I remember Crystal Lake as a summer destination for our Girl Scout troop’s adventures.

By then, it had silted in and about all we could see there were frogs, toads, tadpoles, water striders and maybe a bird or two.

In my Dad’s high school days, however, it had a dance pavilion with bands like Lawrence Welk, ice skating on the pond, as well as picnics, fishing, and boating in summer.

That was after mechanical refrigeration ended the lake’s ice business that filled a large ice house in Hastings and hundreds of train cars with twenty-two by twenty-two-inch blocks.

Today, the lake has been dredged and turned over to the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission and provides picnic and camping facilities next to the site of the Little Blue River dam.

I sort of miss the muddy old place I visited, as well as the bygone gathering place I never saw.