The Summer Resort that Started on a Shoe String - Part 2

Written by Mrs. Fred (Bertha) Coburn

One day a neighbor whose farm joined ours saw Don come in with a nice string of fish. Mrs. Meese said to Don, "If you will bring me a mess of fish like that, I will give you a chicken for them." So Don took a nice string of blue gills to her, expecting a nice hen in return, he liked chicken and biscuits, but instead of a hen, she gave him a 6-week old baby chicken. She said, "Now you feed it good and it will catch all the grasshoppers and crickets in your yard." The chicken would come and became such a pet that it would sit in Don's lap. Mrs. Meese was right, it chased grasshoppers alright, but I think it ran it's legs off during the summer. When Labor Day came, we had to go back to Grand Rapids as the children had to be in school. Fred said, "We can't take that chicken back to Grand Rapids, the street car will run over it." So he killed it and we had it for dinner, but Don wouldn't touch a bit of it. He said, "You can't expect me to eat my pet."

Our oldest son, Bud, came home one day with a dob. He said a woman gave it to him. It was a female, a real nice small bench Collie, and so we let him keep it. The next summer when we went to the lake Teddy had five puppies. The children enjoyed them so much, but wen it gottime to go back to Grand Rapids, Fred gave the pups to anyone who wanted one as we couldn't take them back to the city. People who came up to rent a boat to go fishing admired them (they were real cute) and we felt they would all have a good home. Every summer Teddy had pups usually in June, so it worked out fine. The children could enjoy them through the summer.

One day I saw one of the pups down by the lake. It looked like it was trying to catch something. The pups liked to chase frogs, toads or grasshoppers, anything that moved. but this time it was a crab. It had sum up to the shore and was moving right at the water's edge. I went down to see what the pup was after, just in time to see it wallow the crab. I picked it up and tried to get the crab out of the pup's mouth but didn't succeed. The crab's sharp claws must have hurt the puppy badly. I tried to get it to vomit but that didn't work, so I tried and enema but that didn't help either. The puppy didn't die right then, but wouldn't play with the other puppies. Because it was weak, the other puppies kept picking on him. I took him in the cottage and put him in a box and tried to get him well, but we finally had to have him taken care of.

The first summer at the cottage everthing was so wild. My father-in-law was still chopping brush and clearing the lake frontage. There was a big brush pile on the picnic ground and one evening the children and I were on our way to the farmers to get the milk and one of the children hollered, "Look at the snake!" We all said yes, we see it, but we were all looking at a different snake. They were sure thick around there, but we weren't afraid of them. One day Don found one about 8 inches long and was carrying it in the pocket of his shirt. I didn't like that.

The fishing was real good in Long Lake. The next year after we got started, Fred had 10 boats and the word got around about the big pike and bass that were being caught. One day two men came in and rented a boat. They were not out fishing long when they came in and asked if I had a rake they could borrow, said they had lost artificial bait with hooks out in the weeks on the other side of the lake. I have them my garden rake. Half an hour later they came in with a 45 inch pike. The were carrying it with the rake handle through its gills. It took both of them to handle and carry it. They said the fish was wallowing in the weeds where they were looking for their bait. They eased up to it and it it with the rake. It stunned the fish but also broke my rake. I believe that was one of the biggest fish I had ever seen at that time. A short time later a man came in a 6 pm and rented a boat for the evening. Half an hour later he was back. I went out to see what happened. He had a big pike. He said he just threw out his trowling line and started for the Point just a little way across the lake. He said the fish hit it as soon as he got into deeper water. He knew he couldn't land it alone in the boat, so he kept on rowing until he got to shore and hung on to the line and pulled the fish right up on the bank. He hit is with an oar and stunned it. He was so excited. We measure the fish and it was 42 inches long. He had a Model T Ford roadster with a small trunk on the back and he put it in there and said, "I got to go home fast, my brother-in-law won't believe his eyes when he sees this." It was a cheap fish for him as boats rented then for 50 cents.

There was only one cottage on Long Lake we we first started there. Tibbets owned it, and it was on the farm Fred's father had owned years before and where Fred was morn in 1895. They built next to the flowing wall, so they didn't need to drill a wall. My father-in-law told me that well was where he got all his water when he lived up on top of the hill, known as Hines Place. He said he took a stoneboat with two barrels on it and drawn by a horse and hauled water fromt he flowing well up that steep hill. He must have had to do it every day with eight children and the need for washing, cooking, etc.

The same year we started ont he Point, a "Y" camp from Evanston, Illinois, bought 40 acres on the east side of the lake. The first year the boys had tents but later built cabins that would sleep six boys. The boys would often come over to our place with their canoes. The next year Fred built an outdoor stand where we sold candy and ice cream. Fred would bring a five-gallon tub of ice cream up Saturday nights, when he had finished at the barber shop. We now had the ice house so we kept the ice cream alright. We sold a lot of ice cream cones to the "Y" boys across the lake. Anyway it never went to waste. With four children and the company, we always had on Sundays. Our children always wanted to bring some of their friends up for weekends. Most of them had never been to a lake and seeing the wildlifein the woods and fishing and swimming was a real treat to them.

There was a small farm house by the road when we purchased the land, so it gave us a place to say in and get our meals while the road was being built and the place cleared for a cottage. The next year Fred, with the help of his brother, Sam, and his cousin, Lee Peckham, tore the farm house down and used the materials to build a cottage on the Point next to ours. We rented it out for three years. In the pring of '27, the farmer next to us called Fred and said the fence was broken down and his cattle were getting over into our side and asked if he would come up and help fix the fence. Fred took a man with him, and they went up the night before. The next morning he built a fire in the cook stove (they had sausage and pancakes to fix for their breakfast), but it took a little while for the stove to get hot enough to make pancakes, so they went up the outlet a little ways to see if the suckers were running. Early in the spring they could spear the suckers. when they came back they noticed the cottage was on fire. It had started by sparks getting into the wood box in fron of the draft on the cook stove. They couldn't get inside the cottage. Fred had parked his car right up next to the kitchen so they started to move it but were so scared Fred couldn't start it so the pushed it over next to our cottage. The wind from the west was very strong and blew the flames away from our cottage. Fred said it was completely down in half-an-hour. The farm house was quite old and the siding was cedar wood so it burned fast, so no sausage and pancakes that morning.

As all the lake front lots were sold by 1926, Fred had all the grounds along the outlet surveyed, so there were many more lots to sell. I never thought anyone would want to build way back in the woods but they have. In 1965 a dam was put in the outlet, and it was dredged out so it was a channel deep enough so people could launch their boats and row them down to the lake, making it almost like a lake front for the people who built along the outlet years before.

(To be continued)