In which a little bit of my childhood dies

Way up at the tippy top of the upper peninsula of Michigan there's a little thumb that juts out into Lake Superior. And on that thumb, back 150 years ago or so, there were mines. Copper mines. Lots and lots of copper mines, each with its own town. Some of them were successful, some less so, but they were there, and for a time that little thumb jutting out into Lake Superior had some of the richest men in the United States, because copper was valuable, and the copper there came out of the ground nearly pure and ready to be worked. It also brought immigrants from all over Europe, who founded their own churches and societies and brought with them their own languages and foods and traditions. The last of the Keweenaw copper mines had closed by the end of 1968 and the Keweenaw had to change, to become dependent on the tourists that it could attract in its short summer season.

Back before I was born, before my parents had met each other, my father went to the Keweenaw each summer with his father. Not his mom. Not his brothers. Just my dad and his dad. Some of the mines were still operating then, and my grandpa would visit with the locals while my dad climbed around on tailing piles looking for chunks of copper and silver to bring home. My parents honeymooned up there, almost 50 years ago, and they've continued to go up every summer since then,* renting the same cottage from the same woman for the last 35 of them. This will be the last summer that they go up though. The woman, Dorothy, from whom they have rented "their" cottage for the last 35 years passed away on Monday, and with her went a little bit of my connection to childhood.

I feel like I should write more here. I should talk about how I had sour cream and onion potato chips for the first time while we we on a picnic on the beach with Dorothy and her husband. I should talk about how we had free reign to explore the whole outdoors of their extensive property with lots of lake frontage, and how we would watch the hummingbirds sipping at the red feeders that dotted the yard. How we would watch Don, all covered up to protect him from the chemicals, walk around outside to spray the property and (hopefully) keep the mosquitos and black flies and noseeums at bay. How we would clamber along the rocky front of the property and along the lake to the neighbors', wondering whether there was really anyone there behind the shuttered windows and closed doors. We never saw anyone. Never saw any sign of life, and so expanded our explorations to their properties, looking for wild roses, for wild strawberries, for thimbleberries. How we would climb up to the big ridge behind the houses where the summerhouse used to be, back before they moved it down to be more convenient to the big house.

I should say that they told us about how you could go to the Eagle Harbor dump any old evening in the summer, and sit until dusk and you could see the bears come out of the woods and tear open the bags of garbage, looking for something tasty to eat. They usually found it too, and there would always be lots of cars parked there. Full of people, just watching what was going on.

I should talk about how when we went hiking down in the Eagle River gorge with them, back when I was much smaller, and we disturbed a nest of yellow jackets in an old beer can, that Don got stuck a half dozen times trying to stop them from stinging my little sister, and Dorothy provided the baking soda afterward to lessen the sting.

I should talk about how, when we visited, they treated us kids like extra grandchildren, even though they had lots of their own. How they took us exploring in their 4WD truck to places that we never would have been able to go in our Chevy Celebrity. How (I now know) they kept an eye on us out the window when we played down by the lake, throwing endless stones into the water to watch them splash and walking as far out into the lake on the big rocks as we could without getting our feet wet.

How the cottage was magical. Someplace that it seemed quite likely that there might be fairies, or elves, or a portal to some other world. Someplace where you just might, if you were quick enough and quiet enough, find a magic creature behind a tree or under a stone. Someplace where, once, a bear came in through the front door in search of the smoked salmon that we'd had for dinner.

I should talk about how, when I joined my parents there for the last time two summers ago, Dorothy (who was 93 at the time) was still spending summers up there independently. How she greeted me, and my kids. How we worried when we couldn't get hold of her by phone, before discovering that her phone line had been damaged by passing trucks. (And making her use our cell phones to call her children and let them know that she was fine.)

The dump is gone now. You have to bring your trash on the right days and they load it into trucks to bring to a proper landfill. You can't go a watch the bears at night any more. The Shoreline Resort where we used to go and get ice cream most nights, and pick up something to read from the lending library outside the door is still there, but it's different. The family that ran it and lived above it for more than 30 years is gone now, and it's no longer a meeting place for all the locals. We didn't get ice-cream there once that last time we went up. The gift shop on top of Brockway Mountain where we'd spend hours agonizing over which flavor of stick candy we wanted? That's gone too, not just closed but pulled down completely. Just a grassy spot on top of the hill now. And the Eagle Harbor General Store, open before Lincoln was president? It's a private house now, and has been for years.

This summer, at the request of Dorothy's children, my parents will go up one last time and visit all the special places. I won't be able to join them, but I hope that they'll take lots of pictures. And I hope that, just maybe, my sisters will be able to join them up there one last time. Because my kids had the opportunity to experience just a little bit of my childhood, and I'd wish that for my nephews as well.









* With the exception of the summer that my sister was supposed to be born early (she was late, just like the rest of us), the summer that she spent most of in the hospital, and the summer that we all lived in Seattle for 2 months.