If in 1945 I were to walk north from Koop's Grocery along 96th to my home, I would only pass four residences on the west side of the road: Peter Walters, Luke Luurtsma, Johannes Schout, and Gradus Geurink. On the East side of the road were Lou Vollink, Simon Vollink, the church parsonage, Gerrit Steigenga, Ed Gruppen, and Henry Weaver. If I were to continue North from our house to Blair Street, I would only pass John Essenburg on the West and Albert Bosch on the East. Remember I am talking about the 1940's and I was born in 1940, so I was very young. In that decade there were still a huge number of English Sparrows or House Sparrows . In 1887 the state of Michigan started a bounty program where they would pay one cent for the head of every English Sparrow brought to the county clerk's office. The first year they paid a bounty on just over 31,000 sparrows. Most boys had a BB gun before they were ten, and I was one of them. It was great sport for us to shoot sparrows as we tried to do our part in eradicating this invasive species. After dark many sparrows would retreat to barns and sleep on the beams. We would go in with flashlights to find and shoot them. Today that sounds pretty crass, but at that time the numbers were so great they could eat al lot of grain. I developed pretty good accuracy with a gun. I was the second best shooter in my company in basic Army training.
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