Ives Lake: Memories from My Childhood

The following post is taken from my book My Marquette and is preceded by a short history of Ives Lake and the Longyear family:

1970s photo of the caretaker house and red guest house at Ives Lake

From 1971-1976, my grandfather, Lester White, was the caretaker at Ives Lake. He and my grandmother would go up to the lake in the spring and stay through the summer, only coming home occasionally on a weekend. I can vividly remember riding in the car with my mom and brother when we would drive up to Ives Lake to visit my grandparents. We would sing “Here Comes Peter Cottontail” and any other songs my mother cared to teach us along the way. We would come to the gate where the gatekeeper would let us in because he knew us as part of my grandpa’s family.

My memories of Ives Lake are fragmented since I was only five when those years ended, but I can recall my cousins playing baseball on the large lawn, having big family picnics with all the cousins, great-aunts, and great-uncles there, swimming in the lake and my cousins collecting clams, and going fishing with my dad—I caught my first fish at Ives Lake. I remember my grandparents’ dog, Tramp, swimming in the river, and I remember going in the barn with my grandpa to see the barn swallows.

1970s photo of the Stone House

I distinctly remember my fifth birthday party was held here. I remember it mainly because I got a record player, an orange box that folded and locked up like a case. With the record player came several records made by the Peter Pan record company, including a book and record of “Little Red Riding Hood.” My cousin, Kenny White, who was born on July 4^th, also had his birthday party here one year.

The clearest memory I have is of walking with my grandpa and Great-Aunt Vi behind the barn to the chicken coop, and my brother and I pretending to be Peter Pan as I described in Superior Heritage. While I don’t remember it myself, my cousins, Leanne and Jaylyn White, who are several years older than me, remember Grandpa feeding Chucky the Woodchuck, whom I also depicted in my novel.

One time, Grandpa took my brother and me into the Stone House where one of the rooms had a table with numerous rocks on it that the geologists must have been studying. Grandpa told us we could each have one of the rocks. I still have mine today, a curious two shaded brown rock like none I have ever seen since. Someday I will find a geologist who will tell me what it is.

My family has hundreds of photographs of summers spent at Ives Lake including fishing parties, picnics, and Grandpa and me on the riding lawn mower. The child’s mind is highly impressionable so perhaps that is why I remember this beautiful magical place so well.

My rock from the Stone House. I still have it but have never found out what kind of rock it is.

The visits to Ives Lake ended on a sad note when my mother received a phone call that her grandmother, Barbara McCombie White, had died. I remember I was coloring in a color-by-number book when the call arrived. I didn’t understand, but I remember my mother crying and her telling me to go back to my coloring while she got ready to go. We had to drive up to Ives Lake where my grandpa was—he had no phone there—so my mom could tell him his mother had died. The two events may not have been related, but my great-grandmother’s death seemed like the end of the Ives Lake summers to me. It was also the end of an era in another way—my great-grandmother would be the only person I would know who was born in the nineteenth century, 1885, to be exact, and being at Ives Lake was equally like being in another era.

Tyler with Grandpa on the riding lawnmower at Ives Lake about 1975.

 

Marquette and Istanbul: Love of Your Hometown

I just returned from a wonderful vacation in Turkey, which I’ve long wanted to visit for its many historical and ancient sites, including biblical Ephesus, ancient Troy, and Istanbul, formerly Constantinople, seat of the Byzantine Empire. My journey made me appreciate Turkey in more ways than I can list here, including the people’s pride in being a democracy and their love of the founder of the Republic, Ataturk, as well as the friendliness, politeness, and goodwill of the Turkish people; almost everyone I spoke to had been to the United States or had a relative living here. I realized just how small the world is and how we are far more alike than different to our neighbors in this world.

One pleasant surprise I had while in Turkey was to discover the book Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk. Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. I had heard his name but never investigated his books, so to discover he had written a book about Istanbul that includes the city’s history and his memories of growing up in it in the 1950s-1970s made me feel what a small world it is. Considering I have written a similar book about Marquette, I felt I had discovered a kindred spirit. I read the entire book on the plane flying home. In addition to the text, Pamuk includes many black and white photos of Istanbul, which I can’t reproduce here, but I am including a few photos of Istanbul that I took myself on my vacation.

What I enjoyed about Istanbul: Memories and the City was not only the history and memories that Pamuk describes, but when I say he is like a kindred spirit, it’s because many of the things he says about living in Istanbul are very similar to things I’ve said about living in Marquette and my relationship to my hometown. Here are a few passages from his book:

“I’ve never left Istanbul—never left the houses, streets, and neighborhoods of my childhood.”

Similarly, I feel like the Marquette of my childhood is constantly with me—I am continually finding myself remembering being in the Marquette Mall or eating at the Bavarian Inn or attending nursery school at the Presbyterian Church.

“Istanbul’s fate is my fate: I am attached to this city because it has made me who I am.”

Similarly, the history of Marquette flows through my veins and that of seven generations of my ancestors. To understand me, you have to understand my family background, the beauty and history I grew up surrounded by in my hometown.

“I was beginning to understand that I loved Istanbul for its ruins, its huzun, for the glories once possessed and later lost.”

Pamuk talks a lot about the city’s huzun, a word meaning melancholy. He writes of growing up in the 1950s surrounded by a family in mourning for the glories of the Ottoman empire that vanished with the coming of the Republic of Turkey in the 1920s. While I don’t doubt Pamuk realizes the Republic was preferable to being ruled by a Sultan, he has an appreciation for the glories of the past. His grandmother and elderly relatives have turned their homes into what feel like museums. Similarly, I grew up surrounded by grandparents, great-aunts and great-uncles who told me of Marquette’s past and stories of their parents and grandparents. I felt a certain melancholy in longing to know the Marquette of the past prior to my lifetime and the glories of the past that no longer existed, such as the Superior Hotel, or the glories I saw disappearing such as St. John the Baptist Church being torn down.

“…anything we say about the city’s essence, says more about our own lives and our own states of mind. The city has no centre other than ourselves.”

Very true. My view of Marquette is conditioned by my upbringing and history. Others feel differently about it I’m sure, although I tried, in writing about it in my novels, to create some sort of collected consciousness about its history.

“…we cannot help loving our city like family. But we still have to decide what part of the city we love and invent the reasons why.”

I think the reasons become clear when we consider the difficulties of life in Upper Michigan. Economic issues and cold winters are trying and make a person create an argument for himself about why to remain, weighing the pros and cons.

“…if I had come to feel deeply connected to my city, it was because it offered me a deeper wisdom and understanding than any I could acquire in a classroom.”

Yes, I went to Istanbul, but deep down as a writer, I have always felt like Marquette was more than enough for me to write about. Everything I need as a writer I can find here. There are stories, diversity, history, culture, enough to fill many books as my writing has shown, and all those lead to lessons about life. As Dorothy says in The Wizard of Oz, we need not go looking beyond our own backyards for our heart’s desire.

This last passage describes Pamuk beginning to collect information about his city before he even knew he would write someday about it, similar to how everything about Marquette’s history fascinated me and I collected books and articles about it and even old telephone books before I contemplated writing a series of novels about the place.

“I craved books and magazines about Istanbul—any type of printed matter, any programme, any timetable or ticket was valuable information to me and so I began to collect them. A part of me knew I could not keep these things for ever: after I had played with them for a while, I would forget them….in the early days I told myself that eventually it would all form part of a great enterprise….There were times—when every strange memento seemed saturated with the poetic melancholy of lost imperial greatness and its historical residue—that I imagined myself to be the only one who had unlocked the city’s secret….now I had embraced the city as my own—no one had ever seen it as I did now!”

I won’t go so far as to say no one ever saw Marquette the way I have, but one of the nicest compliments I have received about my novels is that they have made people look at the buildings of Marquette in different ways and see all the history that surrounds them. If anything, I hope my books have made people appreciate the past that once existed and still exists among us.

Marquette is world enough for me, but as a genealogy fanatic, I wanted to go to Turkey to explore what remained of the Byzantine Empire. For me, being in Hagia Sophia was especially a highlight. I have traced my family tree back to many Byzantine Emperors including Basil I and Alexios III, who would have worshiped in Hagia Sophia. I also visited the ruins of Troy and Ephesus where doubtless I also had ancestors centuries ago and now lost to time. My family’s past lies throughout the world. As James Michener said, “The world is my home,” and Marquette and Istanbul are not so very different—although in different ways, both are home.

Marquette’s Catholic Cemeteries

Sign that today marks the Old Catholic Cemetery on Pioneer Road

The following passage is from My Marquette

Across the street from the former Brookridge Estate, on the corner of County Road 553 and Pioneer Road, is a patch of woods where once the Old Catholic Cemetery existed. It became the burial place for Marquette’s Catholics in 1861. Prior to that, Catholics had been buried on the property where the cathedral now stands. The new cemetery would within fifty years become the Old Catholic Cemetery. By the early 1900s, the new Holy Cross Cemetery off Wright Street opened, and between 1912 and 1925, some 165 Catholics’ remains were transferred from the old cemetery to the new one, although not all the bodies were removed.

While I do not know for certain where they rest, my best guess is that my great-great-grandparents, John Buschell, his wife Elizabeth, and maybe her second husband Jeremiah O’Leary are all buried in the Old Catholic Cemetery.

Today, the forest has reclaimed the old cemetery property off Pioneer Road. Gradually, while some of the bodies were left behind, all the gravestones were removed—some for a time in the 1980s I remember being in the front yard of the John Burt Pioneer home when it was still a museum, but eventually all the stones that remained intact were transferred to Holy Cross Cemetery where they lie in the grass, most of them scarcely readable.

Today, all Catholics are buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Marquette. In the cemetery’s early years, Catholics were strict that only Catholics could be buried there. As a result, my great-grandmother, Lily Buschell Molby, lies in Holy Cross while her husband, John Molby, not being Catholic, is buried in Park Cemetery, which accepted all denominations.

Pioneer Cemetery Gravestones now in Holy Cross Cemetery

By the 1980s, burial laws were less strict. John and Lily’s daughter, my grandmother, Grace Molby White, also married outside the Catholic Church, but she wanted to be buried in the Catholic cemetery, so my grandpa, raised a Baptist, also agreed to be buried there. Today my grandparents rest in Holy Cross Cemetery with my grandma’s family while my grandpa’s family rests in Park Cemetery.

A few years after my grandparents passed away, my parents bought plots near them in Holy Cross Cemetery, including plots for my brother and me. At the time, I wasn’t too crazy about having a grave plot waiting for me when I was only thirty years old, but I guess it doesn’t hurt to plan ahead.

Remembering Grandpa

Today would have been my grandpa’s 107th birthday. There isn’t a day that goes by I don’t think of him, so I thought today was a good opportunity to post the section I wrote about him for My Marquette.

Lester Earle White (1905—1987)

Grandpa with his car decorated for a Fourth of July Parade in the 1930s

            My grandpa, Lester Earle White, was the oldest and therefore the “big brother” to the rest. He was named for Miss Lester, the nurse my great-grandmother had in the hospital. He was born premature and about the size of a kitchen knife. Consequently, he suffered with health problems throughout his life. He was a workaholic, but when he got sick, he would be laid up in bed for days.

My grandfather, as the oldest child, helped to support his family. At fourteen, when he graduated from eighth grade, he went to work with his father. In time he would own his own salvage and scrap metal business and was known as Haywire White in the 1930s. However, most of his life he spent as a carpenter building houses, cabinets, furniture, fences, and anything else anyone needed. Many people said he was the best carpenter in Marquette and if nothing else, his work was always sturdy. He retired when he was seventy, but he never really retired. Until a couple of weeks before he died, he was daily in his workshop putting in more than an eight-hour day making tables, lazy susans, benches, mirrors, and anything else he thought he could sell. My brother and I spent many hours in his woodshop with him and to this day I have many of the little houses, wagons, and other toys he made for us.

Like Henry in Superior Heritage, my grandfather died as a result of his flannel shirt catching on fire one morning when he went to light his woodstove so he could start working. Although he was flown to the Milwaukee Burn Center, after two weeks his body could not take the pain and his kidneys failed.

Other than his work, I remember my grandfather most for his kindness. I wanted to be with him every minute I could. I always wanted to sit next to him at the table, and I always had to go with him to help with his craft sales. He never complained about having me around, although he didn’t like me getting dirty or getting crumbs on the floor. He was always giving my brother and me money or treats, as did my grandmother, and often, he would stick dollar bills between paper plates at supper so we would discover them later when we cleared the table.

The scenes in Superior Heritage of Henry Whitman feeding the animals at Ives Lake are all based on my grandfather. He would have chipmunks come into his woodshop, jump into his hand, and take peanuts from him. One time he took care of a pigeon with a broken wing in his shop until it was able to fly again. He always had peanuts to feed to the squirrels and fed all the pigeons even when the neighbors complained. Until late in his life he always had a dog, and after, when I had my dog, Benji, he would tell us we weren’t allowed to visit unless we brought Benji with us.

Grandpa did everything he could for his family, including giving his brothers and brother-in-laws work, and buying the property for his parents where their house on Wilkinson Avenue would be built.

Grandpa and Grandma in Chinatown, Los Angeles in 1948

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about my grandpa and my grandma. They were the happiest married couple I ever saw. When my grandpa went to Florida to work for three months, my grandparents wrote to each other almost every single day, and my mother remembers when Grandpa came home, how he jumped out of the truck and ran into the house to see Grandma. I’m sure they are happy together in heaven. I don’t think I will ever stop missing them.

The History of My Stomach: A Tristram Shandy Parody

The other day I came across the following paper that I wrote for an eighteenth century literature course when I was a graduate student at Western Michigan University. It was a fun little assignment where we were asked to write a parody of Laurence Sterne’s novel Tristram Shandy (1759-1767). For what it’s worth, here is my offering which has a bit of a Marquette connection since it references my ancestors.

The Life and Opinions of Tyler Tichelaar, Graduate Student

Or

The History of My Stomach

            This work is intended to be the history of my life and opinions, yet as I sit here typing, I find that my stomach is so upset I cannot concentrate on my subject, but perhaps this is not amiss, as stomach disorders have been my lifelong problem. In fact, I probably had stomach troubles while still in my mother’s womb, so my life story cannot be told without discussing my stomach.

My stomach has always caused me grief. No matter what I eat, my stomach becomes upset. Similarly, if I do not eat, my stomach is upset. A doctor would suggest that I change my diet to remedy this problem, but since everything upsets my stomach, changing my eating patterns is hardly a solution. Nor is it a matter of nerves or stress which causes my disorder. As an innocent, sheltered infant, I was removed from all forms of stress, yet I went through more diapers as a result of diarrhea than is suffered by anyone who regularly eats three meals a day at Taco Bell.

The reader may then ask if it is not purely my imagination that makes my stomach upset. Reader, I am not like Joyce’s Leopold Bloom, receiving pleasure from my bodily functions, enjoying each chance to urinate, and indulging in the movement of my bowels.

The fact is that I have a stomach problem, and there is no solution to my problem;  nor is it simply my problem;  it is a family complaint. Would that my problem were only my nose!  Then, like the admirable Walter Shandy, I could find some consolation in Slawkenbergius. But if there is a worthy book on stomachs, I have yet to find it.

Perhaps the lack of such a treatise is why I dwell on the subject now. Perhaps it  will behoove the world if I write on the cause of my stomach complaints. Perhaps others like me will realize they are not alone, and possibly, they will even learn the source of their own complaints. But perhaps if I am to write such a treatise, I must first relate how I discovered the true cause of my stomach’s malfunctions.

One day, while in the midst of great gastronomical pain, I thought I would contemplate the enigma of my stomach. In my contemplations, I recalled my mother once saying to me, “You have a stomach just like mine.”  Therefore, reason led me to theorize that my stomach was a genetic inheritance from my mother;  further contemplation caused me to believe my theory was true, for the similarity in our stomachs is attested to by our fighting over who gets to use the bathroom first after a visit to Bonanza’s salad bar.

After contemplating the inheritance of my stomach from my mother, I inquired of her if she might have inherited her stomach from one of her parents. She contemplated my question and then recalled that her father had also had a weak stomach. Being an amateur genealogist, I knew my grandfather had had parents of his own;  perhaps from one of these parents, he had inherited his disordered stomach. But upon inquiring of other family members, I learned that the memory of my great-grandparents’ stomachs had disappeared into oblivion.

But I was determined not to give up the search for my stomach’s origins. It then occurred to me that some information might be derived from “The History of the Bishop and White Families” which Jean Martel, my second cousin once removed, had compiled. This family document was easily attainable since the author had given me a copy. In perusing this work, I learned that my grandfather’s father’s father, Jerome Nehemiah White, was a corporal in the Civil War.

But what does the Civil War have to do with my stomach the reader asks?  Well, reader, be patient rather than trying to rush me, and I will let you know. Corporal White fought on the side of the North during the Civil War. Most importantly for my theory, he was shot in the abdomen on June 19, 1864 at Petersburg, Virginia. Following this wound, he did not die, or else I would not be able to write this now, nor would you be able to read this, so be thankful that Johny Reb was such a poor shot, unless of course, you are not enjoying my discussion of inherited stomachs and wish my great-great-grandfather had been shot to death, but I am sure such a brutal thought never crossed my humane reader’s mind. See, I knew you were deeply interested in the state of my stomach all along.

But what happened to Corporal White?  Well, reader, he went to a hospital in Washington D.C. and recovered. In fact, he was released soon after the Civil War ended. Feeling much better, and wanting to celebrate both his recovery and the end of the war he had so bravely fought in, he decided to see a little of his nation’s capital before returning to his Michigan farm. After all, he was only twenty-four, and since he had seen little of the world he was in little hurry to return home. So one night, Corporal White went to the Ford Theatre to see the play Our American Cousin. But reader, you are anticipating me. Yes, you have guessed my family’s secret claim to greatness. My ancestor, Jerome Nehemiah White, witnessed the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth. There you have rung from me the surprise I intended for a future chapter since this chapter was only meant to explore the history of my stomach, or actually my birth, but since I am off the topic, let me discuss how this digression relates to the main topic.

Reader, I am a firm believer in cellular memory. I believe parents pass their memories on to their children through their brain cells, but only those memories of things that happened in their lives up to the time their children are conceived. My great-great-grandfather returned to Michigan and assisted his wife in conceiving my great-grandfather;  in doing so, Corporal White passed on the memory of his wounded abdomen to my great-grandfather’s subconscious, causing all of Corporal White’s descendants to have upset stomachs. Therefore, my stomach is a direct descendant of the Civil War, as the following stomach chart illustrates.

THE STOMACH CHART

Corporal Jerome Nehemiah White’s Stomach (1841-1900)

Jay Earle White’s Stomach (1880-1963)

Lester Earle White’s Stomach (1905-1987)

Nancy Lee Tichelaar (nee White)’s Stomach (1941-    )

Tyler Richard Tichelaar’s Stomach (1971-    )

Reader, I intended to write about my birth in this chapter. I keep trying to return to my topic, but you keep demanding other information from me. But perhaps these digressions are not without value. Certainly, a little family background is needed to understand how I became the person I am. Really, going back 107 years into my family history is only a small leap, considering I have traced my family tree back nearly two thousand years, and my cellular memory goes back nearly as far. For example, I often have dreams of being in Hastings, England during a great battle. Such dreams might strike you as odd, but since Corporal White was descended from both William the Conqueror and Harold Godwinson, who fought each other at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, my dreams are also the result of a cellular memory passed down for twenty-six generations.

Cellular memory is so marvelous it now enables me to begin the history of my life, or my memories anyway, in the year 1066. But I shall not begin this history until the next chapter, having already filled up enough of this one. In fact, my story should rightfully begin in Chapter One, so I will name this section The Preface. And now, on to the Battle of Hastings.

Marquette’s First Baptist Church

Marquette’s first Baptist Church was established in 1863. It was a small wooden church on Front Street where the Marquette County Historical Museum was later located beside the current library. My ancestors, the McCombies and the Zryds, first came to Marquette in the 1870s and this church would have been the one they attended. My great-great grandparents, William Forrest McCombie and Elizabeth May Zryd, were probably married inside it in 1882.

The First Baptist Church today - Marquette, Michigan

When the congregation outgrew this small church, in 1886, a new church was built across the street where today is the Landmark Inn’s parking lot. This church was well-known in the community especially for its fabulous organ, a Hook and Haster, for a long time one of the best organs in the state. My great-grandmother and her children would know this church intimately, and although a Catholic, my mother occasionally attended services here with her grandmother.

As with many downtown buildings, fire destroyed the Baptist Church in 1965. Rather than rebuild downtown, the congregation erected a new church in North Marquette on Kaye Street, behind the music and theatre buildings of Northern Michigan University.

In Superior Heritage, Margaret Dalrymple writes in her diary in 1962 about what it meant to her to be a member of the First Baptist Church. The passage is based on a similar one in the diary of my great-grandmother, Barbara McCombie White:

This Sunday the eldest Baptist members now attending church were honored. There were 9 of us but only 5 were there. Sadie Johnson, as church clerk, pinned corsages on all of us and then we had pictures taken for The Mining Journal. We all were requested to get up on the platform and give a little talk of days gone by. I was afraid I’d be stage struck, but this is what I said. “Many years ago when my parents came to Marquette they joined the Baptist church and I was raised in it. When I was 11 years old I went to a revival meeting & was converted. Shortly after I was baptized in this church. Since then, some of my happiest moments have been spent in Sabbath school and church. I had good Christian parents who taught me the right way to live and guided me through the years. I have tried to follow their example and am proud to say that I have good children, all of whom act like Christians even if they don’t go to church regularly. I think God loves everyone no matter who we are and we each have different tasks to do. I think this church has helped lots of people, and I am proud to have been a member all these years.”

My great-grandmother lived long enough to celebrate her 75^th anniversary as a member of the Baptist church. After her death, her children Barbara, Roland, Kit, Frank, and Sadie (the real church clerk mentioned in the passage above) would continue attending. Barbara would become a deaconess of the church, and my great-aunt Sadie at age ninety-two remains very active in the church. My grandfather, Lester White, before marrying, taught Sunday school at the church as did his cousin, Marjorie Woodbridge Johnson. As for my Uncle Kit, as a boy he did his part by passing the collection basket and taking a chunk of the money home with him, which his parents immediately made him return.

My experiences with the Baptist Church have largely been limited to attending family funerals. I’m always struck during these occasions by the wonderful old Baptist hymns, including one of my great-grandmother’s favorites, “In The Garden.” The church ladies always outdo themselves with the funeral luncheons and their other church activities. I am sure my great-grandmother would be happy to know her church’s good work continues well into the twenty-first century.

Note: This entry is taken from my book My Marquette, available at local bookstores and www.MarquetteFiction.com

Happy Halloween – Why I Love the Gothic

Since Halloween is almost upon us, I thought I’d branch off to something a little different and post a bit of the Introduction to my upcoming book The Gothic Wanderer, which will be a study of nineteenth century British Gothic horror fiction, and should be published sometime in 2012. But in keeping with my autobiographical postings here, this passage talks about my fascination with scary stuff from an early age before I go into the details of Gothic literature. I’m sure many of you, especially those around my age, have similar stories. Happy Halloween, everyone!

Introduction

Our Long Love Affair with the Gothic

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed;
I was not heard—I saw them not—
When musing deeply on the lot
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,—
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”

I love the Gothic. Most of us do, even if we don’t know exactly what the term “Gothic” means. It may mean different things to all of us, yet those things are closely related. Some of us might think of the Goth look where teenagers wear all black. Others might think of Gothic cathedrals. And a smaller percentage of us might think about classic Gothic literature—the great eighteenth and nineteenth century novels of Mrs. Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and several others.

Many of us have a fascination with being scared. I love to be scared—I don’t go for the gory horror films of today, but I love suspense and the greatest Gothic literature builds up such suspense. But more importantly, Gothic literature reveals much about who we are, what we fear, and to what we aspire.

I was fascinated with the Gothic—commonly called horror, or simply, when I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, what was “scary.” I didn’t know the term Gothic and wouldn’t know it until well into high school, but I knew the Munsters, the Addams Family, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Broom-Hilda the Witch, and countless other characters in popular culture from that time who were often watered down children’s versions of the Gothic.

I remember the “Creature Feature” film being shown Saturday afternoons on TV50 from Detroit, and I loved Love at First Bite (1979) starring George Harrison as Dracula—when it was broadcast on TV for the first time, my brother and I had a big fight over the TV (we only had one in the house in those days) because it shown opposite Yogi’s First Christmas.

The Weebles Haunted House - unfortunately, I got rid of mine so I had to resort to an image I found online - I wish I still had it - Hours of Scary Fun!

I was the proud owner of the Weebles Haunted House complete with weebles that “wobble but they don’t fall down”—including the witch with a removable pointy hat, a glow-in-the dark ghost, two weeble children to be scared, secret panels, trapped doors, and a treasure chest with bats inside. All of it scary but wonderful!

In fourth grade, I was Dracula for Halloween—I remember still the thrill of running so my cape would flap in the wind, and I can still taste the plastic vampire teeth. Nor did I ever miss going through a Haunted House at the fair, and my friends and I commonly played haunted house, turning our bedrooms or the family room into a mansion of monsters and ghosts. Again, I was always Dracula.

A Story of Dracula, the Wolfman and Frankenstein - one of my favorite childhood records

And perhaps best of all, I owned the wonderfully dramatic record The Story of Dracula, the Wolfman and Frankenstein from Power Records. This fabulous 33 1/3 record came with a read along book in graphic novel form (we called them comic books back then) and it combined into one dramatic tale the stories of its title characters. I played this record over and over again and still have my copy today. I constantly quoted it to others, including the pivotal scene when the werewolf (oddly not the Wolfman but Vincent von Frankenstein’s girlfriend Erika—Wolfwoman, I guess) attacks the count, causing him to become enraged and reveal himself by declaring, “You dare!! You dare lay your paws on me! On me?! Low beast, you’ll die for this, die at the hands of the Prince of Darkness…FOR I AM DRACULA!” Recently, when I was working on this introduction, I dug out the record to engage in nostalgia and left I on my coffee table. My brother came over to visit and saw the record there and rolled his eyes. When I asked whether he wanted to listen to it, he said, “No, I never want to have to listen to that record again.” Apparently, I played it one—or maybe fifty—too many times.

But all these details could be dismissed as children’s games and just good fun (despite the fanatics who would ban The Wizard of Oz, or more recently, the Harry Potter books and films because they contain depictions of witchcraft). Only, I think on some innocent level I could not have articulated when I was ten years old, I was even then searching for meaning—to understand the mystery of life, even if it were only the simplified notion of good and evil. I was a very religious child who had read the entire Bible by fifth grade, loved to play at being various characters from the Bible—mostly Moses or Jacob—and wanted to grow up to be a priest. So if I were such a “religious nut”—as one friend called me—how am I to explain my fascination with horror and the supernatural?

And how explain my curiosity over an activity that countless children have attempted over the years? Yes, I am one of those many children who locked himself in the bathroom in the dark, stared into the bathroom mirror, and then tried to find out whether it was true that if I could say, “Bloody Murder!” one hundred times without blinking, the devil would appear in the mirror. But I was never able not to blink before I could say it one hundred times, or I would inevitably lose count.

Still, the quest for forbidden knowledge was strong in me at an early age. The fascination with Good and Evil thrilled me like it does many children, but I wanted proof that the supernatural forces of Good and Evil truly existed. Years later, when I discovered Percy Shelley’s lines quoted above, I was stunned by how perfectly he captured what I felt, his experiences matching mine of nearly two centuries later. And like Shelley, I eventually grew to love Intellectual Beauty….

Early Marquette Boarding Houses

Among Marquette’s earliest establishments were its boarding houses which catered to the growing population, including single men, lumberjacks, sailors, and families. My ancestor Rosalia Bishop White and her sister Lucia Bishop Bignall would both operate boarding houses in Marquette’s early years. While I do not know the name of Rosalia’s boarding house, if it had one, Lucia and her husband Joseph established the Filmore House. Joseph Bignall purchased the property for $100, a great price at the time considering the lot encompassed a quarter block between Third and Front Street. Later city maps however show that it was not that large and several other buildings were located in that portion of the block. The Filmore House was located at 156 W. Baraga Avenue, directly on the corner across from the courthouse and where today the new historical museum is located. Perhaps the boarding house was named for then U.S President Millard Fillmore. Although this cannot be confirmed and the name was spelled differently, the Bishops did have a connection to President Fillmore. Back east, Lucia’s first cousin, the early American artist Annette Bishop, lived for a time with President Fillmore’s family and painted a portrait of the president’s wife, Abigail.

Basil and Eliza Bishop, parents to two daughters who kept early Marquette Boarding Houses

While the Bignalls lived in Marquette, their daughters attended the first Marquette school with Amos Harlow’s children. Their son, Elbert Joseph Bignall, was the first white child born in the village of Marquette in 1851.

In 1865, Joseph Bignall deeded the boarding house to Tim Hurley, and the family moved to Minnesota. They would later move to Colorado, although Joseph and Lucia’s son, Elbert Joseph, would return to live in Marquette in 1877 and marry Rosalia Corlista King, the daughter of his cousin Eugenia Sylvia White. (Marriages between cousins were not uncommon in the nineteenth century, so it was not out of line in Iron Pioneers when I had cousins Edna Whitman and Esau Brookfield marry). Many of the Bignall descendants still reside in the Marquette area today.

The Filmore House would change hands over the years before finally being torn down in 1952. The site remained empty then until 1963 when the A&P supermarket was built on the property. Later the Marq-Tran bus depot was in that place before the historical museum came to occupy the property.

Basil Bishop attributed the success of both Rosalia and Lucia’s boarding houses to his daughters rather than to their husbands. In an 1858 letter, he writes:

“Bignal has a larg hous well furnished he keeps a boarding hous & is doing well he is worth over $2000 but as one man said who knew it all answer his wife Cyrus White came heare poor  I sent him $100 cash to get him heare he has paid me that & now is worth over one thousand clear & has good furniture rooms carpeted and papered & one sette that cost $20 below & he bought & paid for 5 acres of land adjoining me The question is who erned all this is answered the same as Bignall Rosalia erns a washing $12 pr weak for months together Lutia done that and more for years.”

In Iron Pioneers, I merged Rosalia and Lucia to create Cordelia Whitman (Basil Bishop actually had a daughter named Cordelia who remained in New York). Cordelia’s sister, Sophia, is completely fictional without basis in any Bishop relatives. To make matters more interesting, I had Cordelia’s boarding house destroyed in the 1868 fire where it lies in approximately the same area as the Filmore House. Following the fire, Cordelia is stoic about the loss of her home:

            “Oh Jacob,” said Edna, burying her face in his sleeve, so glad he was safe, “the library is completely gone. Fifteen hundred volumes, and the boarding house—”

            Mention of the boarding house made Jacob think of his mother. He found her in the west parlor. Cordelia’s entire domestic world was upset by the loss of her boarding house, but she smiled when she saw her son. “I’m fine now that you’re safe,” she said, thankful to hug him. “I won’t have to cook and clean for a while. I needed a little break anyway.”

            Jacob smiled at her courage.

Cordelia rebuilds her boarding house north of Washington Street—I imagine on Bluff Street most likely. It is here that her son, Jacob, tries to get her to take in an unlikely boarder, who turns out to be her long lost brother, Darius Brookfield. Darius, who dresses like some mountain man or character from the Wild West, was also inspired by a family story. Basil and Eliza Bishop had a son, Darwin, who went out West as an Indian scout and was never heard from again. I was always curious about what happened to him, and while the family must have mourned him as dead, I thought I would remedy their grief a bit by having Darius track his family down in Marquette. It is Darius’ son, Esau, who marries his cousin, Edna Whitman.

I don’t know how long Rosalia White operated her boarding house. After her husband died in 1896, she decided to move to Tacoma, Washington to live near her daughter. (Her fictional counterpart, Cordelia, later moves West to live near Edna, Esau, and Darius). Rosalia Bishop White would not die until 1918 at age 96. During her lifetime, she saw the entire westward expansion and she herself moved from the East to the West Coast, stopping in Marquette for nearly half a century to run a boarding house.

My New York Vacation

Recently, I went to visit friends in Rochester, New York and played the tourist. While New York may have little to do with my usual posts on Marquette and Upper Michigan books, places, and people, there are a few connections.

The Haunted French Castle, part of Fort Niagara

My ancestors, the Bishops and Whites, came to Marquette around 1850 from Upstate New York, specifically Essex County, a bit east of where I was, but I enjoyed looking at the countryside and various trees, which would have been familiar to my ancestors. I visited the Erie Canal, which they doubtless would have known well, and for all I know, they may have traveled along it or Lake Ontario to reach Marquette. My ancestor, Basil Bishop, fought in the War of 1812 at the Battle of Plattsburg. I had my own War of 1812 experience visiting Fort Niagara, reputedly haunted by a headless man whose body was tossed down its well. I also visited the George Eastman home. Eastman, who invented the Kodak camera, first became interested in photography after he bought a bunch of equipment for a trip to the Dominican Republic that fell through, so he instead traveled to Mackinac Island to take nature photography.

Cannons at Fort Niagara

Other places I visited included the Susan B. Anthony home. Anthony is best known for her role in supporting the right for women to receive the vote, but she was also involved in the temperance movement–the two movements were closely connected. My own Bishop ancestors who were among the founders of Marquette’s First Methodist Church also founded Marquette’s first temperance society.

And I visited Niagara Falls–beautiful and breathtaking, even if a bit commercialized with skyscrapers rising above it.

In short, I had a wonderful time. Here are a few photos of my vacation.

Along the Erie Canal

Niagara Falls

The George Eastman Home

Niagara Falls

Bonanza – a Marquette Classic

Bonanza Restaurant - Marquette

Yesterday I attended the Upper Peninsula Publishers and Authors Association (UPPAA – www.uppaa.org) fall meeting. We had to reschedule our location at the last minute and Bonanza Restaurant was kind enough to accomodate us, just further confirmation of the fine business Bonanza has been doing in Marquette for decades, so as a small sign of gratitude, I am posting here the section from My Marquette about Bonanza, one of my family’s long-time favorite Marquette eateries:

Grandpa and Grandma were regulars at Bonanza, which ensured that Chad and John got extra suckers with their little wrangler meals. They all overstuffed their stomachs with steak, chili con carne, salad, french fries, and ice cream.

— Superior Heritage

When Bonanza opened in 1977, it was one of those new restaurants, springing up along U.S. 41 leading out of town and actually in Marquette Township, but today, it is a mainstay as one of Marquette’s longest operating restaurants.

Soon after it opened, my mom and grandma went there for lunch. At that time, Grandma thought Grandpa wouldn’t like it because it wasn’t a “sit down and be waited on” kind of restaurant. Boy, was she wrong!

Grandpa loved Bonanza. Soon my grandparents were going there for supper at least twice a week. They became good friends with Mitch Lazaren, the owner, and all the Bonanza staff. My grandpa made some frames for different maps and posters for the restaurant, and for Christmas one year, my grandparents were given Bonanza jackets with their names embroidered on them.

For years, my grandparents, parents, brother and I could regularly be found at Bonanza on Saturday nights. It was my favorite restaurant as much as Grandpa’s. The Chili Con Carne alone was enough to keep me going back.

How special was Bonanza to my grandparents? So special that during winter blizzards, my mom had to argue on the phone with Grandpa to get him to stay home rather than go there for supper. So special that in 1983, my grandparents celebrated their forty-ninth wedding anniversary there.

Other steakhouses have come and gone in Marquette, but Bonanza has outlived all its competition. The service remains impeccable, the food fantastic, and the atmosphere friendly, if a bit overwhelmed by hungry people crowding around the salad bar—but that’s the sign of a truly good restaurant.