah it was it was a big ring it was a big ring the same thing in south park pretty much in shamasqua had uh a rink out a while now do you ever hear of champlain park well yeah well that that came about from some buildings that got torn down back in where'd that come from i don't remember how that the city got a hold of that i'd say it was uh champlain a viewer of champlain street park is at the end of south end of champlain street right near maple is it maple or king i think it's between king and maple okay yeah but there there was a building there and i might have been as late back as the 70s or probably the early 80s when something got torn down and never got built up and turned the neighborhood kind of turned it in a park and then the city kind of took it over i i won't swear to that but i think it's about what happened well when i was at the park department we was in 60s that that was one of my parks it was one then yeah okay yeah it's not very big it goes back further than i think well they're doing a renovation of it right now oh they are okay good because there's a few kids around there but but not that many but uh let's see what's what's another park leddie park you know well leddie leddie park was named after bernard leddie who was on the parks he was a long time member of the burlington parks commission correct and uh he had lived on stanford road in the 40s and he would walk in those woods over over to the burlington rendering plant and he wanted to see a park there at some time and so soon after his death in 1972 the park commission named karenko park uh in his honor uh and the park was finally dedicated uh july 4th 1976 and uh that was a bicentennial year oh and that's when it was uh dedicated to uh uh to bernard leddie and it turned out to be a great park it was a great area you know that when karenko was there you could smell you could smell it on north avenue from the rendering plant well yeah and then they had all those woods to to to mask it you know to cut it off let me just explain what a rendering plant was karenko was a company rendering plant was where they process animal caucuses and the other thing they did they had trucks that went around to all the stores store to store like the stores would throw all their uh beef trimmings and bones and stuff because back then it didn't come all prepared you broke it all down and boned it out and put in barrels and once once or twice a week the big rendering company truck would come by and pick them up so at that plant is where that all got boiled down and what they'd end up making with it was industrial oils and uh uh what's the word i want to uh oh i made a note of that yeah um but it into industrial fats oils as and such and and talon for soap and now and also for fertilizer and you can imagine what kind of smell came out of that but it was all wooded around that area yeah and uh ironically what my brother-in-law was in a demolition building and he uh he's the one that tore that whole plant down and everything when it was time for it to go and then it got turned into leddie park and uh the ice rink was built on the other side of the tracks the render plant course was where the parking lot is the other side of uh leddie park that was uh put in during the uh uh gordon park head administration right let's go to north beach we got five minutes to go we tell about north beach north beach was when i took over it was awful we had a terrible bath house with rickety and sewage uh going directly into the lake into the swimming area and uh you know day after uh just a live fourth weekend you see feces on the shoreline and and all sorts of things on the waterfront and the so when the time came whereby the school department wanted some land to put a high school right near north beach so we made a deal the park department had property where they had administered the property where the uh uh athletic fields are so what we did was we made a deal school department you put up a sewage treatment plant and we'll give you we'll turn over the athletic fields and the rest of that area which is park area to the school department so that's how we get the sewage out of the lake but for a while um we'd get the water tested to make to do what we could about keeping it clean which we didn't but uh i got together with the with the city health officer and said you know doctor this is uh july fourth weekend temperatures 85 degrees we're not gonna if we test the water we're not gonna win you said well i'll take the test down a little bit more below the surface where the it was worse cooler because people were going to go to that beach anyway i mean when yeah whether they it was polluted and then the other the other thing was uh uh just briefly uh we extended the hit fly ash for the suit for the moran plant and that was flying over lake uterus but we also some residue and we took trucks for the ash fly ash to extend north beach so we had a lot going there and i can tell you there was a lot of summer days that i spent down there and for a couple of years i was the reserve lifeguard that would get called in if they were sure to lifeguard so uh north beach has a lot of fond memories and up in the camping area wasn't as big as the camping is now but a lot of canadians came and camped there and they were doing it with the tents and stuff not not the rvs like you see today that was quite a family even burlington people would go to there because oh yeah uh it was cheap it was cheap yep yep it was accessible i mean you know sure um and they've done a great job with north beach north okay well good i think folks i hope you enjoyed our little discussion here about the burlington park system we never got to the bike path but one of burlington's some of burlington's assets are the our park system our north beach and certainly the bike path on the waterfront we've come a long way since those back in the days so uh al rose there thanks for sharing your experiences folks thanks for looking looking and sharing your what we had to talk about so we'll see you again sometime soon