2.15.2024 – boy began to read

boy began to read
would not be going to bed
for very long time

Tonight there was no question of having to sit still; having pushed back his chair he was able to pace up and down the room, from the table to the window and back again, a walk quite as long and perhaps more free from obstacles than he had known on many a quarterdeck. He had hardly begun when the sitting-room door opened quietly and Brown peered in through the crack, his attention attracted by the sound of the chair scraping on the floor. For Brown one glance was enough. The captain had begun to walk, which meant that he would not be going to bed for a very long time.

From Commodore Hornblower by CS Forester.

I have read the 11 books of the Hornblower series more times than I can remember.

For the most part, I can’t tell you when I first read any of the books.

Books were just always around.

I cannot think my childhood home and not think of books.

I cannot think of my Dad and not picture him without something to read or a crossword puzzle book in his hands.

The photo is of my Dad and my Mom and my sister, Lisa out on the deck of the family place on Lake Michigan.

Notice my Dad is reading a newspaper and at least one magazine and maybe two books along with the never ending cup of tea sit on the table in front of him (along with a radio that is most likely tuned to WGN Chicago and a Cubs game.

There were books everywhere.

And mixed in were most of the Hornblower books.

Hornblower and the Hotspur.

Hornblower and the Atropos.

Beat to Quarters.

At some point I picked one up, read it and I was hooked.

I read one, which I think was Hotspur and then another and another and another.

I didn’t read them in order and that messed me up a little but after reading one, I would discuss it with my Dad.

What 12 year kid doesn’t discuss British Napoleonic War Naval Policy with their Dad?

Several of the books had originally been serialized in the Saturday Evening Post and one day my Dad had dug through a stack of old magazines and found an article with an illustration of a young man being lowered over the side of a ship in a storm.

He bent back the cover and asked me what it was?

I said, “That’s Midshipman Hornblower” and even though I had read the book, I read the chapter “Hornblower and the Bursting Ship” over again in the old magazine

We would talk about the books and the mistakes Hornblower made as well as the mistakes CS Forester made when he wrote the book.

For example, Maria.

Why? Why didn’t Hornblower listen to Bush and take off?

My Dad would make some observations and then he would tell something that happens in another one of the books that I hadn’t read yet.

And I would be a little nutz or maybe, a little more nutz than my usual self until I could read that book.

Over the next couple of years I read through 10 of the eleven books.

I could not get my hands on the book Commodore Hornblower.

That was book 9 in the 11 book series but the 4th book that Mr. Forester had written.

It was always out at the main library (I suspected semi-permanent loan to someone who I cursed) and never was at my local Creston Branch library and inter library loan did not exist at the time.

My Dad would tell me that was the book where Hornblower goes to Russia.

Russia?

Russia!

What was Hornblower doing in Russia?

“And he gets bit by fleas and gets typhus,” my Dad said.

Fleas?

Typhus?

I tried to imagine such a storyline and couldn’t do it.

I kept re-reading the books I had and every once in a while my Dad would ask if I had read Commodore yet?

“You know, the one with the Bomb Vessels?”

During this time, many of my brothers and sisters went off to pursue their education at the University of Michigan.

That meant that several times a year, my Dad either took someone down to Ann Arbor or drove to Ann Arbor to bring someone back for Thanksgiving or some other break.

I remember this one day when my Dad was gone and we all knew that late in the evening he would get home and have with him my sister Mary or Brother Jack and we were always able to stay up to greet them.

We heard the sound of the garage door opening up and we knew they were home and all of us little kids and my Mom went to the back hall and the door to the garage would open and in came our older brothers and sisters to much loud shouting and confusion.

Coats were hung up.

Big bags of laundry were tossed in the laundry room.

And we moved into the kitchen to sit and talk for a few minutes.

This night my Dad stopped back in the hall way to the kitchen and stood there with his big winter coat on.

He had this big grin on his face that said he knew something that we didn’t.

Finally Mom says to Dad, “Why don’t you take your coat off and come in?“

“I thought I would give this to Mike first, He said.”

He smiled then from out of his pocket he took a paperback book.

Understand that Grand Rapids was a nice place to grow up but when I was kid there few bookstores.

My Dad knew that Ann Arbor had a lot of bookstores.

This trip he made sure he had time to stop at one of those Ann Arbor bookstores to find a book for me.

In his hand was a copy of Commodore Hornblower.

I snatched it and held it close to my face to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.

I didn’t talk but I looked up at my Dad.

I think he enjoyed giving that book to me more than I enjoyed getting it.

“Don’t stay up all night,” was all he said.

And I began to read.

I would not be going to bed for a very long time.

Happy Birthday to my Dad!

1.11.2024 – be glad to get home

be glad to get home
I don’t believe I’ll ever
want to go away

Won’t I be glad to finally get home again.

I don’t believe I’ll ever want to go away again.

By the way did you see the movie “Up in Mabel’s room.”

It was quite funny I thought, but in it was a nice house in the country that was like a house I would like to make into a home with you.

We really want to have a house that we will enjoy living in and not something just to be a show off place.

I like to live in the whole house.

Getting kind of rambling I guess but that is what happens when one is away so long.

This is from a letter my Dad wrote back during World War 2, to his then girlfriend, later wife and my Mom, from the 12th Corps Headquarters unit, based in Luxemburg on January 14, 1945 (click here to read).

(In the letter he writes that his unit had just moved to Luxemburg “… shortly after the German break through“, a break through now known as the Battle of the Bulge.)

I am not sure that there was ever a better description of my Dad’s view on life then what he wrote 60 years ago.

First, “Won’t I be glad to finally get home again. I don’t believe I’ll ever want to go away again.”

My Dad liked to be at home and once home, he never ever really wanted to go away again.

Second, “… want to have a house that we will enjoy living in. I like to live in the whole house.“

I got to grow up in that house.

It was a big house but then there were 11 kids in the family and we lived in the whole house.

And we enjoyed living in it.

We were really lucky and we had a summer place out on Lake Michigan.

But it wasn’t a show off place but a house by the lake that was our home away from home and we lived in the whole house.

And BOY HOWDY, did we enjoy living in it.

This a snapshot of my Dad and my youngest brother Al sitting together at the summer place.

Cement brick walls and plywood fixtures and tin metal cabinets.

Plastic trays and cups.

Nothing to show off.

There is some art on the wall of a painting of lemonade that my Mom spotted at an art fair in nearby Grand Haven, Michigan.

It now hangs in my home in South Carolina.

It is 1987.

My Dad would been 67.

Al would have been 17.

I would have been 27.

My brother Bobby would have been 37.

That’s how it works when you born in the decade years of 1920, 1950, 1960 and 1970.

This was my Dad’s last summer as he died on January 10, 1988.

For those 68 years that my Dad was around you can say that once he got home, he did not ever want to go away again.

And where ever my Dad lived, he lived his life in the whole house.

That was just the way my Dad liked it.

1.9.2023 – Hail to the colors

Hail to the colors
float in the light … Hurrah for
the Yellow and Blue!

I am one of those weird alumni who knows the words to the schools’ Alma Mater or the anthem of the University of Michigan, The Yellow and the Blue.

It was written by Charles M. Gayley, an 1878 graduate, who composed the lyrics in 1886 while he was a professor of English and Latin at UM.

According to legend, he was motivated to write the song in hopes of winning a $20 prize from the student editors of the yearbook.

The song is played before every home football game and at commencements and most folks only know to hold out their fists and sing, “HAIL” at the end of the chorus.

But it was one of my family’s songs.

The University station would play it when it came to the end of the broadcast day and I remember one evening when my Dad had his radio on and my Mom yelled upstairs to the girls to ask if they were standing at attention.

She was kidding … I think.

We would often sing it at family gatherings and by general agreement we would let my Dad sing the HAIL part as a solo.

At my wedding, as warning to what she was getting into, my new Brothers-in-Law thought it would be funny if they would get to me by forcing me to sing the Michigan Fight Song.

I looked them cold in the eye and said, “The Fight Song? Everybody can sing that. I am singing the Alma Mater.”

And I grabbed my wife’s hand and stood on a chair and surrounded by wedding guests, I started the song, “Sing to the colors …”

Several of my family saw me, heard and hurried over to join in.

One of the brothers-in-law, caught off guard as he was a Michigan Grad, also joined in.

Sorry and sad to say, my Dad had passed before I got married.

But when we got to the “HAIL”, I felt it he was as much a part of party as if he had been there.

I thought of him last night.

I thought of all us, my family and friends, who have followed this stupid team and wonderful school over the years.

Can’t explain it, but it sure feels good.

BTW, notice the tie in the photograph.

It was my Dad’s tie.

It was the same tie he wore at his wedding.

It was also the tie he wore in his graduation photo from Michigan.

He bought it at store in the Arcade in Ann Arbor when he was a student.

Sing to the colors that float in the light;
Hurrah for the Yellow and Blue!
Yellow the stars as they ride through the night
And reel in a rollicking crew;
Yellow the field where ripens the grain
And yellow the moon on the harvest wain;
-Hail!
Hail to the colors that float in the light
Hurrah for the Yellow and Blue!

12.15.2023 – into the winter

into the winter
night as if we heard the sound
of far-off trumpets

Every year, on the night before Christmas, or sometimes on the last Sunday night before Christmas, the tallest balsam that could be got into the church was erected on the raised platform where the choir ordinarily sat, and it was covered with homemade decorations: looped chains made of colored paper, white popcorn threaded on long strings, tinsel stars, metal clips holding lighted candles, and so on.

We had no electric lights for Christmas trees in those days; we simply used candles with open flames, burning within inches of drying evergreen needles, and the fire hazard must have been considerable.

I should think a few houses would have burned down every year, but it never seemed to happen. Anyway, the church was filled with people.

It was imperfectly lighted, and its interior seemed immense, larger than life, dominated by the great tree that reached up to the shadows just beneath the rafters, its tiny flames all twinkling. Just to be in the place was to partake of a mystery.

The services were extremely simple.

There were carols, prayers, readings of the gospel story of the first Christmas, a few quiet remarks bv the minister, distribution of candy canes and molasses-and-popcorn balls to the small children, and a final hymn: and when the wheezy organ (pumped vigorously by a sweating young man behind a screen) sounded off with “Joy to the World,” and the doors opened to let us out into the winter night, it was as if we heard the sound of far-off trumpets.

From Waiting for the Morning Train by Bruce Catton.

Not sure how old I was, 9 or 10, but one day my grandfather came in the back door of our house asking for me.

It had to be a Friday as it was on Friday night that my Grandpa and Grandma Hendrickson, my Mom’s parents, came to ‘pay a call’ on our family.

Every once in awhile my Dad might try to arrange a date night with my Mom since he knew they were coming, but most often we would just sit and visit and watch TV.

But this night, Grandpa Hendrickson came in asking for me.

He had a book for me.

He said that their church library was throwing out a bunch of books and he rescued one volume that was a book on the Civil War.

He said that he had a grandson who would want that book so they gave it to him.

I was, as I said, about 9 or 10.

Grandpa called for me when they walked in and with some satisfaction handed me a battered copy of Mr. Lincoln’s Army by Bruce Catton.

It was the first Catton book I ever read.

It was the first ‘adult book with chapters’ I ever owned.

I still have it.

The book was most likely over my head at the time and as it started out medias-res it screwed up my timing of the Civil War for years.

But the stories told and the way Catton told them have stayed with me forever.

I have a very solid memory of one summer when late at night, my older brother, Jack, read me the chapter on Crackers and Bullets.

Catton’s words were magic and magically arranged.

I know that my Grandpa’s gift made a big impression on me and maybe shaped my future.

I never ever doubted there was a book I couldn’t read after that.

It also made a big impression on my Mom and she remembered it.

See Bruce Catton grew up in Michigan, up in Benzonia (in Upper Lower Michigan) before he was a world famous Pulitzer prize winning author and Editor the American Heritage magazine of history.

My Mom remembered that Mr. Catton had written that book the her Dad had given to me.

Later in 1972, Mr. Catton came out with his autobiography titled, Waiting for the Morning train: A Michigan Boyhood.

At least that was the title when it was first released.

Later editions changed it to An American Boyhood but us Michigander’s knew the truth.

Mom knew that the book was the perfect Christmas present for her Dad and she picked up a copy.

Sorry to say that my Grandpa died that year in the middle of December, just before Christmas.

My Mom came up to me some time after Christmas with the book in her hands.

She said she had bought it for Grandpa but it seemed appropriate that I should have it.

I got the book and I got a hug.

And I got a book that she had inscribed to her father.

Thanking him for all the years of love and the interest in Mike.

That Mike she wrote about was me.

She signed it, ‘with love, Lorraine – Christmas 1972‘

I still have that book too.

(Me and my Grandparents a few years before this story.)

10.1.2023 – anything man made

anything man made
breaks, will break and once it breaks ..
that’s it, game over

Hoffman Kids on the Straits of Mackinac – 1963?

“An oil spill would be catastrophic for all of North America, this place would become a toxic wasteland that would be contaminated for years,” said Whitney Gravelle, an Ojibwe person who is president of the Bay Mills Indian Community. “People often can’t even believe there is a pipeline going through the Great Lakes. It seems crazy that we just have this heart attack waiting to happen.

So writes Oliver Milman, the environment reporter for Guardian US in his article, ‘We can’t drink oil’: how a 70-year-old pipeline imperils the Great Lakes.

Mr. Milman continues, At the centre of this maelstrom are the native Great Lakes tribes that cherish the Straits of Mackinac, the four mile-wide stretch of water the ageing pipeline bisects, in creation stories as the birthplace of North America itself. They claim Line 5, which cuts through swathes of native land in its 645-mile route, is a “ticking time bomb” that imperils the Great Lakes, which contain a fifth of Earth’s entire surface fresh water, and risks severing deep, existential bonds of cultural connections that stretch back millennia.”

(What would an Oil Spill look like? Click here.)

If you grew up in the State of Michigan like I did, at some point in your life your family made a trip to upper lower Michigan, or the Straits, meaning the Straits of Mackinac, the body of water that joined Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.

A body of water spanned by the Mackinac Bridge and the location of Mackinaw City, Michigan.

Or as Clifton Webb pronounced it, talking to his estranged wife Barbara Stanwyck, who was in the process of leaving Mr. Webb in London and taking the children the quickest way possible which was to buy tickets on the RMS Titanic to her home town of, “MACK – EEE – NACK, Michgan” in the 1953 movie Titanic.

There is a park at the top of the Michigan Mitten and you can park at the park and walk under the bridge.

On one side of the bridge is a sign that says, LAKE HURON.

And on the other side is another sign that says, LAKE MICHIGAN.

My Dad would stand there and every time say, “This is the Straits of Mackinac, Lake Michigan is way over there and Lake Huron is way over there past the island.”

All of us kids would nod our heads in agreement and wonder how the State of Michigan could screw up something so simple.

We made the trip to the Straits on what seems a yearly basis.

There were 11 kids in my family and whoever happened to be home at the time would be invited along so anywhere from 6 to 13 people would pile into the car for the trip

The trip involved a long drive that started in the pre dawn and a stop at some roadside park for a picnic breakfast.

My Mom would pack a cooler with milk, juice and those little travel boxes of breakfast cereal.

That was back when those boxes had specific perforations on them so the one side could be opened and then you could tear the wax paper bag carefully and pull it back so that it became a travel bowl that could hold milk.

We marveled at such thoughtful ingenuity on behalf of those folks at Kelloggs.

My Dad had a little propane stove to heat up water for tea or coffee.

This for my Dad, was all the camping he wanted to do.

This view on camping and of what-is-fun has rubbed off on me while the rest of my Family gathers at campgrounds every year.

We would sit at dew damp picnic tables and my Dad would moan that he forgot to bring a towel to wipe off the benches.

He never did bring a towel as he didn’t want a wet towel in the car anyway.

The invention of paper towels was a big day for him.

Breakfast done it was time for a bathroom break and washup.

The bathroom’s at Michigan Roadside stops in those days where small wooden sheds over pit toilets that were one step above an outhouse.

The disinfectant or lime or whatever was dumped into those things had a unique smell or odor all its own and without much trouble I can still smell it.

To wash up, the State of Michigan had installed a standup hand pump over a well.

We stand in line and take turns pumping the pump as someone rinsed their hands or tried to get a drink of what we called, ‘iron water.’

You would pump that handle three or four times and holding the handle you can feel the water coming up and out the pipe to splash on the concrete bed surrounding the pipe.

Breakfast over and back in the car, we would start looking out the front window for the first sign of the towers of the Mackinac Bridge.

We would start looking around Gaylord, Michigan when we were still an hour south of the Straits.

Someone would catch a glimpse of the first white steel tower of the bridge and yell, THERE IT IS, I SEE IT.

I think I would start yelling that whether I saw it or not and then say, there behind the trees.

My Dad knew a small motel that was our destination and we would stop, unload then start our day in Mackinaw City.

We would start at the Fort and the Bridge museums and see all the things we saw every year.

Lunch was always at Tyson’s Cafeteria and, for reasons I never understood, we got the famous Chicken Pot Pie.

Don’t get me wrong as they were good but Swanson’s Frozen Chicken Pies were a Saturday Lunch staple at my house and I didn’t see much of difference.

After lunch was the drive over the bridge and a trip through St. Ignace and maybe all the way up to Castle Rock with the little kids pointing out every souvenir stand and the older kids yelling TOURIST TRAP.

At some point we always, as did EVERYONE, got some fudge.

I would daydream of the day when I was rich and I would be able to buy my own half-pound slab of chocolate and holding it like a sandwich eat it all by myself.

Getting fudge was so much of a rule when visiting the Straits, that in 1976 when President Gerald Ford was on the island and went to Church with the Governor of Michigan, the Secret Service thought they were safe and moved on to the next venue.

After Church, the President and the Governor realized they HAD to get some fudge and went out a different door and the Secret Service lost the President for a while.

Luckily there were on an island.

I remember also as some sort of right-of-passage, when my Parents felt my sister’s reached the right age, that sister and my Parents leave the rest of us at the hotel and they would make a trip to the ‘Strip’ of Mackinaw City and then, that sister would pick out a silver and turquoise ring.

At least that is what is in my memory and it seems to my that my sisters wore those rings for years.

Behind it all, the parks, the restaurants, and the travel, there was this sense that where we were was a pretty special place.

The land and the water and the islands and the beaches and the rocks and the waves were integral to what made Mackinac, Mackinac.

And we knew it.

I feel that my Parents put special emphasis on the view and the beauty of the place though we might not have appreciated it at the time.

Michigan and the Great Lakes were special.

In school in the State of Michigan, 4th graders studied Michigan History.

Back then, the State celebrated Michigan Week and in school, little pamphlets of Michigan Fun Facts were passed out so us students could be ‘Michigan Minutemen’ and spout off all sorts of information about our state.

And we did!

The word Michigan itself comes from the word “mishigami”, which means “large water” or “large lake.”

The first European settlement in Michigan was in 1668.

In 1774, Michigan was within the British Province of Quebec.

By 1920, Detroit was the fourth largest city in the U.S.

The State motto is, “If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you” with a image of a man on a beach on the State Seal.

Once in a Church board meeting where the task at hand was composing the Church Mission Statement, I suggested, “If you seek a pleasant Church, look about you” and it got some traction until one of my Brothers-in-Law exposed me.

The motto on State License plates used to alternate between Winter Wonderland and Water Wonderland until someone got tired of switching and for a few years we had Winter-Water Wonderland.

The Sunday Magazine Supplement of the Grand Rapids Press was titled, Wonderland Magazine.

One time editor of the GRPress, Gerald Elliott once confided in me that of all the changes made by the GRPress, it was Wonderland the he missed the most when it was stopped.

That was the only place for local writers to be recognized he said to me with regret.

So I read with dismay the sentence, “”It’s little known to the throngs of tourists who gawp at the wonder of the Great Lakes but at the meeting point of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, a combined system that forms the largest lake in the world, there is a 70-year-old pipeline, battered and dented by dropped boat anchors.“

I knew about the pipeline I guess as it has been in the news for years.

But managed to forget it about but reading this article about all I can say it … what else can go wrong?

I remember back in the day when then Gov. Jim Blanchard, when the state was broke, looked into making Michigan a national nuclear waste site.

Someone pointed out that as the center of one of the world’s largest concentrations of freshwater, this wasn’t the best idea.

Maybe we can have that realization again.

As Mr. Milman writes, “The battle over this 70-year-old pipeline may drag on for several more years but the anxiety of the Great Lakes tribes won’t easily abate. At a recent protest event on the banks of Lake Michigan, called the Water is Life festival, banners reading “Protect the Great Lakes” and “We can’t drink oil” fluttered in the breeze of a waning summer as small knots of people gathered around a stage to listen to music and speeches.

“Anything manmade breaks, and that pipeline will break,” said Jannan Cornstalk, an Odawa woman who has organized this festival for the past five years. “And once it breaks, that’s it. Game over.”

PS – BTW the photo is the Mackinac Bridge. When it was built, David B. Steinman was appointed as the design engineer said there is a bridge that will last 100 years! That was in 1958 … tic tic itc