Item From the Past: Cana Island, Door County

July 2001

Door County, the hangnail peninsula off the shape of Wisconsin), is very lush in July, and away from the coasts, I was surprised by the number of working farms -- especially along County EE, which cuts across the peninsula about halfway toward the top. For a few miles, you could have been driving on any rural road in central Wisconsin.

At a place called Cana Island -- which is really a peninsula off the peninsula, since a rocky bit of land connects it to the rest of Door County -- we stopped for a look around. Lilly was in the mood for a roam around the high hedges.

Cana Island sports a fine old 1880s lighthouse. We could go into the former light house keeper's house, but not the lighthouse, since it's still in operation.

Cherries, a local crop in season, were on every menu. We had them in the form of pie and a milk shake. One evening we attended a fish boil in a town on the Lake Michigan side, with the fish-boil master building a large wood fire in a fire ring outside to heat the black kettle, which is full of potatoes and onions and locally caught fish. To make the thing boil over, the fish-boil master adds a spot of accelerant to the fire. Whoosh!

Afterward, the fish and other ingredients are served up in mass quantities for some good eating.

The Grosse Point Lighthouse

At about 11:35 this morning, I was waiting for the light at the intersection of Schaumburg Road and Braintree Drive and this vehicle, or one just like it, drove by going westbound. What was the Liverpool Legends WV doing in Schuamburg on a brilliant warm April morning? Drumming up business in metro Chicago for the Beatles tribute show of that name in Branson, no doubt. Summer's almost here.

My experience with Branson is limited to lunch at a Chinese buffet while passing through back in 2001, so I missed noticing this particular tribute band's operation there, if it existed then. The act is George Harrison's sister's way of cashing in -- I mean, honoring her brother's memory and artistry -- and has spawned at least one funny commercial.

We've had two warm, dry weekends in a row here in April in northeastern Illinois, which I can't ever remember happening before. Last Saturday we drove eastward and by early afternoon had made it to Lake Michigan's shore in Evanston. Just north of the Northwestern U. campus is the Grosse Point lighthouse, located next a former mansion that's now the Evanston Art Center, a place called Lawson Park, an officially closed beach (meaning no lifeguards and no charge to get in) and a parking lot convenient to all of these but not full even on a pleasantly warm April day.

The lighthouse isn't open until June, but the grounds are -- so much so that you can wander right up to the lighthouse. But our first order of business wasn't inspecting lighthouses up close, it was finding a picnic table to inspect the flavor of the rib tips we'd bought at Hecky's Barbecue, another Evanston institution. If I've never blogged about Hecky's, I've been remiss. A former Northwestern student introduced me to it more than 20 years ago. It's carry-out only at a corner location on two busy streets. Since returning to the Chicago area, I've managed to visit once or twice a year. Hecky's motto is, "It's the Sauce!" Boy is it ever. It's never disappointed.

While the kids played at the Lawson Park playground -- turned out that Lilly wasn't too old for such, especially when it came to spinning around one of those tire swings with her sister -- I wandered off to look at the lighthouse. It's a storied structure, standing nearly 140 years now. Then again, lighthouses tend to be storied. That's just the kind of buildings they are: Man Against Nature stories mostly, to use the high-school English teacher division of story types.

Once Chicago became a major inland port before the Civil War, it became clear that the shoals around Grosse Point were hazardous without a light. According to the lighthouse's web site: "Undoubtedly the greatest tragedy to strike these waters occurred in the early morning hours of September 8, 1860, when the passenger steamer Lady Elgin collided with the lumber-carrying schooner Augusta. Not knowing the extent of the damage, the Augusta was sent on her way. But soon after, the Lady Elgin began to break apart and sink. Passengers jumped or were thrown into the water by high seas and clung to anything that floated. By daybreak, the shore was lined with townspeople from north suburban Evanston who helped when it was possible, all the while frightfully watching as survivors battled the elements in their attempts to reach land. A definite accounting of all who died isn't possible, but estimates range from about 300 to 400.

"The citizens of Evanston petitioned Congress for a lighthouse on Grosse Point but the Civil War and events afterward delayed the project. Then, in 1871, not long after the great Chicago Fire, Congress formally authorized construction of a lighthouse on Grosse Point.... Finally, on March 1, 1874, traditionally the start of the Great Lakes shipping season, Grosse Point Lighthouse sent its welcome beacon of light over the waters of Lake Michigan for the first time."

Remarkably, the lighthouse is no museum piece. It's still in use as a secondary aid to navigation. Not only that, it sports a second-order Fresnel lens, reportedly the only one of those astonishing monster glassworks still in use along the Great Lakes. I stood face-to-face with one at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum a few years ago, and I'm glad to know another is still proving itself useful.

A Little More Michigan

Ludington, Michigan, has a pleasant main street, sporting a mix of shops, many catering to out-of-towners. Maude's Garage, where we bought a couple of small items, is an interesting adaptive reuse. Their line of antiques and bric-a-brac was fine, but I was more interested in the old newspaper articles and magazine ads plastered to the walls.

Not far away is a town park, long and narrow, near the town beach, which is also long and narrow. The park features the one and only monument to the little-remembered Armistice Day Storm of 1940 that I've ever seen. It may be the only one anywhere. This isn't an especially good image, but here it is.

This particular monument recalls the men who died when their ships sank in Lake Michigan as a result of the unexpectedly strong winds that began that day. Elsewhere, especially in Minnesota, the extreme temperature drop caught a number of hunters unprepared, and they froze to death. Such was life before satellites, radar and the Weather Channel.

Can't visit the edge of Lake Michigan without seeing a lighthouse, and Ludington provided that as well. You have to walk along a long breakwater to get there, but once you do, you see this:

And a fine view of the lake to the west and the shore to the east. The wind was brisk and cool, but a shade above uncomfortably cold. A lot of people were out on the breakwater, but only one sailboat was within sight, and so were two guys on jet skis. They buzzed around, and seemed to consider the people on the breakwater as a kind of audience.

Near both the breakwater and the park were two other points of interest: a municipal shuffleboard court that was fully occupied -- mostly by people younger than me. It's always nice when life defies stereotypes. A nearby playground also caught our attention, actually the attention of the girls. Its distinction was that it was built on sand, rather than grass or soil of some kind. While the girls played there, we heard the SS Badger carferry blow its horn as it approached Ludington, ending its journey across Lake Michigan from Manitowac, Wisconsin, and watched it sail toward its slip.

Image Problem

We had star-crossed photography on this trip. The digital camera that we've had for about three years recently -- before the trip -- and mysteriously developed a bent zoom, rendering the device useless for now. (I suspect a certain girl, who denies it, of dropping the thing -- but didn't see it happen.) I was too busy to find out if it would be worth fixing, so it sat out the trip.

So we took Yuriko's old film camera. After a few pictures, it stopped working. I bought a new lithium battery for it at the IGA in Glen Arbor, Mich. It again worked for a few pics, then stopped. Old age, I figure. Yuriko had it before we were married.

Then we bought a disposable camera. Lilly's used to the digital, so I had to restrain her from snapping pictures right and left, since there's no erasing exposed film.

But we did get a few passable images, such as this, the schoolhouse replica in which a dog alarmed the kids (see August 11):

It looks like how an 1830s school would be imagined in the 1930s.

This is the view at the north tip of Old Mission Peninsula in Michigan. Note the pride in its latitude. "You are now standing on the 45th parallel or half way between the north pole & the equator. This lighthouse was built in 1870."