Treasure on the Blue

If you were standing on the banks of the Blue River 55 years ago, there’s a good chance you might see a young boy heading downstream in a small, nearly worn out wooden row boat. Slowly propelling the aged vessel with a five-foot-long one-by-four, Ray Elder would scan his surroundings. Enormous cottonwood and sycamore trees lined the banks of a river that was wider and deeper than the one we see today. The shade of the trees stretched half way across the water in some places and must have been a welcome relief from the summer heat as Ray’s boat drifted by. Catch a glimpse of him at just the right moment and you might see his reflection or the reflection of some beautiful puffy white clouds in the water.

At times, dark, ominous clouds would fill the sky above Ray, but it didn’t scare the boy. Storms were a welcomed ally, and the more rain the better. Ray would tie his boat to a stump outside the house trailer he and his parents lived in on the east bank of the river just south of the Truman Road Bridge. As the rain came down, this clever, industrious young man knew a treasure would to come to him within hours.

As he slept, the rain would begin to slowly raise the river level. Muddy water would quietly sneak into the yards of homes along the river and steal anything that wasn’t tied down as it receded. Business on the banks of the Blue weren’t exempt. The river took what it wanted.

Like the streams that brought gold from the mountains to the hard-working miners panning for it in the flatlands, the Blue River brought Ray its own form of gold.

A quarter of a mile downstream from the family trailer, spanning the river from one bank to the other was Ray’s second ally, the Guinotte Dam. It was here that the river's thieving ways were brought to an abrupt end.

To most people, the pile of twisted debris floating against the dam looked like basic flood trash. When the young enterprising Ray looked at that same pile, he saw gold there for the taking.

Countless balls, tires, 55-gallon steel drums and lumber were waiting for him to pluck from the swirling water. The little wooden row boat itself had been a gift from the river after one particularly hard spring rain. It was still floating but taking on water when Ray found it. A few minor repairs later, Ray had yet another ally in his search for treasure.

The Korean War was winding down, but the government still needed rubber for the war effort, so Ray pulled tire after tire out of the river, loaded them into his step father’s grain truck and sold them to the Durbin Corporation at 12th and Elmwood for $17.50 a ton.

He stacked the lumber on the banks so it could dry in the warm sun while he contacted potential customers. Once there was a good amount of balls, they were hauled up to

Truman Road

and Winchester where Ray would spend the afternoon selling them to people driving by.

There was no curbside trash service in those days, so it was fairly easy to sell the steel drums to people for trash burning. Every once in a while, Ray would get really lucky, and one of those drums would have something of value sealed inside, like kerosene. The trailer they lived in was heated by kerosene, so finding 55 gallons of it really helped the family get through the cold winter months.

When the spring turned into summer, the rains weren’t nearly as frequent, which of course meant the river levels stayed low. With his easy source of income now high and dry, our young friend would divert his attention to the small businesses throughout his neighborhood.

Just a block or so due east of their trailer was Fido’s café, home of the 10-inch hotdog. For washing their windows once a week or so, Ray wasn’t paid in cash. Instead, the owner would tell Ray to stop by a couple of times over the next week and he would fix him up with a couple of free hotdogs and something cold to drink.

Next to the restaurant was Olympic Stadium, another source of work. Ray got to show people where to park their cars before races, and he also cleaned under the bleachers and helped repair the parking lot on the weekends.

Saturday nights would find Ray about three-fourths of a mile north of his home in Centropolis. I can picture him waving good-bye to his family as he walked down the railroad tracks on the west side of the Blue River to his job at the café just outside the main gates of Sheffield Steel. It would be early evening, and the sun would be slowly setting as this boy with no worries in the world strolled along the tracks tossing small pieces of gravel at the pigeons searching for grain that had fallen from the passing railroad cars. Once he hit the time clock and slipped on an apron, it was 12 straight hours of washing dishes. The pay for the night was five dollars, all he could eat, and super-clean hands.

The Ford plant back then was located at 12th and Winchester. The new cars were parked across the street from the plant. The truck drivers had to load the cars from work orders, and finding the right ones in a crowded lot was time-consuming; they were always quite happy to see Ray come walking up. The men would give him a list of several cars to look for while they were loading. When he found one, he would hold his hand up to signal where it was. Once all the cars were located, Ray would drag the chains out of the boxes and lay them out on the ground so the drivers could have easy access to them. Not only was it fun to be around all those beautiful new cars, the drivers would usually give him 50 cents for helping.

Recently, Ray and I rode down

12th Street

together so he could show me exactly where the Guinotte Dam used to be. As we drove through Centropolis, he pointed out places that used to be a big part of the once-bustling industrial area – businesses like the American Radiator company, which had made tanks for the military during World War II. They employed a lot of Polish immigrants who once lived near by. If you look closely, you can still see the name Black, Silvers and Bryson on an old building close to the Blue River. Ray’s grandfather worked there at one time as a night watchman.

We walked out to the middle of the

12th Street

Bridge (which didn’t exist when Ray was a child) and stood there for a few seconds while my 69-year-old friend got his bearings. His memory is a thing of beauty as he described even the smallest of details from the past. Years and years ago, his mom showed him a spot just north of the bridge where she used to swing out over the river on a rope and fall into the water as a young girl. The giant cottonwood tree the rope was tied to is gone now but Ray can still show you the exact place where it once provided shade and pleasure to those brave enough to swing from its branches.

One thing that Ray would rather forget is the time he found a body in the river. He noticed something that looked like a man tangled up in a big pile of brush close to the bank. The body seemed to be covered with some kind of black substance. He ran home as fast as he could and had his mom contact the authorities. He went back to the scene and watched as the police pulled the man out of the water. Turns out the poor guy had gotten drunk and fallen off a bridge up river and drowned. Asphalt had stuck to his body as the current took him past a company that dumped its waste into the river.

Ray went on to work as a fire fighter for the Kansas City Fire Department for 35 years and is now the leading authority on its history.

Ironically, the river that brought the little wooden boat to Ray reclaimed it a few years later on a stormy night. Perhaps another young boy farther downstream woke up to find it resting on a muddy bank behind his house.