THE BEST OF TIMES

 

Dear George, 

 I lived in four places while growing up in Menominee between 1937 and 1955. Up until I was six my parents lived had a second floor apartment in a large white house on Ogden Avenue (now 10th Ave.) at the foot of the Interstate Bridge. My age-mate and first friend, Sally Fernstrum, and her parents lived on the first floor, and Sally and I walked four or five blocks each day to kindergarten at Boswell School. At the end of that year my family moved to Sheridan Road (now 1st St.) around Michigan Ave. (now 16th Ave.), next to the State Street neighborhood where many family friends lived (Burkes, St. Peters, Worths, Sawyers, Murphys, and others). With the U.S. entry into World War II, my dad went for officer training at the Great Lakes Naval Station and was then shipped off to the Pacific. My mother, my younger brother Steve, and I moved to a second floor apartment at the corner of Quimby (3rd Ave.) and Sheridan Road. I think the building might have been owned by my paternal grandfather, V.A. Sr. Then when my dad returned in 1946, we moved to our house on the river that had been built by my maternal grandfather, Guy Cramer. That move was monumental for our family. For us kids, we went from being town kids to country kids — entirely new lives. I wrote a poem about this some time back, and recently I’ve worked at revising it for my OLLI poetry class. Here is the current version. 

Love, Dave 

              The Best of Times 

With the war finally over  

and my father back from the Pacific, 

our family, poorer than magpies, 

moved into my dead grandpa’s cottage, 

set among the white oaks 

on the banks of the Menominee, 

the only house on River Road, 

built of Norway Pine 

and boulders from the field, 

no electricity, 

no running water, 

no indoor toilet, 

no telephone, 

six-foot pine snakes in the foundation, 

a gaggle of bats in the attic, 

porcupines nesting in the evergreens. 

We grilled hot dogs at the outdoor fireplace, 

took weekly baths in the river, 

and caught fireflies in a Mason jar. 

With big snowstorms, 

the County took half a week to plow River Road, 

giving us kids private holidays from school. 

We pioneers of the Great North Woods, 

we children of the forest. 

As the oldest I had many tasks, 

to light the kerosene lanterns at sundown, 

to keep the firewood bin stocked, 

to bring water from the outdoor pump 

for the dog’s bowl and my parents’ coffee, 

to gather wild strawberries for breakfast, 

to shovel the walk in winter, 

and, most of all, to raise Old Glory, 

then fold her up again at dusk. 

My favorite times 

were going with my father to the city dump, 

a twenty-minute trek up the road, 

pulling my red wagon 

to lug found treasures home. 

I collected bottle caps 

while Dad searched for household goods, 

a bedside table with a chipped leg, 

a discarded flower vase, 

someone’s seashell ashtray 

from their Florida vacation, 

rusty old tools or perhaps a tin bucket. 

We loved our years on the river, 

swimming from morn till dusk, 

riding our bikes down the old road, 

camping out at Brewery Park, 

shooting at beer cans with the .22, 

acorn fights with my brother Steven, 

taking our green rowboat 

with its one horsepower motor 

for picnics on Indian Island 

or into the channel with its 

family of Great Blue Herons. 

Then came the summer of 1948 

and new neighbors, the Orths and the Meads,

built houses down from ours  

and the County strung up telephone and electric lines. 

Our wilderness world would never be quite the same.

Skipper B

Dear George, 

        Recently I was saddened to learn that one of my best childhood friends, Skipper B, died several years ago. Our parents were close friends, so Skipper and I became close friends too. Our family lived on Sheridan Road at the time, and Skipper’s family lived a block away on State Street. We cruised the neighborhood on our bikes, played softball and touch football at Triangle Park, got ice cream cones at the Producer’s Dairy, swam in the bay at the end of a neighborhood street, built snow forts, and played cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians in my back yard. 

         Skipper was seven months older than me but several years more worldly, and I learned a lot about life from him, including most of what I knew about the birds and the bees. In fourth grade I had a crush on one of our classmates named Louise. Skipper got tired of my talking about how beautiful Louise was, and one day he took me up to his parents’ bedroom, opened up one of his mother’s women’s magazines, and showed my a two-page Clairol ad with dozens of pictures of models who had hair dyed in different shades. He asked me if I thought these women were beautiful, and, when I agreed, he asked me to show him one model that looked like Louise. I looked and looked but couldn’t find a single one. Skipper explained that a girl named Maxine in our class was beautiful and looked most like these models and that Louise, in comparison, had a big nose, a square jaw, and a large Adam’s Apple. That ended my crush on Louise (but started my crush on Maxine). 

         My own family was pretty non-religious, so Skipper provided a lot of my spiritual education as well. His family were good Catholics, and he went to Sunday School and mass every week. Every Monday morning Skipper told me the story of a new saint he had learned about. I also learned a lot about the priest’s drinking indiscretions and which of the nuns were the meanest. 

         Both of us were comic book enthusiasts. I liked Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck the most, but Skipper owned a complete collection of Classic Comics, i.e., the comic book adaptations of literary classics (Moby Dick,The Three Musketeers, Hamlet, the Iliad, etc.). When we debated which superhero was best, I picked Superman, but Skipper liked Batman the best because his powers relied on human abilities rather than fantasy super-powers. 

         In fourth grade our teacher devised a competitive system by which students could move through the military ranks by accumulating points for various extracurricular activities — e.g., going to church, participation on sports teams, singing in the Glee Club, belonging to the Boy or Girl Scouts. All the children began the year as buck privates, and, as they accumulated points during the year, they could proceed through the ranks of sergeant, lieutenant, captain, major, colonel, etc. The highest possible rank was Gold Star General. It involved so many points that it seemed impossible that anyone could every achieve that rank. For the most part, that was true. However, one of our classmates did become a Gold Star General by the school year’s end. Skipper belonged to the most groups, participated in the most activities, went to the most events, and had the most interests. 

         After fourth grade Skipper transferred to parochial school, and two years later he and his family moved to Minneapolis. That was the last time I saw or heard from him until I ran across his obituary. It was amazing and gratifying to read about the rest of Skipper’s life. He attended a top private school in Minneapolis where he lettered in three varsity sports, then went on to Yale University where he continued to excel academically and starred in Yale dramatic productions. After law school at the University of Chicago, Skipper joined a top law firm in Minneapolis and became Chair of the Litigation Department. An avid athlete who enjoyed sailing and skiing, Skipper took up marathon running at age 41 and completed nearly 90 marathons and several 50 mile and 62 mile races. Married four times and mentor to many fellow members of AA, Skipper owned homes in Minneapolis, Colorado, and Wisconsin; was a foster parent to several children; opened and ran a gourmet health food restaurant; wrote several plays, one novella, and an autobiography; and created a successful art fair in Minneapolis.                                                       

        When I knew him, Skipper was an extraordinary kid, but that was only a precursor to his extraordinary adult life. It’s like Freud said — our basic character structure is firmly in place by age 6 or 7.  I’m sad that I lost touch with Skipper.

Love, Dave 

On the Road Again

DEAR GEORGE, Recently long-time friends, Lois and Bob A, invited us to come up to visit them in Menominee, my Upper Peninsula home town. It was our first trip in 18 months. We drove up from Cincinnati via Chicago and Milwaukee in two days, arriving in Menominee in the late afternoon on Sunday. Menominee (pop. 8,150) is located on Green Bay at the southern tip of the U.P., about 55 miles north of the city of Green Bay. It’s right across the Menominee River from Marinette, Wisconsin (pop. 10,608), our twin sister city and the site of my father’s family home. Returning to Menominee and Marinette is always an emotional experience for me. I left for college in 1955, yet much of the town remains the same some 66 years later: the layout of the streets, most of the houses and buildings, the churches, the city parks, the courthouse, the library, the marina, the cemetery, the airport. On the other hand, many of the important places of my youth have either disappeared or been relocated: my grade school and high school, my father’s law office, my uncle’s Rexall drugstore, the DAR Boys Club, the Lloyd and Menominee Theaters, the Five and Dime, the GI Surplus Store, Harry Cooney’s gas station, Garbell’s soda shop, Sonny’s grocery, Trautners, the Gateway Cafe, the hospital, Herb Beyersdorf’s garage, the Ideal Dairy. While I was clearly home again, a big chunk of “home” now exists only in my mind.

Our friends live in a magnificent home that they built by hand themselves on the shore of Green Bay. Because we are so landlocked in southwest Ohio, it’s easy to forget how wonderful it is to live on the water. Menominee is spread out for three miles along the shoreline of Green Bay, Lake Michigan’s largest inlet, and the town’s southern boundary is along the Menominee River (the border between the U.P. and Wisconsin). Menominee’s main business district is situated on the bay, as are its five city parks. You never forget being on the water, the visual scenes are hypnotic, and the ready access to the bay and the river make the outdoors a central part of residents’ everyday lives: swimming, fishing, boating, water-skiing, kayaking and canoeing, skating, ice boating.

We have a regular routine as tourists when we visit Menominee and Marinette, and we did much of it this trip: driving around the loop, Henes Park (with a brand new pavilion bathhouse), the boutiques in the historic downtown district, the marina, the magnificent Spies Public Library, art galleries (including Marinette’s Rusty Wolfe Gallery which could just as well be on Madison Avenue in NYC), “Simply Charming”, Pine Tree Mall, antique malls, thrift shops, the Riverside Cemetery, Riverside Drive in Marinette, Sequins, Joe’s Cheese Shop, and a trip on River Road to the location of our old family home. We were saddened by the loss of Weathervane Antiques and Younkers department store, but pleased with the new Menekaunee Harbor Park and boat launch with its attractive regional sculptures and with the new House of Yesteryear antique store in downtown Menominee. I bought a Menominee Maroons T-Shirt for $12.95 at the drugstore, and Katja got us two U.P. hoodies and some $75-a-pound cheese at Joe’s. Katja and I had a date night at Berg’s Landing, Menominee’s finest restaurant, and enjoyed a lot of other local eateries as well: The Watermark [successor to Schloegel’s], Applejacks, The Brothers Three, the Serving Spoon, and Culvers where we had our traditional lunch with my cousins Ann and John B.

In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s my parents purchased and renovated an 1880’s farm near Birch Creek, five miles north of town, and my Seattle niece and nephew, Jennifer and Greg, currently operate the family property as a successful Airbnb. Katja and I went out to Farm on a day between rentals and Jim and Sharon K gave us a tour. My parents, Vic and Doris, would have been thrilled. There were new roofs on four of the buildings, the Barn’s sagging foundation had been shorn up, the guest house had been renovated, the bridge over Birch Creek repaired. All in all, the property was more inviting than it’s ever been, and it’s no wonder that nearly all of the Guest Book comments refer to it as “magical” or “mystical”. We thoroughly enjoyed our visit, though it was bittersweet. We’ve had so many happy family reunions over the years with lots of joking and laughter, but now, with the loss of parents and siblings, it’s more of a place for quiet reminiscing and nostalgia.

We decided to return to Cincinnati by way of the Upper Peninsula and the Mackinac Bridge. The 195-mile trip from Menominee to St. Ignace and the bridge reminded me of how remarkable the U.P. is. We passed through about a dozen villages and small towns, but only one had a population of 10,000 or more (Escanaba) and most had 200 people or less. The U.P. is largely a wilderness area, and we spent the vast majority of time driving through evergreen forests along the Lake Michigan shoreline — a wild and beautiful country. The Upper Peninsula is about the size of Denmark, but contains only 3% of Michigan’s population. Population density is 19 people per square mile (compared to 94 people per square mile for the U.S. as a whole). Yoopers, as natives are colloquially called, enjoy an outdoor life — hunting, fishing, boating, camping, hiking. Our trip made me once again contemplate how much my personality and attitudes were shaped by growing up in the U.P. LOVE, DAVE