This year, The Blade interns explored a variety of Toledo’s neighborhoods. The following ongoing series highlights those communities.
If it weren’t for his woodworking projects, Bill Jockett might have made retirement plans.
But he’ll be working his job as owner of Jockett’s Marina in Point Place for the foreseeable future. He’s got some boats he’d like the means to restore in his free time. That free time is, of course, limited because he’s busy servicing 60 boats and building docks. And because it’s Point Place, where boats are as much a part of the neighborhood as the land.
It’s safe to assume Mr. Jockett has more boats than the average Point Place resident — he’s got at least 15 of his own, from “real big fancy speedboats” to hand-carved rowboats. He’s been working on boats since his grandfather was running the marina.
Asked what he likes about woodworking boats, he said, “I don’t know every bit of it, I guess.”
Most people in Point Place aren’t lifelong woodworkers, but perhaps the same can be said for what draws Point Place residents to boats: every bit of it. Point Place — a neighborhood in northeast Toledo that trickles into Michigan — meets the lake at Maumee Bay and the Ottawa River. It’s got about a dozen marinas, a half dozen yacht clubs, sailing clubs, bait shops, seafood restaurants, and pretty much every fixture of a lakeside destination. Some Point Place residents skip the cars for commutes downtown, taking their boats there instead or avoiding it altogether.
Point Place was annexed to Toledo in 1937. Bob Trace, a retired accountant, moved to Point Place 75 years ago. He said Point Place wasn’t always a water activity destination; in fact, it was once quite the opposite. When he first arrived, at 6 years old, toilets still flushed into the river on the side of Point Place that’s in Michigan, called the Lost Peninsula.
That eventually resolved, and Point Place got more nautical, said Mr. Trace. He still struggles to explain exactly what the marine Point Place life is like to an outsider, too specific to put into words.
But he gave it a try: “There’s this water mentality, think in terms of Jimmy Buffett and stuff like that,” he said. “And if you don’t have that kind of mentality, you probably are not going to enjoy Point Place. Because it is a little laid back, let’s put it that way.”
Webber’s Waterfront Restaurant is one such place for laying back — and a well-established one at that. It opened in 1933. Boats float up and dock at the restaurants in the evenings to enjoy a dinner of fresh perch or walleye on the patio, a drink at either the indoor or outdoor bar.
Hanging on the wall is a sailboat sculpture, on the window life preservers, and on the ceiling by the bathroom, a restroom sign in the shape of a fish. On a night in July, when the clock struck 4 p.m. and the restaurant opened up, a stream of men wandered in, chatting. A few wore vacation-style button-up-shirts with rowboats and flower patterns.
• The neighborhood is home to many yacht clubs — including, for those who don’t hibernate in the colder months, the Toledo Ice Yacht Club.
• Toward the end of prohibition, in 1933, Jack Kennedy, Toledo’s most infamous bootlegger, was shot on Edgewater Drive in Point Place.
• Point Place has a slogan: “Point Place, best place, any place.”
Of course, life in Point Place has not always been laid back. Webber’s has burnt down and been completely rebuilt twice. That hasn’t and will not deter Webber’s, according to owner Stacey Merryman.
“There’s roots here. I grew up doing this. I love doing this,” she said. “If something were to happen now to this place, I wouldn’t just let it go. I wouldn’t be able to … It’s part of the landscape.”
Long before this year’s tornado, there was one in 1965 that destroyed the building, too. Mr. Trace recalls the tornado ransacking the rest of the neighborhood, when two of his neighbors were killed.
“That was a nasty one,” he said. “We could have a T-shirt. I’ve lived through the tornado of ’65. And the blizzard of ’78. And now the twister of ’23.”
But on July 6, the only chaos on the docks by the Ottawa River Yacht Club in Point Place was self-imposed. It was the night of the annual Howard Pinkley Regatta, which organizer Tim Coates dubbed “a big one” among Northwest Ohio races across all age groups. Old pros and young kids nicknamed “opties” floated in proportionally appropriate sailboats, waiting for their signal to start racing toward a buoy downstream in the Ottawa River.
Spectators clustered behind Mr. Coates and the rest of the race facilitators. Every few minutes, a 3-beep sequence would sound, a horn would emit a deep-bellied honk, and Mr. Coates, on cue, would swap out a flag. Wave by wave, the boats set off.
Mr. Coates, raised in Point Place, has been part of the regatta for 17 years. His first year, he was one of the racers — and not only that, he was a racer who crashed into the dock mid-race, disembarked, and hopped back on his boat to push off, caught “some good wind” and won the whole thing.
Nowadays, Mr. Coates likes to sail in the winter. He rides an iceboat with blades to cut the ice at 100 miles per hour. For the hard-core, perhaps less laid-back in Point Place, there’s a community of ice-boat fishers in Point Place — Mr. Jockett just sold an iceboat he made to one such sailor.
The atmosphere isn’t exactly calm at La Chalupa, a Mexican Restaurant in the Point, thanks to the jumbo margaritas and the lively music. Jasmine Carmona is a manager at the popular spot. She’s worked in the neighborhood since 2014 when the restaurant opened. Last year, when she got into a car accident on her way to work and then clocked in anyways, a Point Place client drove her to the hospital.
Ms. Carmona plans to keep working at La Chalupa long-term because of the relationships she’s developed there with her Point Place clients. “I know a lot of people would be hurt if I left,” she said.
Back in Mr. Jockett’s shed, the one where he keeps his projects that make working the marina worthwhile, he’s making time for a special project. It’s his parent’s old Lyman boat, first bought in 1967. It went out of their possession for a few years but found its way back to Mr. Jockett a few years ago. He bought it back at his mom’s urging.
“My mom still calls it her boat,” he said. “She can’t wait to get in it. Sometimes she doesn’t know who I am because she’s got dementia, but she knows this boat wasn’t in the water last year. I need to get it in.”
He plans to get a photo of his mom in the boat.
First Published December 2, 2023, 1:00 p.m.
