Summer Dream 2006

Phase III – childhood memories, cousins, classmates. I didn't intentionally divide this trip into segments, but it turns out that way. This segment is about people in the Lower Michigan, Wisconsin area.

By the shores of Gitche Gumme, by the shining big sea waters, stood the wigwam of Nookomis, daughter of the Moon Nikomis.

We are Lake Superior. Houghton lives on the canal that connects the north to the south. The big sea waters create the massive winters of the Keweenaw Peninsula. To drive along its shore for many hours is to be inspired by its massive greatness. The sweet fresh lumber smell of the Lanse sawmills permeate the air.

Arrival at Lockview Motel was early enough to participate in a tour of the Locks. Setting out on foot for Dock 2, a scant half mile away, while reading the schedule, yielded the disconcerting discovery that on Sunday only Dock 1 has a tour, another mile and a half walk in high humidity. With a four o’clock deadline, a two mile hike and fifty minutes remaining, this trooper set out. And it was a successful jaunt, arriving fifteen minutes before departure, very hot and drenched. A cool breeze off the lake lowered this elevated body temperature back to normal, and began to renew the suntan, fading from days of indoor activity in Houghton. History of the Sault locks - Sault Ste Marie – French for Falls of St Mary. Lake Superior exits through St. Mary’s river over rapids cascading twenty one feet into Lake Huron. The Sault locks were created both on the U.S. and the Canadian shore to facilitate shipping between the Great Lakes. The upbound cruise used McArthur lock, lithely skirting a downbound ore carrier just exiting the lock. From the iron fields of Duluth, where no compass is allowed, to the steel mills in Indiana at the south end of Lake Michigan, the great behemoths inch their way back and forth.

The tour boat detoured through more history around an ore carrier offloading taconite pellets at the blast furnaces of Sault Ontario, for smelting into steel strips for further transport to the world markets. And on the wind, the oily smell of hot steel billets headed for the rolling mills. For a guy, that’s a good smell.

And as I walked the three miles back from the boat tour to the motel, I locked in the GPS on “Grandma”. And I was only a block from the house; and I detoured. And I found it exactly where it was supposed to be. And the layout of the dangerous river was exactly as it was supposed to be. And it was still green shingle siding as it was in 1958. And I lost the nerve to knock on the door. Perhaps tomorrow…..

The location of grandparent’s house, 541 Cedar Street. A strange juxtaposition of memories confusing the position of the house on the street and a dangerous dead end street ending in a river that fed the Union Carbide plant. And very stern warnings from father about n-e-v-e-r climbing the fence to certain death in the waters below. And on Christmas eve, the upstairs bedrooms heated by registers to the rooms below, carried the sounds that told me... Santa Clause lives in your parents. And I was sixteen – was I that naive? Nooooooo, it must have been a Christmas of years earlier and I only remember the Dickens trip. I prefer not to conjecture.

Houghton to the Sault - another memory. Imagine Christmas vacation as a child. Imagine high school assignments. Imagine riding three hundred miles in the snow in a car with 2 adults and four children. Imagine trying to read “Tale of Two Cities” and learn anything. One page forward, one page back. And then we arrived at Grandma’s. And the smells of a grandmother’s kitchen. And the mystery of two staircases; a formal one from the living room and the best, one that seems only to descend in early morning to a kitchen of cinnamon smells and butter. That would be the winter of 1958. I hate Tale of Two Cities. I know it was written by Charles Dickens. I think it was about war and beheadings. I know it was supposed to be good for learning the English language.