From across the lake, almost Divine intervention
Through all things, history bears greatly on each of us in its own way. My history is inextricably wound to the town of Central Lake, MI. This isn’t a post about food or politics; it is a post about where I came from. It is a post to commemorate the town, not pictured, and the people, some pictured, who did more for me that I can repay.
Ouch!
Gordon Priest’s right shoulder flinched with sharp, stabbing pains. He was driving his brown Volkswagen diesel Rabbit along Rushton Road and had a rather clear view of Hanley Lake to his left due to the falling October leaves. Bang! The pain again. The pain! Betty, his wife, was punching his arm. She was punching him to stop the car and look again across the lake. What she saw and showed him was a large house set back several hundred feet from Hanley Lake. The house was weather beaten, camouflaged well in the grasses and trees. The glass windows reflected the sun just so and that was what caught Betty’s eye across the lake.
Gordon turned the car around. Driving through town he found his was to a dirt road. He drove down, over the railroad tracks and made a left turn onto what was clearly, some long time ago, a drive-way. Along the right hand side of the drive was a row of trees and on the left just a huge maple tree. The grass was almost as tall as the little car and save a clear, unobstructed path, no signs of life existed. Gordon and Betty stopped the car, got out and investigated by looking into the dirty windows. The doors were locked. At the risk of finding themselves on the wrong side of trespassing, they returned to the car, drove downtown to find a cop. If one were accompanied by cop when breaking and entering into an abandoned house, that should change the optics. As luck would have it, they found one. Officer John Fant was parked at the Bellaire State Bank parking lot watching traffic go by. He listened as the two tourists explained their find and why they needed him. If John had objections, they seemed too small to worry about, for he escorted them back to the house and helped them go inside.
The soul of a house
The house has stood vacant for 20 years and served as a place drink beer, have sex and smoke pot. Time, squatters, and partiers leave a trail detritus suitable for archeologists of abandonment. In 1940, often, mattresses were filled with goose down. The house had several which were vandalized. When Officer Fant, Gordon and Betty walked around the house, feathers covering the floor were strewn about them into a blizzard of feathers. Abandoned houses are also museums to the time they were abandonded. In the 20 years that house stood empty, it served as a dusty cluttered time capsule to a day in the life of a farm house in the mid 1950s.
July 4th, 1978 Betty and Gordon drove us kids, Dann, Sarah and Mark, to Central Lake. We had been to Antrim County before and camped in various campgrounds over the years. I earned my picture in Schanel’s Tackle Shop holding a nearly 4# large mouth bass. So, this trip was to show us the house and to announce that they had decided to buy it. They shared it was more than a little bit of work to learn of the current owner, but they did it. John Darmon lived elsewhere than CL and he agreed to sell. And there, in front of us, was what would be our new home.
The house had no shutters and hardly any paint. There were broken windows, overgrown grass, and a huge pine tree by one corner. Liz and Gordon’s adventure with “breaking and entering” left them confident in their ability to enter un-conflicted. We entered through the kitchen door. In it’s heyday, the kitchen would have been the common use entrance. The kitchen, then as now, was the place to be. People were there because food was there. Cupboards were placed side by side and stood floor to ceiling. These formed part of the back wall of the kitchen and were interrupted by a wood burning cook stove. To the left of the cupboards was a narrow swinging door to the dining room. Ribbons of wallpaper hung from the sand plaster lending an almost hackneyed spooky feel. Curiously, in the middle of the kitchen, stood a brand new white wringing style washing machine.
We kids had never seen a house in such disrepair. Magazines and newspapers truly littered the floors as did empty cans and bottles, dust and leaves and feathers. Massive was one of our first thoughts. Despite the mess, it was huge. A full basement had a dirt floor—and no lights. A fully furnishable apartment upstairs in addition to three bedrooms and two more bedrooms on the main floor with a large living room with a mud room in back. That we explored fearlessly is not so. We (speaking for myself) investigated with feline caution. No place was safe without at least one other family member, and often enough, all three of us kids were as one. Under the stairs was a closet which had a drawn curtain. We pulled the curtain aside, not sure really what to expect. I don’t recall if we screamed. I think mostly paralyzed with fear that the thing might move. In the 1930s women who wanted a permanent sst under a contraption of curling clips, each attached to an electric wire and those wires hung from a semi circular arm supported by an upright post. In the unlit daylight of the hall closet, the limited light shone off the metal clips and to the already scared eyes of three kids there stood a metal machine of murderous intent looking for all the world like an metallic octopus from hell. We were scared.
The Summer of Demo
Summer of 1979 was spent demolishing the walls and floors of the house, hauling or throwing all the debris, particularly the wood lathe, out the upstairs window into what became a huge pile of kindling. Under the sand plaster and lathe was “insulation” of old newspapers. That was our first clue to the true age of the house. It was also the perfect time capsule to the 1890s, when the house was built. Usually the 80 year old yellow, but very legible, paper torn into shards too small to keep. However, sometimes, a true gem of an entire page could be saved. Some of the cleverer articles or advertisements were used for a collage of reading material on the wall in the bathroom. Sadly, however, and is likely the case, the remaining pieces were lost in our mess and lost to the ages. I think I wanted to save them but didn’t know where or who to see or where to find that unknown person. I’m a bit sad that we’ve lost them. We could have learned a lot about our past.
By rebuilding that house I learned some basic carpentry skills and some years later would turn them into a co-op job at Argo Lumber. I learned how to use a chain saw and clear weeds and brush and build a dock and grow a garden and stack wood and more than a few life skills which I’ve used again and again. 37 years have passed since that summer. I learned it was Jesse Cary (yep, Cary’s cabin Jesse) who likely built that house. Denise Cary Shooks was kind enough to find and send me a photo from the early days of that house. The wood shown was what we found when we tore off the lathe and found the newspapers. At some point the house was sided with 4” wood siding and painted grey. I don’t know what the cut outs are for, but I do remember finding them from the inside and being curious about them.
Fondnesses return
Nostalgia and time are frequent chums. As a parent, I find myself remembering well those few years in Central Lake and wanting for my kids what I learned in a small town. Also as a parent I can better appreciate what my parents did for us and why. It was a big challenge for me socially—I liked the big city of Traverse City—but I found a way to get on. I made friendships which exist to this day and of all the people I’ve met since, I’ve kept no one close save the CL folks. The house didn’t do that. The people of Central Lake did that.
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