I grew up next to the Cuyahoga in the '70s and I don’t think people today could even begin to understand how nasty it really was. Old tires everywhere, rusting steel barrels full of god knows what, and a thick oily scum over any part of it that wasn’t moving. Factories along the edge had big drainage pipes that just emptied directly into the river (one of these factories made Oasis foam, that green shit florists stick flowers into). The real shocker was not that the river caught fire from time to time, but that it wasn’t on fire all the time.