Glen Arbor Sun

January 17, 2008

Historic Cottages book on shelves

From staff reports

Rarely seen interior images of 50 cozy summer cottages and narratives provide a portrait of a special place and state of mind evoked by summer cottage living on beautiful Glen Lake. These cottages are viewed against the backdrop of early summer resort life in northern Michigan the first half of the twentieth century. Dietrich Floeter’s duotone photographs and author Barbara Siepker’s captivating historical narratives include personal anecdotes on each cottage. The cottage is shown in its glory and reveals its importance in the lives of its owners and the broader community. In total they document the essence of these wonderful old cottages as well as life and time of bygone years.

These rich cottage images have been captured with care and reverence by Traverse City photographer, Dietrich Floeter. His intention choice of a wide view camera replicates the type and style of camera that would have been used during the time period of the early resort era. Floeter has captured their essence through close attention to light and detail, which he has meticulously set up and framed. Floeter has been a commercial photographer for 23 years, specializing in architectural, industrial and aerial work.

Barbara Siepker has enjoyed learning about the local history since moving to Glen Arbor. She owns The Cottage Book Shop in Glen Arbor and has interviewed over 75 local and summer resorters.

Paging through Historic Cottages of Glen Lake is like taking a walk through a time warp. Rich images and narratives honor resort and cottage lore and memories in a manner not previously captured in a book. This attractive hardcover book is printed in duotone by the Leelanau Press. It contains over 300 photographs, illustrations and maps in its 224 pages and is priced at $50.

Posted by editor at 01:59 AM | Comments (0)

November 08, 2007

A Glen Lake Honeymoon, 1942

By F. Josephine Arrowood
Sun contributor

A couple planning to wed these days has a huge and bewildering variety of decisions to make, from the color of the bridesmaids’ gowns to the reception location to the wording of their marriage vows. Last but not least in the wedding sequence comes the honeymoon: to the modern mind’s eye a flawlessly beautiful and luxurious idyll, attended by waiters, concierges and the ubiquitous credit card.

In 1942, life offered very different choices for a young couple in love, about to embark on their great journey of discovery, as November swept to a wintry close against the darkness of World War Two. Their honeymoon — rustic, hand-to-mouth, and nearly buried in the snowdrifts of an isolated cabin — set the tone for a long and fruitful marriage that continues today between two energetic, creative individuals.

Ben Bricker, 84, grew up in the same comfortable Illinois town of Winnetka as his future wife Ananda. His father owned a bakery, and she was the daughter of two artists and illustrators in the leafy suburb north of Chicago. The children often gathered with a group of schoolmates and siblings at the local skating rink, and had been friends since meeting in fourth grade at Horace Mann Elementary School.

When the pair married in November of 1942, Ananda was studying landscape architecture at Groton, Mass.; Ben had recently joined the Air Force, but had not yet been called to active duty. After a brief ceremony in Boston, bursting with college football revelers (Boston vs. Brown), the couple barely managed to book a room for the night at a nearby hotel.

“The clerk never even looked up,” Ben remembers with a laugh. “He just said all the rooms were taken. Then he did look up, said, ‘Oh, just married, huh?’ and somehow found us a room for the night.”

Several weeks later, Ananda’s college semester ended, and they decided to honeymoon in northern Michigan, where her parents, Frank and Alice Dillon, had built a cottage on Little Glen Lake. From Groton, they took trains to Chicago and Manitowoc, Wisc., where the ferry to Elberta, Mich. awaited.

“When we landed, it was snowing heavily,” Ben recalls. “It was early, early in the morning, barely light, and we had to walk clear around Betsie Bay into Frankfort. Then we started up old M-22 [the state highway]. There were no cars on the road — remember, there was gas rationing because of the war. Finally, a mail truck went by. It stopped and we ran up. The driver offered to take us nearly to Empire.”

From Empire, Ben and Ananda continued their trek to the north shore of Little Glen along M-109 (Dune Highway), which had been built in the early 1930s. They arrived at the tiny, uninsulated brown cabin that was to be their honeymoon nest for the next two weeks, and the intrepid pair got to work. They decided to close off most the small dwelling to conserve heat, and sleep on a cot in the living room.

“We brought the woodstove in and hooked it up to the chimney. It was made of sheet iron, and didn’t hold the heat in very well. Every night, we loaded it up, and even if I got up in the night to add wood, our boots would be frozen to the floor in the morning.”

The cottage had electricity, a pitcher pump for water on the kitchen counter, and a simple, wood-fired little cook stove that fit into the chimney, “but we only used it once, because it burned everything black,” Ben laughs. “We had an outhouse, too. Once one of us left the door open all night, and the next morning it was full of snow.

“It was snowing all the time,” he remembers, “ but it was so, so beautiful — deep and fluffy, like a storybook picture, and it went all the way up to the windows. We had a toboggan, and dragged it to Steffen’s in Glen Arbor for groceries,” a distance of four miles each way by road.

“The first time, we decided to go straight across Little Glen, which was very shallow and had frozen, and up over the Alligator. This was not a good idea,” he exclaims, as the two then struggled through steep glacial terrain, thick woods, and heavy underbrush hidden by drifts with their loaded sled.

He reflects with amazement on “the energy it took just to survive! But it was jolly — all the way through, we never took ourselves too seriously. We had a good time; it was a party. We did a lot of hiking, and took the toboggan over to the Bear,” the huge Dune Climb that lies across the highway from the cottage that still rests on Little Glen’s shore.

Eventually, the real world recalled Ben and Ananda, and they set off early one snow-laden morning to catch the ferry, about 25 miles away, which would carry them back to establish their married life together.

As before, the highway was virtually empty of traffic. “At one point, a snowplow went by, and we had to run into the ditch to avoid it,” Ben recounts. “We got into Frankfort early in the afternoon, hours before the ferry was to leave, so we went to a movie.

“When we came out of the movie, we realized how late it was; the ferry was leaving in about 10 minutes, on the other side of the bay. We got down onto the ice and walked across Betsie Bay to the shore near the dock, and got our ride,” back to Manitowoc and Chicago.

In the 65 years since Ben and Ananda’s winter honeymoon, their lively can-do spirit and many adventures together have included raising four children; careers in the arts and arts education; studying eastern spirituality; rallying around social justice issues; living in far-flung places like Arizona, Mexico, Kalamazoo and Tanzania; and co-founding the Glen Arbor Arts Association with several other area artists. About 20 years ago, they moved permanently to the small brown cottage on Little Glen, where they continue to build strong family and community ties.

Ben’s labors of love include teaching art as a volunteer at Glen Lake High School, demonstrating his blacksmithing prowess at the Port Oneida Fair each August, and creating original jewelry pieces in silver and semi-precious stones, which he sells at the Forest Gallery in Glen Arbor. Ananda’s poignant journey through the shadowy, trackless world of Alzheimer’s disease has not diminished her intense love of nature, and the couple continues to share long walks through Glen Lake’s four seasons of woods, fields, and shores.

Posted by editor at 03:54 PM | Comments (0)

August 09, 2007

Turning back the clock: A history of the Brammer Mill

By Edna Brammer
Sun contributor

Mr. Fisher built the millpond in the 1800s. He dammed up the Crystal River north of Glen Arbor. The millpond was made by damming the water up but also letting the remaining water continue on to Glen Arbor and then come back to the bridge. The river ran under the bridge and the floom and around Mr. Brammer’s house, past the mill where it continued to flow down to Lake Michigan. He also built a sawmill on the millpond across from the mill in 1859.

To get water to the gristmill, he built a floom where gates opened to let water into the floom. I don’t remember exact measurements — but I think about six feet high and 10 feet wide. It was made of wood planks. The floom started at the millpond, ran under the bridge, over the river, over land to under the mill and back into the Crystal River. The water flowed through the floom to turn the big water wheels to grind the wheat. When the water wheels under the mill were turned on inside the mill, the grain was ground by the force of the water going through the water wheels. This also ran the conveyor belt and sieve. Mr. Frank Brammer bought the mill in Chicago and a man came to show him how to put the roller mill together.

In 1896 he and his family moved onto the mill property. It was a gristmill. The grain was ground by rubbing two big stones together. In 1904 Mr. Brammer decided to put in a roller mill that ground flour. The elevators had little cups on a conveyor belt in an eight-inch box. This conveyor belt either took the grain up or brought the flour back down. The building had to be higher for the elevators to carry grain to the sieve where it was sifted. It took the ground grain from the first floor to the second floor to be put through the sieve. The sieve was around five feet wide and six feet tall and round in shape. The grain was put into the sifter and shook and shook until the grain came out flour at the bottom. The sieve was full of pie shaped wooden objects with different size pieces of silk cloth on each one. The cloth came from Japan. The flour went downstairs where it was bagged.

The little barn on Herman Brammer’s property was used to keep horses in for the people who had to wait until their grain was ground.

Grandma had a pot of coffee on the stove at all times. People waiting were invited in for cinnamon cake, muffins or homemade bread and butter.

Frank Brammer ran the mill until 1923 when he died.

August Brammer, Frank’s son, ran the mill parttime until about 1945. At that time the big mills came out with snow-white flour, which the ladies liked better than the cream-colored flour. The flour was bleached and the wheat germ taken out. Today we buy the wheat germ and put it on cereal.

August & Martin, Frank’s sons, inherited the mill and then sold it to Dr. Longyear in 1964. He raised the wall and also did other improvements. Dr. Longyear sold the mill to Mr. Fred Ball in 1970. Mr. Ball finished the basement, installed a music studio, and added on the back of the Mill to remake furniture. In 1985 he sold the mill to a man from the Homestead by the name of Kuras.

Ice & Fruit Stand

In 1928, Herman Brammer started the delivery of ice to Glen Arbor, Glen Haven and around Big and Little Glen Lake. He had a real long day and a short day. The icehouse, which was next to my home, had the ice stored in it. The ice was made the winter before selling.

The ice was cut most of the time from Glen Lake at foot of Lake Street. If the ice was too thick on Glen Lake, they would cut it on Big Fisher. If that didn’t work, they would go to Lake Michigan. The ice was cut into blocks, I think, 12 by 24 inches. The ice wasn’t cut through. 4 inches was left on the bottom. A channel was cut open to push the ice through to trucks. Then the ice was spaded off as needed. The ice was pushed through the channel to a conveyor belt where it was loaded onto the truck. Then it was hauled to the icehouse. At first, it was pulled on the trucks at the lake and also into the icehouse by hand. Later it was done by conveyor belt. The blocks of ice were laid side-by-side one-way, the next layer was put in the opposite direction one foot from all walls. When it was filled, a food of sawdust was put down on all sides and 12 inches on top of the ice. When the ice water came out the last of July or first of August, it was just like it was put into the icehouse during the winter.

Purchased ice will not keep in sawdust. It’s too porous.

It took 10 to 12 men one week to fill the icehouse and two trucks.

Edna cooked two meals a day for them.

In 1930 Herman made shelves in his truck so he could carry vegetables and fruits on top and ice below. The vegetables and fruits were bought from truckers, farmers and Edna went to Traverse City twice a week to get them. Around 1948, Herman couldn’t take care of all the business. So, a young man was hired. It didn’t work out satisfactory. Then Edna went with him three times a week and took care of the vegetables and fruits. By 1949, the business increased again. More and more people coming for the summer. So, Herman was going to quit selling the fruits and vegetables. His customers suggested we start a fruit stand at home. The first time we opened, we had sawdust and vegetables and fruit were set on the ground in bushels, boxes and baskets. We were open three days a week. Herman went on with the ice business. That next winter he cemented the floor, and put in shelves for the fruits and vegetables. He made iceboxes to put the produce in. We were open five and a half days. Our daughter was able to help. Larry took care of the sale of ice at home. The ice business began to dwindle due to electric iceboxes. Charlene went to college and Herman took her place.

We also carried cherry drink, Cherry Hut jams and jellies and Mr. Trumbull’s maple syrup. We retired in 1965.

Posted by editor at 02:00 PM | Comments (0)

July 26, 2007

Traveling Vietnam Memorial Wall Visits Peshawbestown

By Pat Stinson
Sun contributor

Three members of the Grand Traverse Band who died during the Vietnam War were honored recently when a traveling replica of the Vietnam Memorial Wall made a July 13-15 visit to nearby Peshawbestown. The Grand Traverse Band sponsored the memorial known as the American Veterans Traveling Tribute (AVTT). Local organizations and individuals volunteered to assist during the visit, which included ceremonies by Band members and veterans, offerings, prayers and the release of a dove.

The mission of AVTT is to honor, respect and remember American soldiers who have died serving the United States. Of more than 3 million Americans who served during the Vietnam War, 58,256 died, more than 1,800 were listed as missing in action and 153,303 were wounded. Names on the wall include those soldiers who died or were listed as missing from 1957 to 1975. Since 1997, the names of 75 more soldiers have been added but are not included in the above counts.

The wall’s black aluminum panels are 8.5 feet tall at their highest point and span 380 feet. Just as they do at the permanent 493-foot granite memorial in Washington, D.C., people leave messages and tributes of flowers, wreaths, feathers and other items of cultural or personal significance next to or at the foot of the traveling wall, which is an 80 percent replica of the original. Some individuals also take rubbings of the names with them to keep as a remembrance.

The traveling memorial also commemorates those who died in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait and Djibouti, the latter bordered by Ethiopia, Somalia and the Red Sea. Replicas of the soldiers’ dog tags are displayed under glass; each full display case contains 680 tags. In this exhibition, six cases bearing the slogan “Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom” were counted, with the last dog tag recording a death in Iraq on May 31, 2007.

Among other memorial exhibits was a pair of black columns symbolizing the twin towers, and the names of those who died in the towers and in the planes that crashed into them on September 11, 2001, as well as the names of victims of the Pentagon and Pennsylvania crashes.

More information about the traveling wall can be found at www.avtt.org.

Posted by editor at 02:03 AM | Comments (0)

A Dogcart, a Flag, and the Slippery Jims

By Jacqueline Tompkins-Weede
Sun contributor

The Old Settlers Picnic

My cousin Jack Sundling sent me a faded picture of two little girls in a dog cart — a picture of his mother Edna and her younger sister Nan. I took the faded picture to Blue Photo on Eight Street in Traverse City.

“Yes,” the clerk said, “if the picture is in focus, Lisa can restore it digitally on her computer.”

A week later, I watched Lisa’s computer keystrokes bring my Aunt Edna and Aunt Nan back to life.

“That’s interesting,” Lisa commented, looking at the screen, “the little one you call Nan is holding an American flag. They must be in a parade.”

The picture had been taken when the Anderson family lived in Burdickville so I called Laura Quackenbush, the curator at the Leelanau Historical Museum for information. She referred me to Dorothy E. Lanham who wrote a book about the Burdickville area. I bought the book and this is what I learned.

The Old Settlers Picnic Grounds

Every year since the early 1800’s, on the third day of August, the people in Leelanau County put down their work, no matter what, and go to the Old Settlers Picnic Grounds to have a day of “frolic.” To the old settlers in Leelanau County, “frolic” was defined as music, games and flirtations — as well as food, drink and conversation.

The Old Settlers Picnic Grounds is a beautifully wooded six-acre tract of land with 200 feet of frontage on [Big] Glen Lake. The property is unfenced with two entrances (one on either side) and one exit in the middle. A small chapel is located on the east side of the road.

The early settlers started having picnics there in the first part of the 1800’s and formed an association to buy the land and make improvements on it. Through donations and memberships, they raised the $450 needed to buy the Property.

So — every summer on August 3, there was a big public picnic. Every family brought its own food in big wash baskets, traveling by horse and buggy or wagon to the Old Settlers’ Picnic Grounds.

Mothers and daughters wore pretty light dresses and broad brimmed hats or poke bonnets, and fathers wore suits with starched collars and bowler hats. Sons, in trousers and white shirts, rolled up their sleeves to that they could play baseball and pitch horseshoes.

In later years, the event was changed into a potluck picnic although there were always several tents called “Eating Houses” where food, beer and cold drinks could be purchased. In spite of these changes, many families still brought their own favorite food.

During World War II, the date of the picnic was changed to the first Sunday in August, and it was not unusual for a thousand people to attend the all-day affair. The Old Settlers Picnic still attracts hundreds of people each summer and everybody, including locals and out-of-towners, agree it is the best picnic in the whole state of Michigan and that includes the Upper Peninsula.

By the time my ancestors, the A.P. Anderson family, moved to Burdickville, the Picnic Grounds had many improvements including a gazebo, benches, several fire pits, and a couple of outhouses on the east side of the road.

The two little girls in the dogcart picture, Edna and Nan Anderson, were going to the Old Settlers Picnic with their parents, brothers and sisters. This is their story.

A Dogcart, a Flag, and the Slippery Jims

Jennie Anderson wipes the cellar dust off from two jars — one of stewed peaches and the other containing her cucumber pickles — the ones her son Seigurd calls Slippery Jims. She polishes the jars until they shine. She is a good homemaker. She likes her food, her house and her family to look good. She works very hard to see to it that they do. She is 38 years old and has six children.

Her big wicker clothes basket is lined with a red checkered cloth that matches the one she will put on the grass — to eat on. She fills the basket with crisp fried chicken, cold roast beef with horseradish sauce, a crock of Bruna Bonor (Swedish Baked Beans), freshly baked Limpa Bread, stewed peaches, Slippery Jims, lemonade, and two apple pies, Appelkaka, too.

She knows there will be huge pots of coffee already brewing over the open fire pits at the picnic grounds, and her husband and Seigurd will start cranking the ice cream maker as soon as they get there. The Potet Salat (Potato Salad) is still in the icebox in a chilled bowl packed in a crock of cracked ice. Jennie will pack the Potet Salat at the very last minute, taking more ice to keep it cold.

Her two little girls are waiting patiently for their mother to tell them they can go outside. They look so pretty in the dresses she made for them. Their dark hair has been brushed until it glistens, and then arranged in fat corkscrews. She uses a curling iron to make their curls, heating it on the cook stove. Edna and Nan are good girls. They don’t even cry when she is distracted and lets the hot iron touch their soft apple cheeks. One last touch, Jennie thinks to herself. She ties red, white and blue ribbons in their hair. Oh, they look so pretty.

She calls to her oldest daughters, Cigne and Sadie. Cigne is 18 and growing up fast. She wants to go to nurses’ training in Chicago. Sadie is only 13 but boys are starting to notice her too. Jennie will have to keep her eye on both of them, and on Seigurd who likes to talk to the girls.

“Ready, Ma? Pa wants to know.”

“Yes, Seigurd, tell him I’m ready,” she said.

The Andersen Family gets to the Old Settlers Picnic Grounds at a quarter to 11 — early enough to get a spot fairly close to the gazebo.

Good, she thinks to herself. We’ll be able to see everything. Jennie spreads the checkered cloth on the ground and starts to unpack her basket. Her family is hungry. She is hungry too.

A band, made up of local musicians, plays throughout the day. They stop only when Rose Meyers starts to play her accordion. The musicians like Rose and pay their respect to her in this way. It is a picnic tradition — Rose Meyers walks around the entire picnic grounds with her accordion and plays like a troubadour, visiting each family like a favored aunt.

Jennie likes Rose’s informal promenade, and she colors with pleasure when the musician sits down beside her. Rose plays a special little song for Jennie and her children, and then she moves on.

Finally, Nan Helm comes to where Jennie is sitting and tells the young mother that someday she will write a book about Burdickville. Jennie believes her. She has never known anyone as smart as Nan Helm nor as talented as Rose Meyers. Only her grandfather. The two women remind Jennie of those golden days in Sweden when her grandfather played his violin and read stories to her from his large collection of books — when students came to his house to take violin lessons. Jennie is glad that she has named her little Nannie after the gifted writing lady of Burdickville. Perhaps she would name her next daughter after the musician — oh, but what if it was a boy?

Edna and Nan get many compliments as they walk around the picnic grounds. Nan waves her flag from the dogcart and Edna leads the patient Jumbo by his collar. He is a good dog. People stop by to talk to Jennie while Peter and Sig play horseshoes with the other men. The day is perfect. The musicians play dance tunes and many couples dance on the grassy space in front of the Gazebo. Finally, Peter looks at his pocket watch. It is four o’clock, and people are starting to drift out of the picnic ground.

Peter says, “It’s time to go home. What will those cows be thinking?”

“Yes, Peter,” Jennie answers. “I’m ready.”

It was a day to remember.

Rose Meyers gave accordion lessons to many people throughout her life, and Nan Meyers wrote two books, Village Days and Village Wags (of Burdickville) and Footprints Where Once They Walked. She also wrote a song called “Glen Lake” that is printed in Dorothy E. Lanham’s book. The Old Settles Picnic Grounds has been declared a Michigan Historic Site with the formal dedication of the historic market on October 11, 2003.

Posted by editor at 01:52 AM | Comments (0)

July 12, 2007

Protecting the Crystal River’s manmade history

By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor

Dr. Chuck Olson is on a mission to protect historic structures in the Crystal River. Ever since he and his wife Connie acquired a seasonal home on the river just off County Road 675 northeast of Glen Arbor 20 years ago, the former professor at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and former trustee at The Leelanau School has watched historic, manmade structures disappear at an alarming rate. He thinks the culprits are unknowing canoers and kayakers, or the flood of new homeowners on the river who, understandably, believe they are doing a service when they remove hazardous, nail-filled boards for the benefit of future recreation or clean up the river in front of their property.

Glen Arbor boasts two commercial canoe and kayak liveries and a surge of new homes, especially in the Woodstone neighborhood, between 675 and the east end of town, where the Crystal River flows southwest before reversing its direction and emptying into Lake Michigan at The Homestead resort. Not surprisingly, the growth in our area since Olson arrived (he and Connie still spend most of their time in Ann Arbor) has collided with efforts to preserve nature and local history.

“Whoever was doing this was not thinking about it from an historical perspective, or that it might be a violation of existing laws,” Olson guesses.

The structures Dr. Olson pointed out to the Glen Arbor Sun during a canoe trip in mid-June are either remnants of manmade fish sanctuaries — logs or stumps nailed onto much older water control structures in the early twentieth century by Trout Unlimited and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to create fish habitat in the river — or the remains of water wheels from before 1900 that early settlers used to irrigate cranberry fields in the bogs and low swales just east of the river.

In any case, the fish habitat features and the waterwheels are both protected, in principle, under state law and may not be legally removed without a permit from the Department of Environment Quality (DEQ). Olson believes that the structures dating from the 1880s may also be covered under the Federal Antiquities Act.

Though Olson originally thought the DNR held jurisdiction over historic objects in the river, the Department’s conservation agent for Leelanau County, Mike Borkovich, yielded to the DEQ. According to John Arevalo, the DEQ’s Cadillac District Supervisor for the Land and Water Management Division, one needs a permit to place new structures on the bottomland, to excavate or to build a dam — but that rule envisions larger projects that involve heavy equipment. “Someone could easily use their bare hands to remove a structure,” says Arevalo. “Technically, someone drifting by in a boat would need the permission of the structure’s riparian owner to remove it. But the reality is that we have a limited staff and a limited budget. Normally, if there really isn’t a large impact … and if it was impeding navigation … you could probably just remove it.”

Dr. Olson doesn’t necessarily expect government help to preserve the structures in the Crystal River. His primary goal is to inform local residents and canoers that these objects are relics of history, and deserve respect. He appeals to aerial photographs from 1952 for evidence of cranberry bogs, which he believes were once commercially farmed by Native Americans. “That’s why I like aerial photos,” he says. “Some say a photo never lies, but it never tells the whole truth either. A photo only answers the questions you’re asking.”

Local history guru John Tobin corroborates his belief that water control structures there were temporarily designed to transport water over the ridge to grow cranberries, especially when the river was low. Olson believes that the previous owner of his home, Jack Russell, wanted a fish farm on the east side of the ridge and that he paid a contractor and heavy equipment operator named Martin Egeler to dig a pond and use wooden conduits to channel water away from the river before the DNR stopped him.

Olson found a hollowed-out, split cedar conduit on his land in 1989 that may have been connected years ago to a water wheel. He’s also found numerous nails in the river structures — rough and square, clearly forged by a blacksmith — that he believes date back to the 1880s.

Dr. Olson has also been instrumental in initiating other endeavors to promote local history. Through his friendship with Guy Meadows, a professor of naval architecture and marine engineering, and director of the ocean engineering laboratory at the University of Michigan, they brought the M-Rover submarine to Big Glen Lake in the early summer of 2003 to search the depths for the remains of a steamboat called the Rescue, which captain John Dorsey allegedly sank intentionally in 1914 under mysterious circumstances that prompted a community-wide debate and search four years ago. Read about the search for the Rescue on our website at http://www.glenarborsun.com/archives/2003/06/dorseys_sunken.html.

Posted by editor at 06:11 PM | Comments (0)

June 28, 2007

Remembering a childhood on South Manitou Island

By Nadine Gilmer
Sun contributor

It seems strange and exciting now to think that there is a ghost town on that strip of South Manitou Island that can be see from the beach along Sleeping Bear Bay. What is today a huge, uninhabited part of the National Park was once just anther small town in northern Michigan. Norma Jean Egeler Marmie spent the tender years of her childhood on South Manitou. She recalls, “You really didn’t know you were on an island except you were surrounded by water.”

Photos courtesy of Empire Area Museum

Norma now lives in Traverse City with her husband David Marmie after spending most of her life in Empire. After her early years on South Manitou she logged three years on Beaver Island and then four on the mainland, in Frankfort. She then made the move to her grandpa’s farm (the Golden Valley Ranch on M-72) east of Empire until she graduated high school and left for Flint to receive her practical nursing degree. Norma eventually returned to Empire where she married Martin Egeler and had eight children. She worked as a cook at The Leelanau School for 21 years until her retirement a decade ago.

Her family had lived on South Manitou for generations before her. “It would have been (back to) the 1800s,” says Norma. Her grandfather, John Tobin, manned the lighthouse, and her father was in the Coast Guard and stationed on South Manitou until he was transferred in 1940 to Beaver Island. He left the family for four years to fight in the Pacific theater during the Second World War and returned safely to his family then living in Frankfort.

Norma remembers her seven-year stay on South Manitou with fondness. “We did have a wonderful childhood. I don’t ever remember not being happy,” As a child, she and her two brothers used the island as their personal sandbox. “We had a wonderful time when we were little. We could roam the woods, build tree houses, go to the beach, and we were free to go to the coast guard station. There was lots of fishing and lots of cookouts. We always did things together as one big family.” Her grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins lived there too. Norma explains, “My grandmother ran the post office and the general store, and my grandpa was in the lighthouse. We used to have a lot of fun running up and down those stairs. My aunt was the teacher in the school, and there were probably 20 families there.

“My mother used to say ‘I wish we could go back to those good old days,’ I just remember good times.”

And back then, living on an island wasn’t so different from living on the mainland. Norma recalls, “Back in the ‘30s we didn’t have a heck of a lot,” so they didn’t need much to make up for the difference in wealth across the Manitou Passage. They had a general store for small things and farmers out in the country for meat and eggs. Norma’s mother had a garden, although it was difficult to keep because the soil in the town was so sandy. The town sat right on the sandy beach, so sandy that the townsfolk had to place boardwalks all around. Closer to the center of the island though, was good soil and farmland.

But for products they could not cultivate on the island, once a month the residents would travel to the mainland for groceries. It was a rough hour-and-a-half long journey on the family’s little boat. They would sail to Frankfort where Norma’s aunt and uncle used to live, and sometimes to Traverse City. There was a schoolhouse on the island, where Norma’s aunt taught, but no church, so the only time the family could worship was when they visited the mainland. Living on an island did change the perception of living space and closeness of people. Norma says that the neighbors were closer. “Us kids had a ball; we were always over at someone’s house.”

She also remembers buying candy with her brothers from Bertha Peth’s house. “I was always afraid of her,” admits Norma. Bertha Peth was an older woman who sold candy and cigarettes in her house. There is a legend about Bertha Peth and her son Sam, who was trampled to death by a bull in 1901, which caused the divorce of her and her husband. The play Barta’s Path, by local writer Anne-Marie Oomen, is based on her story. There is also a legend that a ship nearly full of cholera-stricken passengers stopped to unload on South Manitou and the healthy sailors buried the cholera victims in a mass grave. The screams of the passengers buried alive is still heard on quiet nights. And let’s not forget the most well known legend: Norma owns many books pertaining to the legend of the Sleeping Bears “It became very special to us,” she says.

Now Norma meets with others who used to live on the Manitou islands once a year in July. The group convenes in Empire where they have a potluck, bring pictures and discuss the good old days and members of their group that have passed away.

As Norma says, “It is very special to say you lived on an island.” And her fond island memories of growing up in the ‘30s and ‘40s are reminders of the beauty and rich history of those two little baby bears swallowed up by the glittering blue of Lake Michigan.

Posted by editor at 10:57 AM | Comments (0)

Glen Lake Garden Club takes “A Step Back in Time”

Press release

On a sunny and breezy afternoon, Tuesday, June 19, members of the Glen Lake Garden Club and their guests celebrated the completion of the club’s 30th year at an afternoon picnic at the historic D.H. Day Farm. Owners Don and Annette Lewis, graciously opened their beautiful farm for the Garden Club’s event to the delight of all those who attended. Nearly 100 people came to enjoy an old-fashioned picnic under a white tent where they enjoyed raspberry lemonade and iced tea and a delicious box lunch.

The guests were treated to a horse drawn wagon ride around the farm and a 1929 Packard graced the grounds. Some of the ladies dressed in the period of “days gone by” and many wore big hats adding to the overall experience from the past.

Don Lewis gave a highly interesting presentation about the farm’s past and recent history.

George Weeks, local author and columnist, who is currently working on a book about D. H. Day, shared additional information about the Day family.

Posted by editor at 10:45 AM | Comments (0)

August 10, 2006

“Looking for Mrs. Boizard”

By Barb Kelly
Sun contributor

Grace Dickinson Johnson, Joanne Rettke and Barb Kelly paid a visit in June to the late Mrs. E.M. Boizard (1828-1911), formerly of Miller Hill. All admired the lovely wild roses that grow plentifully in Mrs. Boizard’s garden, as well as the fruit trees that pay homage to this resourceful woman who moved to Glen Arbor in 1863, with her daughter, Marietta, in tow.

I have been looking for Mrs. Boizard since I read the treasure of a book, The Boizard Letters: Letters From A Pioneer Homestead, edited by Julia Terry Dickinson and Jo Bolton, with illustrations by Grace Dickinson Johnson (I purchased my copy at The Cottage Book Shop). Searching for Mrs. Boizard morphed over the years from a casual pastime to a Holy Grail kind of mission, and I would spend big chunks of my precious two-week vacation in Glen Arbor each year traipsing around the Tucker Lake and Miller Hill area described in the book as the site of her old log cabin, looking for signs of her. I was spurred on by the fact that Julia Dickinson states in the book that she and her daughter, Grace, actually found the place. The book contains simple, stunning illustrations by Grace to prove it. This was real motivation. For years, though, I only saw a lot of trees, a lot of swamp and a lot of mosquitoes. Nevertheless I persevered.

During my explorations I stumbled across many signs of the early White pioneers’ life in the Glen Arbor area, but I often didn’t know what I was looking at. Also, I was so obsessed with finding Mrs. Boizard that everything I came across became something owned or used by her, in my fertile, Irish imagination. A large, rusted, complicated machine with gears and wheels, which had come to a halt just south of Tucker Lake, came to be, in my mind, “Mrs. Boizard’s logging machine.” But I’m from the big city, so who knows? It could just as well been Mrs. Boizard’s egg-sorter, or Mrs. Boizard’s cat-herder. The exciting thing was that everything came to be a sign of Mrs. Boizard’s presence. A beer bottle? “Mrs. Boizard’s beer bottle” (a real find, since she signed a temperance pledge on May 1, 1878, according to the book). A rusted bucket? “Mrs. Boizard’s berry-picking bucket” or more likely what she used to carry those empties deep into the woods to hide them.

An exciting find last year was “Mrs. Boizard’s shovel.” Just off a nearby local road there is a huge tree that has grown around a shovel so that the shovel is impossible to budge. It rests not just against the tree, but into the tree so that handle and spade both are encased in the tree’s enveloping bark. Some long-ago slacker set that shovel against the tree and blew off his chores for, say, 30 years. Now he has the perfect excuse: “Dude, the tree ate my shovel! Guess I don’t have to dig that hole after all.”

Or here’s another explanation for the “tree that ate the shovel”: In a letter to her husband, left behind in Chicago to earn a living, Mrs. Boizard writes, “If you possibly can send me a Shovel like the one I had, but I don’t care about it being so large. When we went to Chicago we let Mr. Tucker have one, our other one. There are none in the place. (April 14th, 1870).

Well, yes there are, Mrs. B. Just check out the tree where “Mr. Tucker” left that other shovel of yours. Oops, too late.

Along the way, I found other signs of the pioneers to this area. Hidden in plain view is a Fisher family tombstone, along with three graves eerily sunken into the sandy soil. John Fisher was — guess what? — Mrs. Boizard’s landlord. Really.

So, finding the site of her nineteenth century log cabin last month, deep in the mosquito-infested woods at the base of Miller Hill, was the crowning event of years of looking for Mrs. Boizard. While during all my previous traipsing and tromping, my heart would quicken at every imagined symmetrical rise of land or, alternatively, every indentation that could possibly have been Mrs. Boizard’s root cellar or cistern, there was nothing subtle or imagined about this site: a four-square rise of land that once held high her log cabin (140 years ago), along with the adjacent clearing so often described in Mrs. B’s letters to her husband, where she raised potatoes and squash, lima beans and cucumbers, greens and beans, and where her pig wandered, her chickens pecked, and her dogs romped. Be still my joyful heart.

The letters that launched my search — letters back and forth from Mrs. to Mr. Boizard from Glen Arbor to Chicago — and how they came to be found, is another amazing story in itself and one I’ll briefly tell here, but you can read more about it in the book. The old Westcott home behind the Glen Arbor Township Hall was being torn down. Most of the furniture had been hauled off and whoever did so dumped the contents of the drawers everywhere. Well, Julia Dickinson and Jo Bolton, intrepid anthropologists that they were — that’s my word: Grace’s word for them is “junk diggers” (same thing as far as I’m concerned) — scooped up what turned out to be an amazing cache of letters from the nineteenth century, some with very familiar names like “Fisher” and “Tucker” and “Westcott”, and others with unfamiliar names — like “Boizard.” Julia Dickinson painstakingly transcribed each and every one of these faded letters with their flowery script; Jo, Grace and she arranged each one in chronological order; and Grace created illustrations that illuminate and amplify the content and narrative flow of the letters (it was published in 1993 by the Empire Heritage Group). This book not only sent me on a wonderful adventure, it also brought me into contact with many who are the current chroniclers, story-tellers, memory-keepers, archivists and lovers of this Land of Leelanau and its compelling lore. These people are the worthy descendents of Mrs. Eleanor Magill Boizard, letter-writer and Glen Arbor pioneer.

Posted by editor at 06:59 PM | Comments (0)

July 13, 2006

"Soaring and Gliding"

One of 182 images in Pete Sandman's book "Soaring and Gliding: The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Area" shows L.D. Montgomery being winch launched on the Frankfort beach during the 1939 American Open meet. Montgomery, who flew to Northport on this flight, was the overall winner of the contest that year.

Photos from Sandman's book are on display at the Empire Museum.

Posted by editor at 07:17 PM | Comments (0)

June 29, 2006

Locals give the Gulf Coast a hand in Katrina’s wake

By David Early and Daniel Herd
Sun contributors

Ten months after Hurricane Katrina brought New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast to its knees, the area is still reeling. Here are the stories from two local residents who worked with Habitat for Humanity and FEMA this spring to help put the region back together.

Boats sinking, spirits rising

The 140-foot tugboat the Linda Susan didn’t exactly look seaworthy, but it was being prepared for one final voyage. William Ladnier, his brother Greg, and his father Pat had been working for over five months to get it ready to be sunk in the Gulf of Mexico to create “fish havens” for red snapper, grouper and triggerfish. This would be the tenth such vessel (along with a half dozen army tanks) they had contracted with the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources to scuttle. Next to the Linda Susan was moored the Windward Sentry, a 192-foot cargo ship that had served as home and refuge for the entire Ladnier family during the worst hours of Hurricane Katrina.

I was in Biloxi, Mississippi for a week volunteering for Habitat for Humanity by preparing foundations for five new houses. Several other organizations including the Salvation Army and various church-affiliated groups were represented there. We slept in what was left of the Mayvar Shrimp Company warehouse, which had been under 14 feet of water after the storm. Each day I enjoyed my morning coffee on the narrow porch and looked out at a nearly totally destroyed boat storage building that still contained a few boats on its upper levels. Three days before I arrived, I was told, one of those boats dropped 32 feet and smashed to pieces on the concrete floor below. We would gather every morning for breakfast in a makeshift cafeteria built underneath the bleachers of a high school football stadium and then receive our assignments for the day. When we returned for lunch there were often a hundred volunteers being fed. Most were from the southern states, but people came from all over the United States and Canada. A group from the Air Force base and three teams of Americorps workers were there too.

The extent of the damage I observed was more than I was prepared for. Imagine a giant hand starting at Northport and smashing every structure within 1000 yards of the bay all the way to Petoskey, and you have some idea of what I saw. Recovery in a physical sense will take many years; emotional recover may take even longer. Habitat’s progress is not now limited by resources but by manpower. Still, in spite of organizational and logistic difficulties, homes are being built and families have a chance to put their lives back in order.

The best part of volunteering to do anything like this is the opportunity to meet and work with great people from all over. During my volunteer days for Habitat, I was fortunate enough to be working with Susan Wiseman from Grand Junction, Colorado who was making her third trip to the area. She had been with the Red Cross shortly after the hurricane hit, driving a regular route delivering hot meals to people who had lost everything except their spirits and sense of humanity. Susan spent three weeks feeding the stomachs and morale of dozens of families including the Ladniers, a family she introduced me to.

The Ladniers, now living in one of the infamous FEMA trailers so prevalent along the Gulf coast, had done their best to put their lives back together. Responding to Susan’s kindness, they had invited us to tour the boats, told stories, shared an amazing homemade gumbo (seasoned with sassafras) and were gracious hosts under difficult circumstances. Pat and his wife Mary gave accounts of struggle and survival.

On Sunday morning, August 28 of last year, as the winds increased and the waters rose, the family boarded the Windward Sentry and headed for safer harbor through the Back Bay of Biloxi to the Industrial Seaway Canal about 15 miles from their D’Iberville home. This was the one asset they could take with them; it was also the one structure that might keep them alive. So that’s where they stayed for 17 hours, fighting surging water and powerful winds and watching smaller boats crash into bridges, roll over and sink. Later on Monday afternoon William set out in a smaller boat across a lifeless bay to find nothing left of his home except a concrete slab strewn with trees, furniture, appliances, garbage, and fragments of the thousands of houses that had been destroyed in Katrina’s path. They had lost their home and belongings, including her books, his 35-millimeter slides from five years in the U.S. Navy, but they had their health and the two boats that would provide their livelihood for the near future. Now they would sink one.

I worked for five days in 90-degree heat digging footings for the one-level homes that would be built by other crews after my departure. I had been warned to drink plenty of water, seek out shade, and “pay attention.” One of my co-workers noted that living in an area now so devoid of anything beautiful was beginning to wear on him. I was starting to have the same feeling.

That said, the last day of my work was an especially bright one for the Ladniers. The state inspector had cleared the boat for sinking. After salvaging everything of value William and Greg had spent days scouring the hold to remove grease, oil and fuel. The dirtiest work was over, but there was still more to do. Holes would have to be made in the hull of the boat so that it would sink properly and without rolling. But a major hurdle had been cleared and a celebratory gumbo was simmering on the stove in the small trailer Pat and Mary called home.

The only dark news of the day was that the sinking, originally scheduled for an afternoon three days later, would have to be postponed because a tropical depression forming just off the Yucatan Peninsula was predicted to bring 14-foot swells to the area. What we didn’t know was that the depression would soon turn into the first named tropical storm of the season — Alberto.
— David Early

Picking up sticks

After four hours of orientation, equipment allocation and paperwork (always paperwork) I got back in my rental car and drove from Vicksburg towards the coast to Hattiesburg, where I would spend the next four months. As part of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, I deployed to the affected area to help in the cleanup effort. While the majority of the damage was inflicted upon the Gulf Coast, Mississippi's second largest population center, Hattiesburg, was also devastated, having received 125 m.p.h. winds and an extended period of rain, which brought thousands of trees down, destroying homes and utilities. This area, about 60 miles from the coast, lost power for more than two weeks and this during late-summer humidity and temperatures that topped 100 degrees.

The extent of orientation before I arrived consisted of a brief email and a few sheets of paper, all later found to be horribly inaccurate or misleading. They mentioned bringing lots of bug repellant, worrying about blisters, and remembering to drink enough water. I worked from an air-conditioned rental car and had $40 a day to spend on food, which made hydration easy and comfort a given. As you may start to wonder now, absent from this introduction is the knowledge of what duties I performed. I knew almost nothing and gained my only real insight by speaking with another National Park Service employee freshly returned from his own 30-day stint. His advise: “Bring lots of books and get ready to be bored.” As it turned out, I read only two books throughout the five months, during three of which I headed the second largest U.S. Corps of Engineers debris removal project in Mississippi. The first month was less than exciting.

The emergency center in Hattiesburg consisted of an abandoned office building, recently brought back into operation to hold the 300 or so Army Corps of Engineers personnel working from it and was nothing more than a few large, open rooms and a lot of computer cables. All incoming people were housed in hotels and, though mine had an awful smell and lacked sufficient light, I almost giggled at the idea of spending an entire month in a hotel — fancy when compared with the deployment briefing, informing us that housing would be tents or FEMA trailers.

The job, carried out by thousands of people after each hurricane, consisted of writing load tickets to contracted companies, providing them with the verification necessary to be paid by FEMA. It took 15 minutes to learn. For a month, ensconced in a government rented KIA (all personnel were provided with separate rental vehicles), I led a group of three dump trucks, a back hoe and two flag persons, as we trolled the streets of Mississippi for storm-related debris, usually left out by people cleaning the trees, trash and refuse strewn across their property by Katrina.

As the end of the month approached, my direct supervisor Tom, a lock operator from Minnesota, asked me if I would take another position, that of team leader for the private property debris removal project. Instead of cruising around looking for debris, residents would sign up for crews to come onto their property to remove all storm-generated debris. The team consisted of 30 people and looked to be running smoothly, so I accepted.

Three days after accepting the position, I realized that at our current rate of completion, the project would take 8.17 years. Something needed to change. The projection I gave my supervisor was that within two weeks we needed to more than triple in size and force the contractor to provide additional crews. You see, all work was being performed by contractors, sub-contractors, and subs of subs. So, though all federal responders were told to bring gloves, work shoes and safety equipment, if any of us were ever found to be lifting a log, or pushing a broom, we could be sent home immediately — fired for working.

Although employed for eight years with the federal government, this fact still confused and infuriated me. It was accepted as regular practice for a large company, the primary contractor to provide logistical control and financing, while a sub-contractor, sometimes three levels below the prime, performed the work. For this, the prime retained between 45 and 60 percent of the contract dollars. While those of us who left our gloves in the car and wrote claim tickets received a good wage, those running the equipment and picking up debris often were being paid no more than $10/hour.

Although frustrating aspects pervaded the work, I was also treated to many wonderful experiences, making the deployment more than just a job or a way to help the affected area recover from the devastation. The people of Mississippi, especially those suffering loss, are some of the most welcoming, friendly and helpful I have ever encountered. Along with this, the group of federal and local employees — brought together by the opportunity for economic gain — are some of the most dynamic, fun and positive people I have ever met. Faced with what seemed an impossible task and burdened with the shackle of federal bureaucracy, this group helped in the removal of over seven million cubic yards of debris and the cleanup of almost 6500 private properties.

Either from practical necessity or comic effect, I would stand on an eight-inch high stump to give my morning address to the room full of orange and red-shirted people, and upon leaving I accepted my certificate from this same log and wrote in a goodbye: It is an awful mess, both from the storm and from FEMA’s response and what wonderful people were brought together from it. The area will never be the same and there will be more hurricanes, but like I was told by an 84-year-old woman who had four trees come through her house, “What more can you do? You pick up the sticks and move on …”

— Daniel Herd

Posted by editor at 10:15 PM | Comments (0)

May 25, 2006

Shipwrecks are moving in our midst

By Jane Greiner
Sun contributor

Who can resist the romance and mystery of a shipwreck? All you have to do is go to Empire beach and you can see one for yourself.

This wreck lies half uncovered at the north end of Empire beach. It appears to be a section from the bottom of a wooden ship, which means it likely sailed in the 1800s.

There is one long heavy beam (perhaps the keelson), a number of curved ribs at right angles to it, and underneath but partly visible some long flat slabs which were probably the outer hull. The blunt, iron spike-like things sticking out of the wrecks are called connectors. In building these boats the connectors were driven into drilled holes with sledge hammers, according to Steve Harold, Director of the Manistee County Historical Museum.

Harold is the author of “Shipwrecks of the Sleeping Bear,” a book unfortunately now out of print. Once those connectors are driven in, Harold said, they are impossible to remove without totally tearing out the wood around them. You can see them clearly protruding out of the wreck in Empire.

Harold recently examined this wreck in Empire to see what he could learn about it. But it is impossible to positively identify any of these wrecks in the condition they are in, he says. You have to go somewhat on location, but he pointed out that this wreck “has moved a mile” since he first studied it 25 years ago.

Other shipwrecks have been known to move a lot faster. A wreck up in Leland moved a mile in only two years. “So how far could it have moved in 50 or 100 years?” he wondered, by way of illustrating that location alone is not enough for identification.

Harold listed six boats lost close to Sleeping Bear Point, The General Taylor, the Badger State, the St. Nicholas, the Kate Bully, the James McBride and the Gold Hunter.

He believes the ship on Empire beach was a “centerboard vessel of canal schooner dimensions.” Although that describes about half the ships lost on the Great Lakes, Harold said, it at least cuts in half the number of possible ships this could be.

Canal schooners were an innovation in which boats were designed to be pulled down a canal like Welland Canal (between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario) and then once into the Great Lakes could raise a mast, lower a centerboard and sail.

Harold cannot say for certain that the Empire wreck had a mast. But he thinks “it is possible” that it is either the James McBride or the Jennie and Annie, which match its dimensions, or the Gold Hunter, a ship which was lost only four months after she was launched and about which few details are known.

The James McBride sank near Sleeping Bear Point in 1857. Her story is interesting. She was a wood two-masted Brig (a ship with square rigged sails) 125 feet x 25 feet x 10 feet and weighing 272 tons. She was bound from the Manitou Islands to Chicago with a cargo of wood when she was forced ashore and wrecked. Fortunately, no lives were lost. She had been the first vessel to carry cargo directly from the West Indies to Chicago in 1848.

The Jennie and Annie was a wooden schooner (a ship with at least two masts and the taller main mast to the rear) built in 1863 in Buffalo. According to Harold’s book, “Her deep hold of 12 feet allowed her to carry large cargos of grain from Chicago to Buffalo.” She was lost in 1872 just north of Empire after being driven aground in a gale. Six or seven people were believed lost out of 10 on board.

A Second Shipwreck

For those willing to hike a bit, a piece of an old ship is visible on the sands around Sleeping Bear Point. It is approximately two miles south of the Life Saving Station and can be reached in an hour’s walk along the shore. A piece of the ship about 60 feet long lies at the water’s edge.

Although this shipwreck could be any of the six ships Harold mentioed, it is identified (perhaps optimistically) in some websites as the General Taylor. She was a wooden ship, propeller driven (steam power, not sail power), built in 1848 in Buffalo, and was 173 feet long. The General Taylor was lost in 1862, “driven aground by storm on Sleeping Bear Point with no lives lost.”

Another piece of the same ship (or of another one) is reported to lie just offshore in about 10 feet of water, according to an Internet posting by a kayaker.

Of course the wrecks in Empire and on Sleeping Bear Point could be two pieces of the same ship, Steve Harold points out.

Bill Herd, a National Park interpreter at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, says that both shipwrecks are located in the Manitou Passage State Underwater Preserve, which encompasses the Manitou Islands and stretches along the Lake Michigan shore from near Leland to Point Betsie. The Preserve safeguards the ships and other antiquities from salvage and souvenir hunters.

You can go see the wrecks, even touch them and take pictures, as long as you do not disturb them. That way the wrecks will be there (unless the Lake takes them away) so that people for years to come can marvel at their endurance and think about the days when these wooden ships were imperative to everyday life in this area.

Posted by editor at 03:52 PM | Comments (0)

Reprinted: History of the ancient Arbor Light building

By Jacob Wheeler
Sun Editor

This story originally ran in the Glen Arbor Sun on June 28, 2001

Years ago, the booming music and jovial laughter wafting through Glen Arbor on warm Saturday nights didn’t necessarily lead you to Art’s Bar for a cold beer, but rather, across Lake Street to what is now the Arbor Light building, where the Warnes family held weekly town dances above a general store and ice cream parlor.

As Gil Warnes Jr. remembers, the business run by his father Gilbert, Sr. through the 1920s and ‘30s was a virtual community center, visited by not only the Glen Arbor town folk but also folks from surrounding villages and even the Manitou Islands. With horse and buggies, on wooden bicycles, or in the new fad of the time — the automobile — they would frequent the general store to satisfy practical needs: filling up on gasoline or purchasing 16x16-foot ice blocks which were dragged off Lake Michigan in the winter and stored in salt to maintain a low temperature, all before the revolutionizing refrigerator came to Glen Arbor.

Or patrons would satisfy their vices near the (114)-year-old building, and that didn’t always mean stopping for ice cream. During Prohibition, according to Gil, Jr., thirsty men would hide their potent home brew or moonshine inside a hollow oak tree across the street where the Glen Arbor fire hall now sits, while they attended dances. Periodically, the daring men would descend back onto the street and swill to their hearts’ content … if local kids hadn’t already stolen the bottles from a different hole in the tree!

Accessible through a ticket counter on the fourth step of the stairway that still exists on the north side of the Arbor Light building, the dances themselves provided some of the fondest memories for Gil, Jr. and his wife, Elsie, also a local girl, whom he met and kissed for the first time when they starred opposite each other in a play at Maple City-Glen Arbor School. In the play “was the first time we were married,” said Gil, Jr.

Elsie remembers her parents rocking her to sleep and laying her behind the piano as they took part in lively square dances during the happy-go-lucky “roaring twenties” for Glen Arbor.

Even during the week times were jovial. An avid baseball fan, Gilbert, Sr. sat in his store every day smoking cigarettes and listening to the Tigers game on the radio, and relayed the news all over town whenever Hall of Famer Charlie Gehringer cleared the bases with another double up the gap. Where the Cottage Book Shop sits now was a miniature baseball field, and there Gilbert showed many a child how to catch a baseball the correct way, holding one’s mitt up to avoid being hurt.

But fortunes changed for the Arbor Light building in the late ‘30s, strangely mirroring the storm clouds building around the world. Gilbert died in 1939, leaving his 17-year-old son Gil, Jr. and his wife Pearl to fend for the store. The younger Gil attests that he weighed only 109 pounds at the time, yet inherited the responsibility of lifting the huge ice blocks, which were imperative products for the town’s well being in the summer.

The two men did not bear the brunt of the work for long, however, as Gil joined the Air Force in 1941 and served in Europe until the war’s conclusion. He would build and operate what is now (Bear Essentials) on M-22 after returning in 1945. Pearl gave up the business and moved to Detroit around 1942, and what once was the town’s unofficial community center remained closed to the public until Bob and Elna Garthe, teachers at Glen Lake Schools, leased it from John Eichstadt and opened an arts-and-crafts shop. To bring back locals in droves, the Garthes showcased hand-dipping candle exhibitions every Wednesday in the former ice cream parlor until, said Bob, candle dipping just became too labor-intensive.

Woody Stebbens purchased the building in 1985 and sold it a year later to Pat and Karen Watson, who, ever since, have run the gift shop and flower outlet, which the younger generation of locals identifies with the Arbor Light.

Other faces have come and gone: Barb Siepker and her Cottage Book Shop took the place of ice cream and candle shows from 1995-99 before giving way to Ed Bosse and his fine wines. The Glen Lake Artists now operate out of the back wing and co-exist nicely with the Watsons’ gift shop.

Despite all the traffic over the years, the hardwood maple floors built by a Swedish immigrant named Ehle in 1892 are as strong as their creator’s Viking legacy, and though wine tasters and gift samplers occasionally hear mysterious creaks coming from the floorboards above, no one has danced in this building in a long, long time.

Posted by editor at 11:10 AM | Comments (0)

November 10, 2005

When the world came to Empire

Remembering a Cold War outpost in the middle of nowhere

By Codi Yeager
Sun contributor

The quaint village of Empire is nestled in a valley between rolling hills to the north and south, with Lake Michigan lapping gently at its western shore. To the south looms a hill a bit taller than the rest, certainly prouder. Atop its peak sits a dome that crests the rise like a crown, its white facade gleaming in the sun as it gazes over the land with superiority. Of course, some call it nothing more than a glorified golf ball. But this white dome is no oversized sports ornament. It is a radome — one of the last standing reminders of a time that has passed into history.

The United States Air Force came to Empire in November of 1950, bringing with it about 300 military personnel, nearly doubling the population of the village at the time. The base was strictly an early warning radar system. The big scare was that the Soviets would send missiles up over Canada, so a line of radar stations spread across the northern U.S. and Canada, designed to warn us of an attack. The home of the 752nd Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron was placed on one of the hills to the south of Empire, and it comprised of an Officer, NCO and Bachelor quarters, one dining hall, a recreation hall, a commissary, a BX (Base Exchange), a dispensary, operation buildings and usually two to four radomes. Many of the officers with families rented housing in Empire or in nearby Dorsey Trailer Park.

Dave Taghon, who was a local teenager at the time, remembers that the Commanding Officer of the base would always rent out the house next door to his family’s home on Front Street. “When one CO would move out, the next one would move in. I got to meet all their lovely daughters,” he remembers with a laugh. Taghon also recalls watching movies in the Rec Hall every once in a while with the kids from the base — a rare treat when trips into Traverse City were scarce. “We even had a colored fellow once. He always wore a penny tied to a string around his neck and was a really good basketball player,” says Taghon, “We had never had someone like that before, and we thought of it as a novelty.”

While hosting the base was new and exciting for the citizens of Empire, (especially for all the local girls) the small town off the beaten path must have seemed like the middle of nowhere to the GI’s, who came from all over the country. “One GI later told me that when he first came to Empire and saw a kid practicing a cornet in the gas station, he knew he must really be out in the boonies … the kid was me.” confides Taghon.

However, the hunters and fishermen soon took advantage of the benefits of living in the ‘wilderness’ and set out to enjoy South Bar Lake and the forests of Leelanau County. Water skis and boats could be rented from a recreation area on Little Glen Lake, also used as a picnic spot, while other pastimes took the forms of boxing and baseball and basketball teams.

“Sometimes we would be invited to ‘agitate the dogs’,” says Tom Ford, who was stationed at the base from 1957 to 1969. Two guard dogs were always ‘stationed’ at the base during its first few years of operation. To train the dogs to attack, volunteers would put on heavily padded suits, agitate the dogs and then run away. The handlers would let the dogs go and call them off after a quick, and hopefully harmless, attack. “One of the dogs must have had really long fangs because it would bite right through the padding,” Ford remembers. “So if you antagonized the dog too much, you would get puncture marks on your arm.” Another dog was deemed too friendly since it let the GI’s pet it, so it was put to sleep. Eventually, the dogs and their handlers were sent off the base because they were no longer needed.

Even so, security was far from lax. “When you first got to the base, you would be stopped at the gate and asked for your orders. If you didn’t have orders, you didn’t get in,” says Gene Zoyhofski, who was also stationed at the base. Newcomers were given identity badges that they wore to enter and exit the base as well as the operation buildings. Once inside the base, there was no need to leave again other than for recreational activities. The base’s exchange store sold necessities such as cigarettes, razors, uniforms and jewelry while the commissary sold dry goods. “We were really a self-contained little city,” reminisces Zoyhofski. However, many GI’s did their grocery shopping at Deering’s Market, often signing a book for credit. On payday, everyone who owed money to either Deering’s or Taghon’s gas station would go traipsing down into town to pay their debts. “I remember my dad had a whole drawer full of pocket watches for things that probably never quite got paid off,” remembers Taghon.

The radar in place at the base was of two different types: a parabolic antennae and a height finder. These antennas were enclosed inside of the radomes and picked up aircrafts from all the way inside Canada. The early radomes were metal frames with tough rubber stretched over their exterior. The air that kept them inflated was pumped in using power from the small power plant on the base. “I remember that one time the power went out and you could see the radar antennae rotating around and making a dimple in the rubber,” says Pat Hobbins, who worked as a civilian for the Federal Aviation Administration. If this happened for too long, it could puncture the rubber.

The operation buildings, where the information gathered by the antennas was sent, were low brick buildings with no windows. They were kept completely dark inside at all times. The jobs of the radar operators varied; they could rotate through as many as eight jobs during the course of a day. For example, the path of each plane would be charted on large, clear grids. Each person would be responsible for a specific area of the grid. When a plane flew into their coordinates, they would chart its progress until it left their area and entered another section.

When the Air Force left in 1987, given that Soviet missiles over Canada were no longer considered a threat, the FAA took control of the radomes, using them for air traffic control of commercial airplanes by sending the information to Detroit, Chicago and Minneapolis. “There were certain checks that we had to do every month, checks for every week and checks for every day,” says Hobbins. Twelve FAA personnel were stationed in Empire, and that number gradually decreasing as technology became more advanced. “It’s pretty much all software-run now,” says Hobbins. There are currently three FAA personnel working at the lone remaining radome. The base itself has been mostly torn down, and the FAA shares the buildings that are left with the National Park Service. Lake Michigan’s waters rose during the year that the base was dismantled, and much of the rubble was taken down to the beach and spread over with dirt and sand.

Although the base is gone, many of the men who were stationed there are not. When asked why he chose to stay in Empire, Gene Zoyhofski, who was originally from upstate New York, summarized, “Hunting and fishing. Why would I leave?” Quite a few of the former airmen married local girls and stayed to raise families. That’s why, local families that have lived here for generations share the community with families with roots in Illinois, downstate Michigan and Wisconsin — all because of the Air Force base. In the words of Dave Taghon, “ It brought the world to Empire.”

Posted by editor at 07:54 PM | Comments (1)

June 30, 2005

Sea lampreys ruined many a picnic

By Helen Westie
Sun contributor

When I was growing up in the 1930’s in southern Michigan, our family summer highlight was always a camping trip. Our favorite camp spot was the state park on Green Lake in Interlochen. It was an idyllic camp spot under stately pines near the beach and the shelter house. The Interlochen music camp had been in existence for just a few years. Dr. Joe Maddy of the School of Music at the University of Michigan and founder of the Music Camp would often come to our camp site and give us free passes to the concert that night. Many years later when I was a student at the University, I met Dr. Maddy at a reception in the School of Music. I asked him if he remembered giving us the passes to concerts. “I certainly do,” he replied. “We really needed audiences in those days.”

I recall how much we enjoyed the International Youth Orchestra which often played familiar classics as we sat in the original Interlochen Bowl. I admired the camp uniforms which consisted of Navy blue corduroy knickers, blue shirts and red sweaters, which are standard issue to this day. Red mittens were part of the regulation uniform and they were needed in July and August here in the north country. Of course, as students played their instruments, those had to be put aside.

The nights were very cold in the 30’s and 40’s, and those campers who were better equipped (some even had mobile campers) would often Good Morning us with “Nice sleeping last night!”. “Humpf” would be our reply, “We froze”.

We always camped at the same place. Later, after I married and had two boys, my husband’s work took us to the Philadelphia area, but July or August took us back to camp at Interlochen. My brother Charles’ family would camp near us. My sons loved being with their cousins. Lately, they recalled the strains of Liszt’s Les Preludes, which always marked the end of the summer camp season as it still does today.

Through the years, my parents who still lived near Detroit would come to visit us at camp. The rigors of tenting did not appeal to them, so they rented a cabin nearby. Mom would bring her large cast-iron frying pan, some lemon, butter, Crisco, and perhaps a few spices. The most delectable of Michigan fish, the Lake Superior lake trout, would be bought in Traverse City. Mom would pan-fry the trout steaks and would serve corn on the cob and sliced very ripe tomatoes with it. Sometimes there were little new potatoes buttered and parslied. Dessert was a bowl of berries. What delicious dinners Mom prepared for us year after year. Then one year the lake trout became prohibitively expensive and the next one it was not available at all. That scourge of the Great Lakes, the sea lamprey, had decimated the whole industry!

I have never seen a sea lamprey, but from bulletins of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife and the National Park Service, I can visualize this reprehensible, disgusting sea animal. It is snake-like and it has a protuberant sucker-like strong mouth and teeth which can penetrate the tough skin and scales of any big fish. This parasite bores a hole in the side of the host fish and lives on its blood and body fluids, and the host fish usually dies.

The habitat of the sea lamprey is the Atlantic Ocean and not the Great Lakes. With the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaways some lampreys came in with ocean liners. Niagara Falls provided a barrier, but then with the opening of the Welland Canal in 1919, the lampreys gradually increased so that they have killed off the lake trout and other large fish.

In the 1940’s and 50’s the United States government spent millions of dollars in research programs to control the lamprey. Cooperation with Canada and much study has gone into programs to eliminate this predator. Various mechanical barriers were invented. An effective one was an electric fence, which did not allow lampreys to enter but did allow other fish to go through. This was put across streams where the lampreys go to spawn and which feed into the big lakes. In recent years, two lampricides have been developed which can attack the lamprey larval stage. At last, because of the application of these lampricides, the lamprey population has gone down and the lake trout is increasingly more available as time goes on.

Tom Rose of Empire is an avid fisherman and reports that now and then a Lake Michigan fisherman will reel in a lamprey on a salmon/ The fisherman will immediately take the lamprey in to the DNR office for whatever use this will be in the solving of the lamprey problem.

Steve Yancho, chief of Natural Resources for the Department of the Interior, whose office is in the National Park headquarters in Empire, and Dennis Lavis of the Fish and Wildlife Services in Ludington have provided helpful documents about the sea and lamprey problem and the steps in its solution. These documents are now on file in the Glen Lake Community Library in Empire. David Diller, librarian, has placed these in the records room for public use.

Posted by editor at 04:12 PM | Comments (0)

June 16, 2005

We Did Not Come Over Here on the Mayflower

By Lois Beardslee
Sun contributor

We did not come over here on the Mayflower. We did not come up the Cumberland Gap. We did not follow Daniel Boone or De Soto or a black-robed priest. We came from the tops of tall trees that softly bent down and laid their boughs upon the earth so that she would not be lonesome. We came from the clouds, life-giving mist and sky. We came from the soil itself, from crevices that opened up and gifted us to the open air. We came from the rich mud at the bottom of the waters to mingle with the other life forms and make them complete.

We followed Cranes here. We followed Turtles here. We followed Ravens and Frogs and Catfish and Sturgeon and Deer, Caribou, Moose, Otters, Bears… We followed the stars here. We followed the Northern Lights here. We followed rivers and streams and shorelines and horizons here. We followed the wind and the very air we breathe here. We did not follow you here.

So you stop telling those stories about us not traditionally being here. And about us being only a historic presence here. Like we were too dumb to fill up this place with life and culture, until after you nearly killed us off and then let the survivors linger, huddled together for warmth and solace, in the tiny, cut-off hamlets that you call our historic presence here. Yeah, you, lady from the Park Service. I’m talking to you.

You’ve got to stop telling the Indians the stories that you white folks at the Park Service keep telling yourselves. For instance, that one about the Ojibwe migration myth. You see, it takes a whole lifetime to learn that story about the migration myth, and even then, one only grasps a piece of it. Because it takes many, many lifetimes to learn that story about the migration myth. And the only way one can even begin to understand that story about the migration myth is to be in a room full of people who have spent lifetimes learning that migration myth and to be in a community full of people who have spent lifetimes learning that migration myth and to be in a culture full of people who have spent lifetimes learning that migration myth. Then one can understand it, a little bit.

But simply pulling out tiny snippets of that migration myth is ignorant and dangerous behavior. You pulled out the little pieces that sounded good and that met your needs. You took the parts that suggested that we were not always here and did not always use and need this place. First of all, you suggested that we all only got here a few hundred years before you did. And you left out the part of the migration myth that says that most of us were already here before those Indians whose latest migration myth you borrowed got here. Like they came to a giant empty space. Like there was this archaeological record just chucky-chock-full of cave men without caves and hunters without decent homes and storage facilities and accumulated knowledge about survival in this place…and then, poof, some Indians arrived who really aren’t from here anyway and have no greater claim to this place than recent migrants like you have to this place. Convenient. Very convenient.

You left out all of the parts of the migration myth that included merging and scattering and forming new groups and identities as the environment demanded of us. You left out all of the parts of the migration myth that included following the Cranes, the Turtles, Ravens and Frogs and Catfish and Sturgeon and Deer, Caribou, Moose, Otters, Bears… You left out the parts about how we followed the stars here. We followed the Northern Lights here. We followed rivers and streams and shorelines and horizons here. We followed the wind and the very air we breathe here. We did not follow you here.

We came from the tops of tall trees that softly bent down and laid their boughs upon the earth so that she would not be lonesome. We came from the clouds, life-giving mist and sky. We came from the soil itself, from crevices that opened up and gifted us to the open air. We came from the rich mud at the bottom of the waters to mingle with the other life forms and make them complete.

You need to stop telling those stories you tell about how we got public education from you white folks through treaties. We already had public education. We had it in our teaching lodges. We had specially educated and certified specialists, teachers. Teachers were such an important part of our society that we deemed them one of the five categories of people that communities and cultures need to survive. We had a special curriculum for those teachers; and the body of that knowledge took up an entire fifth of our totem system. We had special buildings, special teaching tools, even books with written lessons and important historical events. But you continue to rename these things as spiritual, as paraphernalia to a lesser religion, rather than what they were, schools and books and tools, fine arts curricula, literary curricula, math and science and medicine. You rename these things as archaeological sites and as mythology and as artifacts. How absolutely ignorant and boorish of you!

To continue to force your versions of our history upon us is oafish and uncivilized. It forces us to unteach what you teach. It challenges your concept of public education (which still fails to meet the needs of minorities), and it elevates ours. It challenges your terminology, and it elevates ours. It challenges your version of one tiny slice of our migration story, and it elevates ours.

We did not come over here on the Mayflower. We did not come up the Cumberland Gap. We did not follow Daniel Boone or De Soto or a black-robed priest. We came from the tops of tall trees that softly bent down and laid their boughs upon the earth so that she would not be lonesome. We came from the clouds, life-giving mist and sky. We came from the soil itself, from crevices that opened up and gifted us to the open air. We came from the rich mud at the bottom of the waters to mingle with the other life forms and make them complete.

We followed Cranes here. We followed Turtles here. We followed Ravens and Frogs and Catfish and Sturgeon and Deer, Caribou, Moose, Otters, Bears… We followed the stars here. We followed the Northern Lights here. We followed rivers and streams and shorelines and horizons here. We followed the wind and the very air we breathe here. We did not follow you here. We are the very essence of here.

Posted by editor at 07:19 PM | Comments (0)

November 11, 2004

Recycled Park houses provide a home, sweet home

By Helen Westie
Sun staff writer

These days, when half of a mobile home is transported down a highway on a flat bed truck, people rarely give it a second glance despite the ominous presence of an escort vehicle with a WIDE LOAD sign. But when an entire highway is taken up by a house moving slowly along, now there is an irresistible attraction that will never fail to draw a group of spectators. Such was the case six years ago, in the fall of 1998 when a group of locals teamed up to move the old Brooks House from the North Bar Lake area to M-22, south of Empire at LaCore Street.

The preparatory work had been completed. The house’s owners had engaged the Jonassen Moving Company of Hart, Michigan for the endeavor and hired local builder and urban planner Robert Foulkes as the contractor. A permit was granted from the state police to block off M-22. The Empire Village Council had approved tree-trimming all along the proposed route. Private land owners agreed to allow movement across their property. The Michigan Department of Transportation arranged to take down the blinking light at the corner of M-22 and M-72 (Front Street) and then return it later on. Century Telephone, Consumers Power and Charter Cable were also alerted. Skid boards were added to the house at the eaves, in order to deflect small tree branches while en route. The wrap around porch had already been removed.

The Jonassen Company had constructed a web of I-beams bolted together. And placed below the house, which was then lifted with hydraulic jacks and slid onto a truck, were a set of wheels and axles. At this point a police inspection of the house on the truck was required.

The route stretched from Bar Road to Voice Road, but also included a detour across the field where the Dunegrass Festival was once held, because of a line of Maple trees, and through the Catholic Church parking lot (with the priest’s permission, of course) to M-22 and, finally, south to LaCore Street.

What an effort!

Obviously, the task was slow and cumbersome. All went well until just before Fisher Road, as the truck was proceeding on LaCore, a large tree limb caught the roof of the house and stopped the truck. Backing up did not help. The house was stuck.

With M-22 completely blocked off, the crowd of onlookers had swelled to about 30 to 40 people who now were highly amused. Luckily, there were many community elders present who gave permission to saw off the offending tree limb. Foulkes gave the order, and Jeff Grant from White Oak Frame Company provided the saw and completed the job to the cheers and applause of the crowd.

The truck then slowly proceeded on across the field, the church parking lot and on to M-22.

In the spirit of historic preservation

In the 1970’s, the United States Department of the Interior acquired 71,000 acres here in northern Michigan, which became The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. The lives of many people changed forever when the new branch of the National Park Service purchased their homes and farms. The sellers were sometimes granted a “Reservation of Use and Occupancy” for a stated number of years. The reservations ranged from five years to 25 years, or even the lifetime of the owner, depending on individual circumstances. When the reservation expired, the park took possession.

This ongoing process originated in the 1970’s and continues even today, according to Tom Ulrich, Assistant Superintendent of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. “If the house is an historic site, the park seeks to preserve the property,” he said. “If it is not of historic value, one possibility is to issue a contract to a demolition company on a bid basis and the house can be razed. The contractor may offer a house to interested parties who can arrange for its removal, thus sparing the house from demolition.”

Park ranger Bill Herd estimates that under 20 local homes, including the Brooks house, were moved through a process similar to the one described above, and more may follow suit in the future.

Several houses in the Village of Empire are of special interest because they have been moved from the National Park and recycled. The large farmhouse now on the south end of the village where LaCore Street meets M-22 was moved from Stormer Road, and once owned by Irwin and Lillian Beck, who sold strawberries, raspberries, sweet corn and other vegetables from their 40-acre farm. Robert Foulkes and his wife, Robin Johnson, an architect who designed and built one of the homes in Empire’s “New Neighborhood” now own and occupy this farmhouse. The house was too wide to go down the road, so a large east wing was dismantled, and the historic parts were recycled and used in the restoration. The size of the house was shrunk down to what it was in 1924 and positioned in the new Empire location with the same orientation. Robin and Robert are doing the finishing touches. He feels that “recycling the old farmhouses into the Village of Empire is a unique chance to keep alive the historic character of the town. This house is now referred to as the Beck House.

The next house south on LaCore Street, known as the Brooks House, was moved from the North Bar Lake area and has been completely renovated and restored as a turn-of-the-century farmhouse. Ben Weese, Robert Foulkes, James Foulkes and Chris Hall formed a partnership and are responsible for saving both the Beck House and the Brooks House. Weese, a retired architect, and his wife Cindy, Dean of Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis, sometimes live in Chicago. They are part-time residents in their home on LaRue Street in Empire. Ben was in charge of the repairs and restoration of the Brooks House, and he is the new owner.

Before it was moved the house included a rap-around porch, which was knocked off by a bulldozer to facilitate the move. A new, smaller porch was added as part of the restoration, and is more in keeping with the period. New siding was also added, as well as new windows, and the house was re-trimmed. The original front door remains on the house, but a new backdoor was added. Original floors were refurbished. The house has a new, full basement. Jerry and Paul Solem of Empire were commissioned to do this work. Ben Weese says that, “it is important to keep the spirit of an earlier community by way of these recycled houses.”

Susan Pocklington has resided in the Brooks House since its restoration. Her possessions and antiques fit the historic period of the house like a glove. Susan is a singer and flautist, and she is the administrative coordinator of Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear, a non-profit organization whose mission is to preserve the historic structures and the cultural landscape of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. The organization is funded by donations and grants. Susan stated, “Living here is congruent with my passion for historic buildings. The opportunity to live here and be the caretaker of an historic farmhouse which was saved from demolition is very satisfying.” For good measure, she added a white rocking chair, a pot of geraniums, and a white picket fence at the side and back of the old house.

Dave Taghon, who served as Empire village president for many years and is now the active president of the Empire Area Museum, knows more about the history of this quaint village than anyone. “I am a firm believer in this recycling process,” he said. “I give credit to those who go through the trouble of undertaking such a challenge.”

Scandinavian charm and an optical illusion

Thirty years ago Chicago residents Joe Karr and his wife Kaisu obtained the Mary Birdsey House, which was located in the Park on the west side of M-22, north of M-109 at the curve. They had it moved to their property on Lake Street in Empire. Joe is a semi-retired landscape architect and Kaisu, before she became a fulltime homemaker, was a French language instructor. At the South end of Lake Street, this house is hidden from view because it is set back behind a row of Pine trees at the base of Storm Hill.

Jerry Solem and his company crew completely remodeled and refurbished the house, and it has retained the clean lines of the former Birdsey home. The added basement has the original floor joists which support the whole house. Uniquely, these joints are rough tree poles of Beech and Maple, and are visible to this day. Pale yellow siding with white trim has replaced the grey shingles. Windows were widened and others added. The kitchen was extended to the back to form a large dining area surrounded by eight new, long windows which overlook a wooded area where deer and other wildlife appear. New Maple floors were added. The whole modern décor is in natural wood with white accents. This house has a definite Scandinavian look inside and out, a reflection of Kaisu’s Finnish heritage. The house is still in mint condition. The Karrs are now adding a second roof.

Some years ago the Birdseys held a family reunion in Empire at a relative’s home, and the group came to the Karr House to view the changes to the old family house.

As the Karrs’ two children were growing up they often came to Empire in the summers and often on weekends in the winters for cross-country skiing and other activities. The Karrs now hope to spend more time in Empire.

One of the earliest homes purchased by the National Park was the Tom Thorogood home on Day Forest Road on Little Glen Lake. In 1971 Tim Barr of Empire and current owner of Art’s Bar in Glen Arbor bought the house on a bid basis for $75 from the National Park Service. He was obligated to move the house and everything from the site and restore the landscape to its natural condition. In turn, he sold it to the elder Thorogood’s son, Dave, and his wife Shirley of Empire. He also engaged the Jonassen Moving Company, which charged him $2,500 to move the house to the Thorogood property just off LaCore Road on South Bar Lake. They made improvements to the house and lived there several years before selling it to Bill and Sue Chambo, who operate The South Bar Bed and Breakfast there to this day.

Tim purchased several properties from the Park. One of these also has an interesting history. Before the Park bought a building and out-buildings near Good Harbor Bay at 669 and M-22, it was a tourist attraction named Glen Magic. This was an attempt to replicate the Mystery Spot in the Upper Peninsula west of the Mackinac Bridge, which to this day is a successful tourist attraction. Like that one, Glen Magic had a building constructed on a 45-degree angle but appeared to be on straight lines so that an optical illusion gave people a dizzying effect. Before long the enterprise failed and was closed down. Tim bought the enterprise from the park and used the materials, himself, or sold some. He used siding to cover his own home on Aylsworth Street in Empire. The ticket booth is still in Tim’s backyard.

Posted by editor at 09:37 PM | Comments (0)

August 12, 2004

Picking cherries during the Great Depression

By Helen Westie
Sun contributor

In the midst of the Great Depression, American families harvested the cherry crops here in northern Michigan. They were the forerunners of the migrants who came much later. It was 1931 and I was 13 years old when my family camped in the orchard of huge cherry trees (the trees are much younger today) at the tip of Old Mission Peninsula, which at that time consisted solely of cherry farms.

Our method of hand picking was a far cry from the cherry shaking described by Norm Wheeler in the July 29 issue of the Glen Arbor Sun. A pail was hooked onto our wide belts, leaving both hands free to scoop all the cherries from a branch into our pails. And we had to get them all. I wore my brothers’ overalls or slacks because girls wore only dresses then. Blue jeans would not come into wide use until several decades later.

We started at the top of the tree and when a pail was full, we would climb down from the high ladder and empty it into a cherry lug. We were paid 15 cents per lug — I was a good, enthusiastic picker and could earn almost a dollar a day. My father’s daily wage was $1.50 or a little more. My two brothers, a little younger than I, were not as productive or motivated. My mother stayed back at the tent airing our bedding and packing our lunches. When she delivered them, she would stay and pick for a while.

Right from the start, she became friendly with the farmer’s wife — they made an arrangement that my mother would bake two casseroles or two pie pasties (having been raised in the Upper Peninsula, she was an excellent pasty maker), one for us and one for the owner’s family, and we would eat dinner at our camp table.

Often after the day’s work, the farmer, Mr. Kilmurray, let us three kids ride on the truck loaded with full cherry lugs to the canning factory in Traverse City. For the records, the truck drove onto a scale and after unloading was weighed again. There was a story told to us about an incident one year before … When the farmers brought their loads to the factory, the price for sour cherries had gone way down. The farmers, in protest, dumped their whole day’s pickings into Grand Traverse Bay. The whole Bay was red with cherries as far as the eye could see, and the story and photographs appeared in newspapers throughout the United States.

One of the men who lived in the barn played a banjo. We would sit around a campfire at night enjoying s’mores, the first we ever had, and we sang and sang all the well-known songs, “Oh Susanna” and the like.

My brothers and I regarded the very first cherry-picking year as the most wonderful adventure of our young lives. We had left our home in Dearborn, MI in early spring of that year. My uncle Ed, who had hunted in this area, assured my parents that living was much cheaper and there was always fruit picking for a little extra income. My mother and father were feeling desperate; every insurance policy had been cashed, their life savings all but gone. There had been no work for my father for two years and now it meant going on welfare. My proud Finnish-American parents did not want to do that, so they bought a little Ford truck for 25 bucks, packed up our belongings and moved to Rapid City, near Kalkaska. Thus began the big adventure. Years later, the grandkids, grandnephews and grandnieces would ask, “how long were you in Rapid City?” We would say, “Well, almost two years,” and they would respond incredulously with, “and all that happened in two years?”

My brothers, now deceased, were better storytellers than I, and often regaled the kids in the family about the Rapid City characters (notably Helen’s boyfriends) or about skating parties, snowball fights, toboggan slides and pranks. Our lives could not have contrasted more with what they had been in Dearborn. It was life as it had been lived a generation or two before. The large house my parents were able to rent was furnished for $7 per month and was one of the nicest in town. Our Dearborn house was rented out for $10 per month. We were thrilled with our two-holed outhouse, but by mid-winter it had lost its fascination, and we longed for our city bathroom. We planted our big backyard at once with vegetables and berries. A number of chickens were fenced in for an egg supply and for special dinners. Mom had no qualms about cooking and baking on an old-fashioned cast-iron wood range. Dad was always busy chopping wood for the upcoming winter and the demands of the big kitchen stove. A pot-bellied stove with chrome fenders and isinglass windows was the only source of heat. In the bitter winter ahead, we dressed around this stove.

In Rapid City, we were intrigued by our new friends of the same age. At school we had farm friends; they knew so much, especially about taboo topics like reproduction, and they taught us plenty that we didn’t know. In turn, we intrigued them with our hints of urban sophistication. We were given lead parts in plays. We enjoyed a popularity that we’d never had before. We loved our new friends, and Mom and Dad also became acquainted in town. Often there was a Box Social, a picnic, or a Pie Social, and everyone in town participated.

After two years, we heard from friends back home that the factories were hiring again, so of course we had to move back. I shed bitter tears because I was smitten with a senior boy. We were “going together” it was told around town, though where this expression came from I cannot imagine. There was no place to “go” in this dating system except the walk home from Sunday night Christian Endeavor meetings when he walked me home. He never called my house. We had a sad goodbye and what I chose to think was True Love’s First Kiss.

None among us could ever, ever forget the evening before we left. The whole town and nearby farm friends gave us a potluck farewell party at the Rapid City Town Hall. All the way back on the long drive to Dearborn, we talked about the speeches, the presents and how sad we were to leave.

Posted by editor at 10:11 PM | Comments (0)

Olsen house, farmsteads in Port Oneida district, deserve to be preserved

By Susan Pocklington
Sun contributor

“We’ve been driving by this house for 20 years…we love it,” beams one woman who couldn’t be older than 35. A gentleman positions his tripod in front of the orange poppies blooming in the side yard. He grins at me and pauses. “I’ve taken many trips out here and have several photographs of this farm,” he explains with an air of accomplishment as he continues to adjust his camera angle. Laced with sentiment, these are comments I hear often, now that the public is coming through the doors of the restored Charles and Hattie Olsen house on M-22, which opened on July 2. The thrill of finally stepping inside this house that has quietly and stoically sat vacant through too many seasons is obvious.

Somehow this clapboard house with the signature sunburst design at the top has touched people over the years, and they feel a secret kinship with it. It’s “their house” some remark rather proudly. Perhaps its location on a well-traveled road has made it one of the most well known farms in the Port Oneida historic community. Even though the main farmhouse and barn are all that have “survived” of this once-thriving farm that included a house for Grandma and numerous outbuildings, it has retained its charm to passersby.

Standing near the entrance to Port Oneida with mature maple trees flanking each side of the road, the house now welcomes visitors in to tell the story of Port Oneida settlers through displays of historic photos and maps. It boasts of restored oak floors and trim, and original flour and sugar bins in the pantry. Ornate woodwork with glass cabinets dividing the front rooms showcases beautiful craftsmanship.

Yet, in addition to the architecture and restoration that we appreciate, now there seems to be an even greater purpose for this house — to be the voice that pleads to save its neighbors — the Kelderhouse, Burfiend and Basch farms, to name a few; those on North and South Manitou Island, and more distant historic buildings and landscapes south of Empire, all part of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. There is much to be done.

In all, there are 369 historic structures in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore that qualify for, or are already listed on the National Register of Historic Places. They tell the story of our pioneer, maritime, logging and tourism past. Of Port Oneida’s 18 farmsteads, historians have called it the only intact agricultural community in the Midwest and perhaps the nation, in public ownership. That’s impressive. The non-profit organization, Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear was organized in 1998 to help Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in the massive undertaking to save these historic treasures that are in our backyard.

The restoration of the Olsen house, which was completed with funding from two grants written by Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear, is one example of projects accomplished directly or indirectly through this partnership. PHSB is now the adaptive-use partner for the Olsen house, which includes maintaining the building. Fortunately, other farms have been or may potentially be adopted by other non-profit partners. Under a new management team, the Park is actively doing what it can, and has been successful in competing for funds from National Park resources for several stabilization and restoration projects. Still, they don’t have enough time or money to do it alone.

Looking beyond the freshly painted walls of the Olsen house you will see buildings in need of repair, like the Martin Basch granary whose skeletal east wall leans toward the foundation of a building now gone, or the collapsed porch roof at the Theodore Beck farm on South Manitou. Seven buildings in the Park were either lost or sustained considerable deterioration just this year. Winters are still harsh here, and once they’re gone, they’re gone.

Perhaps the Olsen house never knew how many friends it had. I suspect that each farm is someone’s favorite. But I’ve come to understand that people do care about these places. A few years out of college when I worked at The Leelanau School, I used to ski past Thoreson farm and sigh despairingly over the empty, weatherworn buildings, sad that they could be lost over time. What is it about these farmsteads that evoke such sentiment? We like their beauty. We like their reminders of times past. We like the peace that comes when you walk their meadows. Let us hope that the Olsen house speaks through its new family, Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear, and will draw to it folks with hands ready to repair and pockets willing to give so that these conduits to our past — barns, farmhouses, corn cribs, lighthouses, log cabins, meadows and inns that tell of Great Lakes history — are not lost.

I heard a different comment the other day. There was a knock on the door. “I used to live in this house … I really did,” the woman said, head lowered, and voice quivering. She was a granddaughter of Hattie and Charles, in town from California for her sister’s memorial service. Together we walked through the house and grounds, her eyes brightening as she saw her childhood home restored as a place where the history of Port Oneida and surrounding farms would be told. I think she felt that peace I mentioned, as her face seemed more tranquil when she left. She promised to send pictures too; maybe there’ll be one of Hattie’s garden with the orange poppies. Come visit the Olsen house and let it tell you her stories.

Located on M-22 about 3 miles north of Glen Arbor, the Olsen House is open Tuesday – Saturday from 11-4 and Sunday from 1:30 – 4 through August, with Fall hours yet to be determined. For more information about Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear, call 334-6103. Susan Pocklington is the Administrative Coordinator for Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear.

Posted by editor at 05:29 PM | Comments (0)

July 29, 2004

My Labor of Love: Remembering the Martin Basch farmstead

By Kristin Seitz
Sun contributor

“A handful of pine seeds will cover mountains with the green majesty forests. I too will set my face to the wind and throw my handful of seed on high.” Fiona Macleod

For generations people have thrown their own seeds to the wind in this beautiful region. With blood, sweat and tears the pioneers of Port Oneida carved out of wilderness a home for themselves. I discovered this magical area through the kindness of my very dear friends, Dr. Joseph Naoum and Lynn Stevens-Naoum. Just short of a decade ago, they offered their Glen Arbor vacation home to my family for a week getaway. I absolutely fell in love with this area and its history. My heart was touched by the dedication and perseverance of the Port Oneida founding families. It was troubling to think that their hard work was slowly fading away right before our eyes. The once active and fruitful farms are now slowly decaying away. Very soon it will be as if they never existed, doomed to disappear.

During one of my many explorations of the area, I “discovered” the Martin Basch farmstead. This farm piqued my interest. Although the home is in serious decay, the craftsmanship was still evident. The architecture was extraordinary. I just had to know more about this farm. Unfortunately, I found very little information on this particular farm through reading most of the books on the area. It was then that I decided to write my own book on this particular farmstead. It has been said that the true art of memory is the art of attention. To me, this book is my attention and is now my labor of love.

The German community was not only a strong presence in the Port Oneida/Glen Arbor area, but in Michigan as a whole. The first Germans arrived in Michigan around 1830-1840. Interestingly, by the 1880’s, Germans were the largest foreign-born group in the Detroit area. In 1852, Carsten Burfiend of Hanover, made the move from North Manitou Island to the mainland. The patriarch of the Basch family, Martin Basch, immigrated to America with his wife, Aderheit “Allay” Basch, around 1868. They first settled on North Manitou Island then made a permanent home in the Port Oneida area. The Basch families, including the Nicholas Basch family, have been important figures in the Port Oneida area. It is vital that we not just recognize these founding families, but bear witness to their hard work and hardships.

Working in conjunction with the wonderfully benevolent non-profit group Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear (PHSB), it is my intention to restore not just the history but home of the Basch family. Eighty percent of the proceeds of this book will go to restoring the Martin Basch farm. The enthusiasm of the Project Coordinator of PHSB, Mr. Michael Matts, has been nothing short of contagious. I am also excited to announce the participation of Ms. Barbara Siepker, owner of The Cottage Bookshop in Glen Arbor. She has been extremely supportive in this project. One current venture that The Cottage Bookshop and I are undertaking is a “corporate challenge”. Through private donations, I have raised $2,000.00 to restore the Basch farmstead. We are challenging the business owners/shopkeepers in the Glen Arbor area to match the $2,000.00 already raised. The results would be phenomenal. With the initial “seed” money, PHSB already has made plans to restore the granary building on the property. Think what an additional $2,000.00 could do. We are excited at the possibilities. I would love for the Glen Arbor community to get involved with this worthwhile project. I truly believe that in saving our past, we save our future. We have already lost too many historical buildings and farms. The time to act is now.

I encourage everyone, both in the Glen Arbor area and abroad, to get involved. This is not just your history but everyone’s history. The foundations laid by the pioneers of this area should not have been made in vain. few need to not just recognize but honor their dedication and sacrifices.

For further information on this project, please contact Kristin Seitz at manitoumoon@hotmail.com or Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear at 231-334-6103. For donations to this project, please contact Barbara Siepker at The Cottage Bookshop in Glen Arbor.

Posted by editor at 03:46 PM | Comments (0)

July 15, 2004

Preserving Native American lore — excerpts from “Lies to Live By”

By Lois Bearslee
Michigan State University Press, published 2003

Lois Beardslee, author of Lies to Live By, is an accomplished Native American artist, teacher and writer in Leelanau County. She practices many traditional art forms, including birch bark biting, quillwork, and sweetgrass basketry, as well as painting and illustration. In publishing these excerpts from Lies to Live By, the Glen Arbor Sun seeks to initiate and expand coverage of this area’s history and traditions preceding the white man’s arrival. — the Editors

Birch Bark Biting

As far as I know, there were only two of us alive in Michigan still making birch bark bitings, although for years Canadian collectors told me about an older lady in the far north who was still making them. Then I started hearing about the lady who made them bus was in her eighties. Finally, someone told me that she was gone. One Valentine’s Day, I traveled around Lake Nipigon. While there, I demonstrated to some of the Ojibwe and Cree women how to make bark cutouts. Some of the people I spoke to asked if I did bark bitings. It is an art form that is remembered and respected, but no one there knew how or knew of any local individual who still made them. There is so much communication, travel, and intermarriage between the Indian communities of the northern Great Lakes, that word tends to get around about such things. We value the old art forms and want to know who still does what.

That was back when there were two of us. Then Ron had his eyetooth pulled. The bitings are created only with the eyetooth, and the biter, either right-handed or left-handed, tends to favor one eyetooth over another. Never having gotten the opportunity to demonstrate bitings to any of the interested parties at Lake Nipigon, I found myself the last living soul I knew of still creating this art form. Painfully aware of my own mortality, I began dragging other Indians out into the nearest birch woods. “I don’t want the responsibility,” I insisted.

Birch bark bitings were originally done strictly for amusement. The designs are traditionally floral and abstract. Pictures of animals are also done, and these are usually at least bilaterally symmetrical. As a child, I saw it done near the small northern Ontario Indian community of Palomar. The bitings were done as a curiosity after dinner, by a couple of older men who peeled the bark directly off the firewood next to the stove. I was very young and didn’t know yet that these things I saw would disappear, so I didn’t really pay attention to the details of how the bark was treated. Mostly I remember the joking and cajoling as the designs were held up to the kerosene lamp. One uncle lacked the necessary teeth to make the designs.

Eventually, as an adult, I began to try bark biting as an offshoot of other bark that I do. It was hard, and it hurt my teeth. One day Ron Paquin, a Native who worked at the Ojibwe Culture Museum in St. Ignace, Michigan, mentioned that he did bitings. He suggested that I try heating the bark over a candle flame to make it more pliable. Although I had known that heat was traditionally used to flatten large sheets of birch bark, it had not occurred to me to try it on such delicate layers. It’s tricky. As Ron warned, too much heat destroys the bark.

Today, I make my bitings while I am doing other bark work, utilizing the papery thin layers that peel off but are too thin to fold and cut. I rarely have time to use fresh bark when it is first gathered. Much of my bark work is done during the winter, when the bark is less supple. I trim the bark so that it is symmetrical, because the designs are created strictly by folding, refolding, and planning the bite patterns. I use the pot of hot water on my woodstove to heat the bark. If I am making a particularly complex design, I keep touching parts of the bark to the stove surface. I use the warm water to help pull apart the bitten layers without splitting them. Pressing the unfolded finished pieces onto a hot, cast-iron skillet helps to eliminate fold lines and create a smoother finish for market work.

I don’t remember how many years ago I started making the bark bitings, I’ve gotten better over the years, just because of the hands-on learning experience I’ve had. It is my absolute favorite traditional art form, because of the surprise element created by the challenge of working with a surface I can’t see once it enters my mouth. As with bark cutting, the size, shape, thickness, and texture of each individual piece of bark determines the final product. No two are alike. Birch bark biting is also the single most threatened traditional Woodland Indian art form that I know of. I can teach people how to do the cutouts any time, any place, with paper and scissors. But biting is trickier, and young people think it’s “icky,” because I put the bark in my mouth.

Sometimes when I am out in the woods I pick up pieces of bark that the tree sheds naturally during winter’s harsh winds. I make bitings, then lift and release them to flutter away in the breeze. This is how I thank the woodlands for my livelihood. This is the way of leaving a message to future generations that the Anishnabeg are still here, that this one small tradition has not yet perished. Sometimes my children find the bitings, years after I have released them. For a few brief moments we admire the tree’s gift of a particularly suitable piece of bark, and we wonder at the durability of the medium. Then we send them back to the forest floor… I long to find someone else’s, for the security that comes with being part of a mainstream, part of something that is alive and growing, like a culture.

One of our traditional stories tells about a group of siblings who entertain themselves by cutting and biting animal and floral motifs with their mother’s basket-making scraps. Preoccupied by the illness of her youngest son, the mother angrily swept the children’s “mess” into the fire. Later, her recollection of the bark designs was the only remedy to save the infant’s life.

Minan

Minan is the Ojibwe word for berries. Some berries are named for what they look like. Strawberries are really called “heart berries,” or oday-minan. Raspberries are miskiwiminan —“blood berries.” As children, after we had carried them around in our hands for too long, we used to call them miskiwiiwiminan, or “bloody berries.”

The word for blueberries is simply minan — “berries.” Blueberries are the most important wild fruit in the subarctic. People who have never been north of the southern Great Lakes during late summer and autumn cannot fathom how extensively minan grow. They are not picked a handful at a time. They grow in such large, thick, bushy swaths that women and children can gather huge quantities of them in only a few hours. Minan have such a high content of sugar and pectin that they stay intact and harvestable from mid-August until hard frost. Even if the berries dry on the bushes, they are still harvestable and edible. In the old days, it was not uncommon for northern Ojibwe to trade blueberries for corn, beans, and squash with their cousins to the south.

My family has a camp in the far north. In September we bake as many as a half-dozen blueberry pies in one day. Big, full, bulging pies. We scoop up the minan with our fingers stretched out, raking them up by the handful, eating at least as many as we bring home. I have always told my children that I have only one berry-picking rule: for every berry you put in the bucket, you must put two in your mouth. A favorite game is to eat them like bears, on all fours, no hands.

We are not alone when we pick our berries. Sometimes the dog’s ears perk up. We look up, to stare off into the bush where a lumbering, crashing sound in the woods has come to a sudden stop. Sometimes we pick so quietly that the bears happen upon us. They watch us, then silently, cautiously back away. It is their favorite blueberry spot, too. On the way home, we see their loose, blue-stained stools on the dusty openness of the bush trail. It seems that we both enjoy and depend upon minan so much that we risk this uncomfortable interaction with one another.

We have a story ab