Thanks to Christopher and other readers, we have our answer for the December Mystery Photo! Fulton Park housed the peacock population of Traverse City during the winter months. During the summer, they occupied more pleasant surroundings by the bay near downtown.
Fulton Park is located on Carter Road just outside the city limits in Leelanau county. A building on the property once housed an exotic, gorgeous bird that made outrageous squawks near Clinch Park, downtown. Name that bird!
In honor of all the architects who have built Traverse City, and their buildings that have been demolished in the name of progress.
by Julie Schopieray
The city’s landmark Park Place Hotel has undergone many changes over its long history. The first major change was the construction of the building we all know today. After standing for more than fifty-five years, the 1873 hotel first known as the Campbell House was replaced in the name of progress. In 1929, R. Floyd Clinch, president of the Hannah & Lay Corporation, hired prominent Chicago architect, Benjamin H. Marshall to design a new, modern 9-story structure. Since then, the hotel has had several owners, gone through many renovations and has struggled with financial difficulties, yet it has survived. It is once again considering another dramatic change.
Among several controversial development proposals currently being discussed in the city is a new conference center attached to the Park Place Hotel. This development would involve demolishing two mid-century buildings, including the 1965 Park Place Dome. Before this happens, it is important to inform and remind the public of the significance of this building, both architecturally and historically. Some will question whether a mid-century structure could be considered historically significant– it’s only fifty years old. Many may look at the Dome building and think it isn’t worth saving because honestly, it may not be the most attractive building in town. But, do they know that when it was built, it was ground-breaking technology?
By the early 1960s, it was determined that the city needed a convention hall. A couple sites were proposed, but the overwhelming opinion was that it should be located in the downtown area. At first, a city-owned hall was proposed in cooperation with the Park Place Hotel, but the bonds were voted down. That plan changed when the financially strapped hotel was sold In December 1963, to Traverse City native Eugene Power of Ann Arbor. Under his ownership, it would be re-opened under the name, Park Place Motor Inn. He was determined that the updates he planned would once again draw tourists and conventions to the hotel and stated that “all-out efforts will be made to re-build the convention business” [Traverse City Record-Eagle, 5 December 1963].
But first, the thirty-five-year-old hotel needed to be brought up to date. The expansion proposal was not without controversy. It included the need to close to through traffic, the section of Park Sreet that ran between State and Washington streets. At first, there was strong opposition and the city commission denied the request. It would mean the few remaining structures on that section of Park Street would become “land-locked” and lose value. It also drew criticism from the representatives of the three churches on Washington Street whose congregations used the street. Eventually, compromises were made which freed up the hotel to complete their 
plans. By January 1964, the renovations were finally under way. Power’s goal was to make the inn once again, “a credit to Traverse City.” [Traverse City Record-Eagle, 5 December 1963]. He hired local architect Paul Hazelton and the extensive updates were prepared. Hazelton first designed a 100-room motel addition replacing the old Annex building. The raised building allowed for doubling the parking for the hotel. Other improvements included a top floor dining room and cocktail lounge, a complete redesign of the lobby and a dining room, a bar, coffee shop, room renovations, indoor competition-type swimming pool and eventually a convention hall. The convention center was the last structure to be added. For that, Hazelton conceived an extraordinary design. It complemented the unique dome which covered the swimming pool. It was to be circular in shape 
and covered by an 80‘ dome. When the plan was revealed, an article in the paper described the new Park Place Dome as “A world ‘first’ in architecture,” as the roof of the building was being constructed of a material never used before. Hazelton described it as “a completely new concept in world building history.” He was working with Dow Chemical Company engineer Donald Wright, who developed the lightweight plastic styrofoam that covered the building. Wright came up with the idea and worked on the project in secret for several years before he and Hazelton convinced Eugene Power to give the go-ahead on the 
experimental project. Hazelton explained that it was the first time a plastic was actually used as a “structural form rather than as a cover supported by some other material.” It took only about 12 hours to place the dome on top of the structure. The architect continued by explaining that “the unique use of plastic has tremendous potential for future building throughout the world. It is ‘monolithic’ in that one material is used, the process is fast, the structure is easy to maintain and repair, and the overall cost can be as little as one third that for conventional construction” [Traverse City Record-Eagle, 24 October 1964]. The dome weighed only two pounds per cubic foot, compared to concrete which would have weighed 150 pounds per cubic foot. Even though the dome was experimental at the time, it has withstood fifty years of use.
The innovative concepts used in the design are important to our town’s history. At the time, this building was seen as a much needed step forward and was built to improve not only the hotel but the community as well. If we are to lose this unique structure, we, at the very least, need to remember the significance it held for our city just one generation ago.
As a side note about the architect: Paul Hazelton is also well known as the architect for the 1965 Chamber of Commerce building which was replaced with a new structure in 2001. His 1957 design of the Oleson’s food store on State Street won an award for Architectural Achievement of Merit from the Western Michigan Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. He also designed the 1969 airport terminal. It was the first building (and only) in town to have an escalator– another of Hazelton’s many “firsts” in Traverse City architecture. That building was demolished in 2007 to make way for a new terminal.
You will be able to read more about the architecture of Traverse City in an upcoming book by Julie Schopieray, author and regular contributor to Grand Traverse Journal.
O broken life! O wretched bits of being,
Unrhythmic, patched, the even and the odd!
But Bradda still has lichens worth the seeing,
And thunder in her caves—thank God! Thank God!
– Thomas Edward Brown, quoted in Lichens of North America, p. 3
More than 24,000 souls are buried in Oakwood Cemetery on Eighth Street. Their monuments fill sixty acres all told, the earliest ones dating from the 1860s. They are made of limestone, granite, and even zinc, the last material only used for a few persons buried between 1885 and 1890. Draped urns, lambs, weeping willows, angels, passages of Scripture—even baby shoes—are carved on them, symbols of grief and the hope of life to come. Besides these human expressions of emotion are marks Nature herself bestows upon the stone as a reminder of continual change: lichens.
Lichens are informally called “moss” by most people, but are different from that organism. Mosses have leaves and stems, for one thing, and lichens do not. A moss is a single organism, every cell with moss DNA, while a lichen is like a chimera (an animal made up of two different kinds—like a centaur). Its body is made of a fungus which has captured a colored food-making element, an alga or a kind of bacteria. Often forming a crust or spreading as a leaf-like thallus over a stone monument, many of them are stunning, especially when examined under a ten-power lens.
We think of organisms only when they impact our lives and, in this regard, lichens are no different from other living things. What good are they? What harm do they do? What is their role in nature? These questions tug at us even as we admire their beauty.
We can’t eat them, though a few cultures—like the Inuit–manage to extract scant nourishment in extreme habitats like the arctic. They colonize our statues and monuments, their slender filaments penetrating even hard granite to a few millimeters and softer limestone to a depth of 16 millimeters (more than a half inch). Lichens are colonizers: they move onto unfriendly substrates like tree bark, barren soil, or rock, creating patches of organic matter which are taken over by more complex plants like mosses and ferns. They are pioneers.
Lichens are not friends to sextons of cemeteries. Degrading statuary and carvings, they make inscriptions hard to read, obscuring names and dates. Only the scattered zinc monuments are free of the problem, that surface providing scant toeholds for colonization. Inscriptions on the oldest stones are scarcely legible, so encrusted with green and orange lichen growth that observers vainly scratch them away to capture the names and dates of persons long forgotten.
Yet we should not despise lichens, for they charm us with their intricate structure. Under the lens, some of them present an array of disks aimed upward, not to catch something from above but to give something off: spores. Called apothecia, these miniature dishes produce millions of fungal spores which enter the streams of the wind. Upon landing in a fertile place, they send out tiny threads and wait for the landing of the right bacteria or algae, photosynthetic cells responsible for growth.
Slowly the colonies grow, and we should be glad, since lichens only thrive wherever the air is pure and clean. It is well known that tree trunks downwind from polluting industries are bare of lichens. When our tree trunks are bare of them in Northern Michigan, when gravestones stand without those round patches of sage green, orange, and yellow, then we will know that the air has gone bad. We should take joy in the lichens around us.
Books of most interest to readers are Michigan Lichens by local author Julie Medlin and the ponderous Lichens of North America by Irwin M. Brodo, Sylvia Duran Sharnoff, and Stephen Sharnoff. Both of them may be found in the Traverse Area District Library.
Richard Fidler is co-editor of Grand Traverse Journal.
In the coming months, Traverse Area District Library (TADL) will become the home of the regional archives formerly maintained by the History Center of Traverse City (HCTC). In response to that event, reference librarians at TADL have received a number of questions. Since the Grand Traverse Journal is a forum for sharing knowledge, let me take the opportunity to describe an archives, explain its functions, and tell how having an archives available at TADL is important to library visitors and patrons. Afterwards the HCTC will supply a brief history of its archives.
What is an archives?
Archives are similar to libraries. They exist to make their collections of information available to people, but differ from libraries in both the types of materials they hold, and the way materials are accessed. Archives concern themselves with future use, or the “second life” of information.
All information, whether it remains in your head or is recorded on a physical medium, has a first and second life. That life cycle can vary, depending on what the information is and how the information is used. The first life of information covers the time the information is immediately relevant, and the second life covers the time that information has no immediate relevancy, but may have some future use.
Memorizing a restaurant phone number has a short first life, perhaps 20 seconds, and a long second life, where it may get filed in your memory bank for recall at some later date. Your birth certificate has a longer first life, as the information it records is good to have on hand for the length of your life, but it also has a second life. Perhaps a distant descendant will need that information to record in the family tree, or researchers will use your information to explore health issues of the past.
An archives is a place to store, preserve, and make available information that is in its second life to people who need that information. Information held in an archives is usually unique.
How does an archives function?
Most people keep their own personal records, such as tax filings, court papers, wills and trusts, and the organization and management of your personal archives is a thing easily managed. You create a finite set of papers, probably organizing them using folders and a filing cabinet or two, and within five minutes of searching, the document you are looking for is found.
Now, imagine if you cared for all the personal records of every member of your extended family. You might need to come up with a system for making sure Aunt Joan’s documents stay with her other files, and Aunt Claire’s stays with hers. Most archives operate this way; We call it maintaining “provenance,” that is, keeping things of the same origin together. An alternative would be to separate like documents (perhaps putting everyone’s student loan information in one folder), but this method destroys the context of their creation, and limits our ability to arrange and describe the archives effectively. An even more amusing alternative is to throw it all in the middle of floor, but none of your family members would thank you for that. How could they ever find the document they were looking for?
We’ve just described basically how an archives functions, but let’s break it down into steps:
How will the transfer of the archives to TADL affect me?
For you, our patrons and researchers, the transfer of the archives means the largest known collections of published and unpublished works concerning our local heritage will now be housed in one building. It also means our collective history will be retained in the Grand Traverse Region, rather than being parceled out to other archival institutions. The archives, like all library materials, will be accessible to all our visitors. As stated by TADL board president Jason Gillman in a recent Record-Eagle forum piece, “preservation and display of the area’s history will be an added bonus for library patrons and visitors.”
As the steward of this public collection, the HCTC’s largely volunteer crew and lone professional archivist made the archives accessible, maintained the collections and improved them with new acquisitions. As the new steward, TADL is both professionally and technically prepared to take on the archives. In addition to those tasks listed above, TADL is also committed to growing and improving the online image archives as well, providing unparalleled access to both local and remote researchers.
You can also expect the HCTC to stay involved and especially to promote history education for all. As stated by Stephen Sicilaino, Chair of the HCTC Board, “The Board believes that with the transfer of the archives to TADL, the History Center will be able to become a stronger organization and more effectively meet its mission to protect, preserve, and present the history of the region. We will continue to work with TADL on preserving the archives and we will have greater ability to present the history of the area through programs and publications” (Open letter to the membership, November 2015).
Your editors hope you will join us for our HCTC and TADL jointly-sponsored monthly history programs, which take place on the third Sunday of the month, at 2pm. In 2016, topics will range from lumbering to labor strikes, and all points in between!
History of the Grand Traverse Archives (provided by the HCTC)
The archives trace their beginnings to Traverse City’s Old Settler’s Association, a social club organized in the 1920’s, by the area’s original white settlers. This group eventually became the Grand Traverse Historical Society (GTHS) and focused primarily on social gatherings and educational presentations. In the 1980’s the GTHS joined with the Pioneer Study Center, a public archives started in 1978 at Pathfinder School. The new organization, the Grand Traverse Pioneer and Historical Society, received thousands of photographs and historical documents from the Pioneer Study Center. The collection was variously located in the basement of the Grand Traverse County Courthouse, the basement of the City-County Building, and above a store front on Front Street. In 2005 it moved into state-of-the-art facilities in the newly opened Grand Traverse Heritage Center, located at the renovated Carnegie Library building on Sixth street, the original Traverse City Public Library. The Society changed its name to the Traverse Area Historical Society in 2008.
In 2010, the Society merged with another non-profit, the Friends of the Con Foster Museum, largely because the two organizations held similar missions, to foster historical education and preserve our local history, and the renovated Carnegie provided space for both the Museum collections, as well as the Archives. The combined organizations became the History Center of Traverse City. Since receiving the initial donation of the Pioneer Study Center archives in 1978, the organization (whatever name it was operating under) continued to collect donated materials to improve the archives’ holdings.
Amy Barritt is co-editor of Grand Traverse Journal, and Special Collections Librarian at Traverse Area District Library. Special thanks to Peg Siciliano, who provided the history of the archives to date.
For as long as there have been automobiles, there have been gas stations. At first they were no more than pumps along curbs, but, as oil companies began to compete for market share, they took on a specific character that proclaimed service, style, and branding to the motorist and to the public in general. That character was expressed in station design and the way gas stations fit into neighborhoods and communities. Even now, in subtle ways, they communicate a sense of product and place to all people, not just auto owners.
In the Grand Traverse area it is impossible to find curbside gas pumps, since regulations concerning the dispensing of gasoline products forbid them. In the first and second decades of the twentieth century, however, they were common. The picture below showing the “Indian Gasoline” station in Elk Rapids is typical of the curbside design. At this early time little effort was expended to mark a gas station as a place designed to fill a specific function: only the branding on the pumps, “Indian Gasoline,” tells us anything about the product.
In the 1920’s, gas stations began to take on a new appearance. One new design was the house filling station, one of which still exists in Traverse City as the “Flower Station” on West Front Street. As cars became more prevalent, oil companies sought lots close to residential neighborhoods in order to market their products to homeowners who drove automobiles. Since they had to blend in with nearby homes, such stations frequently sported a steeply inclined roof, windows with individual panes, flower boxes, even chimneys. Such places certainly did not convey the reality of exhaust fumes, the smell of gasoline, and the sounds of automobile engines—all of that would clash with the quiet elegance of nearby homes.
The next major innovation in gas station design was the oblong box, a rectangular design with individual bays for servicing. During the 1930’s oil companies expanded product lines such as batteries, tires, and other accessories. Crandall’s iconic station at the corner of Union and Eighth Street (now Randy’s Service) clearly labels each of the bays: washing, greasing, batteries, and tires. Its handsome art deco appearance has drawn attention from many architectural preservationists. Cliff’s Service on Union Street near 14th across from Speedway is a smaller version of this style. The “oblong box” prevailed from 1940 until 1980 as the dominant design for gas stations.
Beginning about 1970, a new style evolved: the small box. Emphasizing low prices, retailers presented their product in no-nonsense fashion, selling nothing but gas, oil, and a small amount of merchandise aimed at the motoring public. Clark Oil and independents avoided all kinds of promotional gimmicks in order to undercut prices of the major companies, Shell, Mobil, Texaco, Phillips, and the rest. In Traverse City there remain two such stations, one on Division Street and the other on East Front. The latter location is still in operation, though it has added a canopy.
About the same time as the small box, the Canopy and Booth design was created—and for the same reason. Here, the small box has been reduced to a building no bigger than a highway toll booth. Often a canopy was added to protect customers from the elements. Rest rooms and vending areas occupied small shed-like structures at either end of pump island. In the Traverse area, two of them remain, both active—one on US 31 South, a few miles out of town, and another on East Front west of Garfield Avenue.
Finally, the most modern incarnation of the gas station is the Convenience Store with Canopy, a design that has become increasingly popular since 1990. Gone is the joining of auto service to the retail purchase of gasoline. In fact, gasoline is only one of many products motorists and shoppers can purchase: cigarettes, fast food, beer, and lottery tickets make up a large percentage of sales, though oil, windshield washer fluid, car washes, and even air for tires are sold, too. Pumps are untended, the consumer required to pump his/her own gas.
How the gas station has changed since the early days! Within the memories of those still living it has morphed from a neighborhood fixture emphasizing personal service to an impersonal store only slightly related to automobile travel. Where before uniformed attendants used to pump gas, check the oil, fill up tires, and maintain automobile systems, now motorists can fill up without even entering the business, paying with a credit card after a few minutes spent at the pump. In such an experience, the human element has been eliminated entirely.
The rubber hoses spread on the drive that cheerfully announced the arrival of a new customer with a cheerful “ding,” are forever gone, their absence lamented by those who can remember when getting a fill-up meant more than a simple transaction for gas. Like the neighborhood grocer, the local gas station owner no longer interacts with us, that job being sacrificed in the name of efficiency and lower prices. It has not been a completely satisfactory trade-off.
The book most useful in preparing this article was The Gas Station in America, by John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle. It was obtained by means of interlibrary loan through the Traverse Area District Library.
Richard Fidler is co-editor of Grand Traverse Journal.
For more information on interlibrary loan services offered by Traverse Area District Library, please visit the following page: http://www.tadl.org/melcat-interlibrary-loan
The following vignette was provided by the author of Murder on Old Mission, Stephen Lewis. Lewis is currently crafting the sequel to that well-received novel. Expected publication is early 2016. Murder on Old Mission is currently available at local booksellers and at Amazon.com.
In 1895, Woodruff Parmelee, the scion of a major Old Mission Peninsula farming family, was sentenced to life imprisonment in solitary confinement for the murder of Julia Curtis, his pregnant girlfriend. Julia’s body was found at the base of Old Mission Peninsula in an area near East Bay that was called the hemlock swamp. By modern standards, the prosecution’s case against Woodruff was well short of solid. It depended upon the questionable forensic evidence of footprints found near the body, which may or may not have been Woodruff’s, but could equally well have been those of any of the thirty or forty men who were searching for her. There was also the eyewitness testimony of a hired hand named Stagg who had a history of perjury and who offered to leave the area if he were paid enough.
Parmelee’s defense was built on an alibi. He could not have killed Julia, he claimed, because at the very time she went missing, he was working on a new road on the other side of the Peninsula heading toward West Bay. The prosecutor’s witness testified that he had seen Parmelee heading east, away from that new road. Parmelee said, no, he was going the other way. Clearly this difference is crucial. If Parmelee could prove his version, it would establish his alibi, and he would have to be acquitted. He could not be in two places at the same time.
Receiving scant attention in the detailed newspaper reports of the trial was the testimony of Parmelee’s son Louis who supported his father’s alibi. He stated that when he went to join his father working on the road, he met his father coming from the west.
The testimony of both witnesses was less than convincing: Stagg’s character is at issue as is Louis’s assumed filial attachment to his father. If we say that their testimony cancelled each other out, not much besides the footprint evidence remains of the prosecutor’s case. Nonetheless, Parmelee was convicted. In all probability, the unstated basis for his conviction was his troubled marital history, including two failed marriages, and the fact that he was twice the age of Julia.
This is the story I fictionalize in Murder On Old Mission. In my version, I focus fully on the testimony of the son. By changing some facts and adding others, I intensify the son’s situation. That book’s penultimate chapter takes the story to Parmelee’s conviction. Its very last chapter provides the bridge to the sequel I am now writing. That chapter jumps twenty years ahead when Parmelee, in spite of his sentence, is again a free man, returning to Traverse City where he is reunited with his son.
My sequel intends to fill in what happened between conviction and release. Parmelee was convicted of a most heinous crime. His sentence reflected the severity of the community’s judgment. If capital punishment had been available, Parmelee would have been a candidate for execution. Yet, not only did he not serve his life sentence, he was released, and in fact lived another twenty-seven years, almost outliving Louis, who died shortly after him.
There is one salient fact that explains Parmelee’s release: the intervention of Governor Woodbridge Ferris, who interviewed Parmelee in Jackson State Prison immediately prior to Parmelee being paroled. My research as to why this extraordinary intervention occurred has come up empty. Why the governor should have picked Parmelee out of all the prisoners in Jackson at that time for his personal assistance remains a mystery.
And that provides me the opportunity of creating fictional circumstances to fill that void. As I did in Murder On Old Mission, I am building on the historical facts, but this time, as well, I am constrained by the fictional facts I created in the first book.
That is an interesting challenge.
Review of Murder on Old Mission
Amy Barritt, co-editor of Grand Traverse Journal
Reminiscent of Arthur Miller’s work, The Crucible, Murder on Old Mission is a fictionalized account of a true crime that took place on Old Mission Peninsula. Although we modern readers might associate the Peninsula with breathtaking views and wineries, author Stephen Lewis deftly realizes the relative isolation of that region in the late 19th century, which would, on occasion, encourage intense interpersonal relationships to compensate. Readers are invited to see both sides of that coin, in the passionate relations between Sam Logan and Margaret Cutter and in the unexpectedly adversarial relationship between Sam and his son, Isaiah.
Highly descriptive and full of rich conversations, this is the type of book wherein the scene can play out in your imagination as a movie would. A drama of the highest order, and well worth a sequel, which I eagerly anticipate.
Excerpt from the sequel to Murder on Old Mission
by Stephen Lewis
Isaiah adjusted his sailor’s gait to the flat surface of the road leading to the church. Everything else was eerily familiar. It had been five years since he walked up this road on the day that began to change his life. But the road itself, inanimate and without memory, just lay insensate beneath his shoes. Somehow he had thought that the dust rising beneath his feet would carry with it echoes of that day, perhaps a word, a sigh forced out between clenched teeth, an image of a face drawn in pain, a tear trickling down a man’s unshaven cheek or finding a path along the worn furrows of a woman’s face, and above all a pervasive black of mourning.
On this morning to be sure, the shadow of death argued against the bright rays of the sun this late spring day. But this time, death’s face wore a bemused grin, a weary acknowledgement that the deceased had simply run his appointed course and it was time for him to be gathered into the ground. In that respect, this occasion could not have been more different than that one five years ago when a person in full bloom had been cut down.
The handle of the church door felt the same as it did that day when he had grasped it with a hand warm and wet from sweat, his lungs gasping for air. And the hinges squeaked just as they did then. On that day, when he pushed the door open ever so slowly to minimize the disturbance of the squeaking hinges, he was confronted by an empty building. He was too late. Through the rear door, he could see the mourners gathered around the freshly dug grave into which the woman he loved would be interred, and standing, ashen faced, among the mourners was his father soon to be convicted of putting her there.
Today, however, the congregants were all in their seats. He stood for a moment at the rear of the church. He expected heads to turn around to gaze at him in response to the loud squeaking of the door on its hinges but none had. He had tried to prepare himself for that eventuality, but had not come up with a suitable response. Several people did now, belatedly, turn in his direction, but then swiveled their heads back toward the front of the building. Perhaps, he figured, they had not recognized him. It had been, after all, some years.
Biography of the Author
Born and raised in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, Stephen Lewis holds a doctorate in American Literature from New York University, and he is Professor of English Emeritus at Suffolk Community College, on Long Island, New York. He now lives with his wife on five acres in a restored farmhouse on Old Mission Peninsula in northern lower Michigan.
After having written The Monkey Rope (1990), and And Baby Makes None (1991) two mysteries set in Brooklyn and published by Walker & Company, Lewis turned his attention to a different time and place, New England in the seventeenth century, for Mysteries of Colonial Times. The stories set in Brooklyn dipped into Lewis’s childhood, while this second series, written for Berkley, drew upon his expertise as a scholar of New England Puritanism. The Dumb Shall Sing, the first of this series was published August, 1999, followed by The Blind in Darkness in May, 2000, and The Sea Hath Spoken January, 2001. Murder On Old Mission, put out in 2005 by Arbutus Press, was a finalist in the historical fiction category of ForeWord Magazine’s book of the year awards. His mystery novel, Stone Cold Dead, was submitted by Arbutus to the 2007 Edgars. Belgrave House recently published A Suspicion of Witchcraft, his first ebook original novel.
Before turning to mystery fiction, Lewis published short stories, poetry, scholarly articles, and five college textbooks, including Philosophy: An Introduction Through Literature (with Lowell Kleiman, Paragon House, 1992) which is still being used in a number of colleges. This past December, Broadview Press, a Canadian independent, published Templates, a sentence level rhetoric that relates syntax to computer templates.
He continues working in various fiction genres. His more recent short story publications include “The Visit,” a literary short story in The Chariton Review, “Eagles Rising,” a mystery story in Palo Alto Review, “A Foolish Son,” a historical story published online in the Copperfield Review, and “The King Knew Her Not,” in Green Hills Literary Lantern.
Dear readers, this marker is placed near the railroad tracks, close to the Woodmere Branch of Traverse Area District Library. What does that mysterious “W” stand for? And who should pay attention to it?
Here’s your clue: Your editors believe this to be rather antiquated, and feel that the “W” might be better replaced with a “H” for modern times.
Readers Rebecca and Robert hit the right notes with their answers! Indeed, the “W” on this marker stands for “Whistle,” which has been replaced on modern railroads with horns (and why we suggest the “H” needs to replace the “W” on these markers). Read Robert’s full explanation here:
“This is a whistle post that notifies the engineer that there is a road crossing where the whistle/now horn should be blown. Two longs, a short and a long blast of the whistle or horn/s is the Federally required law to inform people that a train is coming and they should be prepared to stop short of the crossing. Nowadays there are quiet zones in some localities that forbid the blowing of the whistle or horn/horns at crossings. In this case, the crossings are well protected by flashers and gates to keep motorists from crossing when a train is coming.”
Our readers are simply brilliant! Thanks, Rebecca and Robert!
A naturalist must cope with whatever Nature deals out. Once when I took a course in invertebrates, I had to walk through shallow, warm ponds in the middle of summer, an action that would surely attract leeches (known by some as bloodsuckers). Sure enough, after traipsing through one particularly muddy body of water, I looked down to discover that one had attached to my leg. It was not only attached, but was apparently feeding: it wouldn’t let go.
When one’s life blood is being sucked out by a predator, one does not always behave rationally. Not entertaining the notion of spraying an offensive chemical on the animal so it would let go on its own, I used my fingernails to scrape it off. Not a good idea. The wound bled and bled, taking twenty minutes or so to stop. Thus, I learned about the anti-coagulant properties of leech saliva: leech bites don’t readily stop bleeding because the creature injects hirudin, an chemical that prevents the blood from clotting.
The wound didn’t hurt—I am told the clever leech employs an anesthetic as well as an anti-coagulant. It would never do to annoy a mammal to the point it would forcibly remove the animal feeding off it.: better to feed quietly and drop off to browse, sated with food and satisfied for any number of months to come.
This predator leech—the word “predator” is more appropriate than “parasite” since it feeds for only minutes instead of days and months—was Macrobdella decora, the American medicinal leech, the red-bellied leech. As its name implies, it sports an attractively decorated array of red spots, a possible design pattern for a necktie or a scarf. The animal is a distant relative of the earthworm with its concentric rings that encircle its body, marking off no fewer than 34 segments.
While the practice of leeching, using leeches to bleed patients, has fallen into disfavor since the nineteenth century, it still is occasionally employed in modern medicine whenever it is necessary to increase circulation to a blood-starved part of the body such as a newly reattached finger that has been accidently cut off, for example. I remember distinctly that in our own Munson hospital not too many years ago, a young girl had a finger reattached and submitted to treatment with leeches. “It’s kissing my finger,” she would tell visitors. Indeed, in a way, it was.
Most leeches do not feed upon mammals, preferring frogs, fish, and, especially, snapping turtles. Some do not attack large animals at all, being satisfied with earthworms and smaller creatures found in water. One of the largest leeches to be found in the area, its body extending a full six inches or more, seldom feeds on humans or their pets–the horse leech, Haemopis marmorata. I have observed this creature in Lime Lake, Leelanau County, where it can be seen rapidly scudding across the marly bottom, fully as capable of swimming as a fish.
Horse leeches sometimes are found on mud at the edge of the water. If they are grabbed to use for bait—as bass or walleye fishermen will occasionally do—they will readily try to climb out of the bucket, unlike other more docile species.
Leeches are given a bad rap. They seldom bite, they do not spread disease, they have medical uses, and they make good bait. However, the idea of having our blood sucked does not go down well with us. We despise things that do that–mosquitoes, black flies, or biting midges—and we cut them no slack. Perhaps, we should, though, with leeches. After all, they do us little harm–much less than mosquitoes—and at least one of them, Macrobdella decora, looks terrific!
Richard Fidler is co-editor of Grand Traverse Journal.
Header image courtesy of Tim Eisele at “The Backyard Arthropod Project”, American Medical Leech.
Fulton Park is located on Carter Road just outside the city limits in Leelanau county. A building on the property once housed an exotic, gorgeous bird that made outrageous squawks near Clinch Park, downtown. Name that bird!
by Julie Schopieray
People in general are fascinated by the unknown: Bigfoot, Loch Ness, and UFOs. What is it about the unexplained that keeps us interested?
Historically, our region is no exception. Around the turn of the twentieth century, sightings of strange creatures in the waters of Northern Michigan were quite common- some real, most imagined. The best known at the time was the famous sea serpent of Petoskey, which showed itself in Little Traverse Bay for several summers in the 1890s and became a novelty that resorters looked forward to each summer. The mystery was solved in 1895 when it was discovered to be nothing more than a “very crooked tree trunk that has been beating about in Little Traverse Bay for years. Its peculiar shape and the fact that it had become black with slime…gave it a very serpent-like appearance.” The Petoskey sea serpent was celebrated for many years even after its real identity was discovered. Their baseball team was even called the Petoskey Sea Serpents— complete with a plaster serpent mascot that traveled with the team.
Other creature sightings occurred at various resort areas such as Omena and Harbor Springs. Most people made light of the sightings and it was all for fun.
Distinguished Monster Here for his Annual Outing Near Omena. The resort business of the north is now assured as the regular summer attraction has arrived and has begun daily performances near Omena. The Sea Serpent, which has been so minutely described by summer visitors for several years, made his first appearance a few days ago and was seen by two carpenters working at Omena Inn. He seems to be in the best of health and looks as if he had enjoyed life the past few months. Just what his scheduled program for the summer will be the Eagle has been unable to learn but he will no doubt be friendly at all the ports and pay Traverse City a visit too.” [Daily Eagle June 1898].
In 1903, a “sea serpent” in the Boardman River near the Cass St. bridge drew attention from curious locals. “County Treasurer George W. Steward claims to be the discoverer of the monster, and may be seen frequently pointing out the “horrid green monster” to his friends. “It” is there all right, and his friends can see it for themselves, but it doesn’t move, and seems to be located in the same place all the time. Of course, it is sunning itself, but then, too, it may only be weeds and water grass collected together, which gets its snake-like motion from the current of the river…Anyhow, it is there. ~Traverse City Evening Record 17 July 1901
In the summer of 1907 several people saw in West Bay, what they claimed was either a sea serpent, walrus or a sea lion. On June 25, the newspaper reported that Captain Dave Duane spotted something on the beach, was four feet or more long and “barked like it was a sea lion” . The Captain was in a rowboat when “dead ahead there sounded a terrific splash and a noise, half grunt, half bark, followed it… a moment later he was drenched by another splash…as the tail of the sea serpent, sea lion, octopus or whatever it is, broke the surface. He had just time enough to catch a glimpse of a body perhaps four feet long and seemingly covered with a dark brown hair. The head of the animal was flat and the nose pointed while two sharp white tusks protruded from the mouth. Others saw it as well, and the newspaper reporter stated that “the telephone in the Record office buzzed frequently…the news that a real live sea serpent… on the west side travelled rapidly.”
A day later Frank Birdsall claimed that he saw a very large animal that had to be either a seal, sea lion or walrus. Mr Birdsall was sitting on the beach near their home just after sunset when a fish leaping from the water attracted his attention. The fish jumped again in a few seconds but this time was followed by a seemingly gigantic form. This so excited him that he took no notice of what happened to the fish. Mr. Birdsall says that he can offer no estimate as to its length but as the animal left the water very near in-shore, he is almost certain that it is covered with scales or else a hard skin instead of hair. There are still many skeptical people in the city but Captain Duane and Mr. Birdsall can readily convince them of the material existence of some aquatic animal. -Traverse City Evening Record, 25 &26 June, 1907
Word started to spread that perhaps this creature was “Big Ben” a trained, performing sea lion that had escaped in November, 1903 from the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. The Big Ben story made news all across the midwest and sightings continued for more than seven years after he escaped. The incident fueled a series of articles, mostly in Chicago papers –which were widely read by Traverse City citizens– that played up the escape as a humorous event, humanizing the animal and making light of the “motives” of his escape. One poked fun about the animal refusing to return to the zoo until he got union representation and a “nine hour day”, and many others that related sightings to the over-consumption of alcohol.
The legend of the absentee sea lion of Lincoln Park lived on in the press for many years. Several reports of his death were announced beginning in 1904 when his body was supposedly found on a beach fifteen miles south of St. Joseph, Mich., and obituaries continuing as late as 1910 when it was proclaimed that the sea lion had been captured and killed by fishermen in Galveston Bay. The real truth is most likely the earliest account and the 1907 Traverse City encounters with something that looked very much like a sea lion helped sustain the appeal of the missing animal. Sensational stories sold newspapers and continued “sightings” led to the story of Big Ben being drawn out for quite some time.
For Traverse City, this story ends with the two 1907 sightings. Nothing more about the creature is reported, but the mystique of his fate remained and the question of whether an ocean animal could survive for an extended time in the waters of Northern Michigan was debated by many.
In June 1935, another large aquatic mammal was spotted in the bay and confirmed to be a seal. Photographs were taken and the story of the animal made newspapers around the region, even featured in the October issue of Hunting & Fishing magazine. A humorous account of the 1935 sighting, written by Detroit News writer Herbert C. Garrison, was published in The News and in The Michigan Alumnus.
“It seems that for some weeks now the good folk of Grand Traverse region have been coming in from their fishing expeditions saucer-eyed and panting, with reports of having seen some strange marine monster disporting itself in the limpid depths of the bay. These reports have resulted in a series of theories as to the identity of the monster, all of them completely unauthenticated. Among the principal theories were these:
That it was a sea-serpent …a sea lion…a walrus…a whale…an alcoholic mirage…Primo Carnera [Carnera was a professional boxer of very large size]… Purely in the interest of science, Mr. Sackett the other day determined to seek out the truth of these conflicting rumors, which have kept the neighborhood in a turmoil and have ruined the summer romance business on account of nobody daring to go out for moonlight sails…Sackett assembled himself a sea-going safari consisting of one outboard motor boat, one camera, one pack of films, one harpoon (for defense purposes only)….Sackett before leaving had imbibed only in two bottles of sarsaparilla and a hot dog (this to clear up any misunderstandings falling under the heading of Theory No. 5 above), the Ray C. Sackett Grand Traverse Bay Monster Expedition shoved off with a yo-heave-ho. We now turn to the the written record of the expedition in Mr. Sackett’s own hand, found floating in a sarsaparilla bottle which the intrepid commander dropped overboard to make sure the results of the expedition’s research would be preserved for posterity, even if the expedition itself failed to make shore… “We were proceeding with a spanking breeze on our quarter and approaching a large flat rock, about 500 yards offshore, when McGonigle, who was acting as look-out, sang out: ‘Monster Ho-o-o-o!’…I looked, and yessir there he was, sunning himself on the rock. McGonigle said it was a walrus. I said it was a seal. ‘It can’t be a seal,’ McGonigle pointed out. ‘He ain’t got no hat on. I’ve seen lots of seals in circuses. They always wear hats.’ Well, that was a stumper, until I finally got a great idea. ‘Throw the harpoon at him,’ I ordered. McGonigle threw. The monster caught the harpoon in its mouth, tossed it into the air, and balanced it on its nose when it came down….Then to cinch the matter, the seal looked toward me and distinctly said: ‘Werp!’ According to McGonigle, who hasn’t missed a circus since he could carry a pail of water, this is the old Forepaugh & Sells Bros seal dialect, now almost extinct, and means: ‘Brother, can you spare a herring?’’” Thus was the Grand Traverse Bay Monster identified. As to how he got here, I think I can clear up that point, too., I have been told there was a troupe of trained seals at the Chicago fair last year, and that one of the seals got into a rundown condition because of too much night life and was advised by his physician to take the baths. So he slipped off into Lake Michigan one night, and liked it so well he never came back.
There were no further documented sightings of this particular animal and its fate is unknown.
An article about the history of Traverse City sea serpent sightings over the years was written in the popular “The Observer” column in 1948. Author Jay P. Smith first mentioned the famous Petoskey serpent, as well as the 1907 Traverse City incident when “that horrendous creature who, fifty years ago, emerged dripping from the bay, waddled up the beach and stole a whole critter out of the Brosch slaughter house in the southeast corner of the bay and lugged it back into the water. That was, without doubt, one of the best sea serpents Northern Michigan ever produced.” Smith tells of fakes that were planted by pranksters for fun. “One of the smaller ones was the one Art and Bert Winnie built and arranged on a pulley just off the old Hannah & Lay lumber dock with the ropes running to the dock. A person concealed between the lumber piles could pull the ropes so the monster would raise its horrible head above the water, glare around and then submerge. Many old, short people today owe their shortness to having been scared our of several years’ growth by that serpent.” The article concludes with this: “It became necessary for Traverse City to go out of the sea serpent business years ago. The bay got so full of them and people saw so many of them, that summer guests starting going to places where there were no monsters. They darn near ruined this community as a vacation center. So, if you hear any reports in the bay or see one, keep it to yourself. We don’t want to scare our visitors away.” [TCRE 17 July, 1948]
We are long overdue for another sea serpent sighting in the bay, but with today’s technology, the mystique of the unknown would likely be ruined. I think I’d prefer the mystery of whether it was real or imagined as it was a hundred years ago.
Julie Schopieray is a regular contributor to Grand Traverse Journal.
