ED THE DIVER

 

Dear George, 
When my father came home from Japan after the end of World War II, my parents had very little money, and so we moved out of town to my recently deceased grandfather’s cottage on the banks of the Menominee River. It was a momentous change for myself and my siblings. Among other things, we spent a great deal of time in or on the river. Swimming every day during the season and taking our green rowboat for expeditions to Pig Island, the Channel, the dam, Indian Island, the lumberjack hut, and Little River. 

Because of the importance of the river in my youth I read with some interest a recent news story about Ed the Diver from my home town. Ed Bieber had taught his kids to fish in the Menominee River, but, fed up when they kept losing his expensive lures, he bought scuba diving equipment so he could retrieve them. It took only one outing, and Ed got hooked on retrieving lures and other treasures from the river bottom. He started spending all of his free time on his new preoccupation. Currently he collects about 10,000 lures a year from the Menominee River, as well as 4 or 5 Apple watches and 6 or 7 i-Phones. Ed broadcasts his adventures on TikTok, Facebook and Youtube, and he has 40,000 followers on Instagram. He makes enough money cleaning up and re-selling the found lures that he’s quit his day job as an electrician and spends all of his time on his lure-retrieval business. He’s branched out from the Menominee and also dives in the nearby Fox, Oconto, Peshtigo, and Wolf Rivers. He estimates that he and his partner also remove a ton of trash from the rivers each year. 

I am thrilled by this story. As children, we constantly sought to find treasures on the river bpttom, swimming underwater with our eyes open, believing that pirates might have lost gold coins on the river floor. The most exciting time of the year was in late March or early April when the ice melted and began flowing eastward toward Green Bay. We stepped out in the river in hip-waders and retrieved items flowing along with the ice with a bamboo fishing pole. Buckets, bottles, planters, patio chairs, what have you. 

The Riverside Country Club offered lessons for members’ kids, and we went once a week, then played on weekday mornings before noon. The ninth hole was infamous at Riverside because it was right along the river’s edge, and, if you sliced your ball, it was gone in the river. When playing, we were always thrilled to get to the ninth hole because we’d strip to our undies and search the water for golf balls. On a good day we might each get half a dozen or more golf balls, enough to keep us in stock for weeks and weeks. I still have exciting feelings about retrieving golf balls from the river bottom. I can understand Ed the Diver’s obsession and wish I could join him. 

Love,

Dave

SOURCE: Jeff Alexander, “SMALL TOWNS: Marinette’s ‘Ed the Diver’ making a difference in local rivers; www.wbay.com; May 4, 2023.