Carolyn's Blog

Historic New Castle Day last Saturday went well, lots of activities, Colonial troops in uniform, people in 18th and 19th Century  costumes strolling around town, but today it was quiet.

New Jersey is visible in the distance in these scenes taken in Battery Park, so named for the hill which once held a gun battery to protect the town from pirates, who plagued New Castle, so they say. Between 1926 and 1951, a ferry operated across the river just north of this point and crossing into Pennsville, New Jersey.  It ran until the first of the Delaware Memorial Bridges opened in 1951.

But today, a different type of activity was being carried out by a man from Wilmington and his daughter. Every Thursday, winter or summer, they visit the park. The man, who says his name is Ozzie, brings his harmonica and a list of patriotic songs to play for people like me, who hear him work the song out on his instrument. It really reminded me of my Father, who also played the harmonica. Memories!  Anyway, Ozzie, a Marine veteran, wears his Semper Fi hat every Thursday in the park, and his daughter takes him for ice cream.

Another old timer in the park is this Paulownia or Empress Tree. The purple blooms have almost all faded away, but the tree tells a tale of 1700's ships full of Chinese export porcelain being unloaded in New Castle and the dried pods from the Paulownia used as packing material being discarded, only to later sprout and grow into these big, beautiful trees.  The wood is highly prized in China for dowry chests, and I remember many years ago hearing that the Chinese were trying to buy trees in Delaware to import back to China, because they could not get enough of the wood for their daughters' dowries!