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WINNETASKA
Several years
ago when Fred Grienenberger asked me to write an
account of our first years in Winnetaska I started the
wheels of memory churning. Several times I attempted
to make a start but was unsuccessful. But apparently
these efforts had stirred up the old memories and this
past summer of 1982 I was able to put something
together. Not being sure of just what he had in mind
other than that he was hoping to develop a history of
Winnetaska, I have attempted to provide facts as I
recollect them seventy-two years after their
happening, and have supplemented them by a few
personal anecdotes and thoughts for I hope my sons and
daughters and grandchildren will find it interesting.
I hope the project has been carried out and that it is not too late for this to be of use, either in part or in its entirety. Elizabeth Hull Jouse Grand Rapids, Michigan November 15, 1982 WINNETASKA The Early Years -- 1909-1918 It was the summer of 1909 that we first came to what is now known as Winnetaska. Back then it was called Id1ewi1d II. I was a child of five and I ask that you keep that in mind as I evoke memories of those early years. We were members of St. Margaret's Episcopal Church, located in the South Shore area of Chicago. lit is my understanding that the rector of the church, Mr. Spencer, had learned of this lovely area and asked my father to go with him to see if he thought any of the parishioners might be interested in buying property there. My father went and saw and fell in love with it. Four families from the Church responded: the Spencers and their sons Lee and Jerry, the Hulls and their daughters Alice and Elizabeth, the Parsons with their son Edgar and their daughters Myra, Jenny, and Katherine, and the Kimptons with sons Kenneth and Theodore and daughters Marjorie and Carol. Mrs. Llewellyn, with her son and daughters Kathleen and Gwendolyn, and Dr. and Mrs. Clark with their daughter Jane -- also Chicagoans -- joined us. I cannot give the first names of the adults other than Hugh J. and Marion Spencer, and Joseph C. and Alice Hull, for in those days even grown-ups who were good friends addressed one another as Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so. First names were strictly for family use and were taboo for children unless preceded by Aunt or Uncle. The Spencers built their cottage at the northern end of our little camp. Across the path leading to the beach were the Parsons in what later became the Beukema cottage and now is owned by the Glotfeltys. We, the Hulls, were on the hill above the Parsons. Dr. Clark built what was later the Allen cottage. The Kimptons and Llewelyns built on the hill to the south of them. The Grienenbergers at one time rented the Kimpton cottage. With each lake- front lot we purchased we received a bonus five acres in the area now owned by the Nugent Sand Company. I know they pestered me for years to sell them our five acres. I am vague about the Loomis family. My recollection is that they were Michiganders and owned the site later occupied by the Breuningers and the Oaks, and that they were there that first year. They had two sons whose names I do not remember. We were an isolated !group. There were no paved roads or sidewalks. Cars were rare indeed and none of us owned one. Horse-drawn street cars, open on the sides and equipped with a car length running board along which the conductor walked to collect the fares, ran along the main street of Lakeside and that was it. After leaving the carline, one walked. We would take the boat from downtown Chicago to downtown Muskegon -- about an eight-hour trip-- ride the street car to Lincoln Avenue, and then walk out to the camp. Townspeople were not too enthusiastic over traversing those sandy roads with heavy loads and so we traveled light and carried about everything. Then the Kimptons had the bright idea to buy a horse and wagon with which they would meet the boat and transport our luggage. The horse had seen better days -- and even those could not have been too good. He was named Bonapart and was quite a character. They pastured him in the area that became a tennis court and frequently he would have a seizure of some kind. The story was that the man who sold him had warned them of this tendency but assured them that a shot of whiskey would bring him out of it. They, accordingly, bought some whiskey with the horse. Sure enough he had his seizure and the whiskey worked. That was amusing enough but one day Bonapart had a fit and there was no more whiskey. Ever resourceful, Mrs. Kimpton sent one of the boys in great haste to get Mr. Spencer to bring some wine he had purchased for sacramental purposes. The reverend gentlemen rushed to the horse's aid. wine bottle in hand, and the dosage turned the trick. We all found it a hilarious situation. Needless to say Bonapart was not driven to town unless it was necessary. After all, we never were sure he would survive the trip. That first big sand hill after you turn off of Lincoln would almost do him in every time. The sand was deep and the hill was steep. We would have to get off the wagon and walk up the hill and more than once would have to unload some of the contents and help old Boney pull the wagon up. Living conditions were frightfully primitive in those early years. We had no running water, no indoor toilets, no gas or electricity, no refrigeration, no telephones. Every family had an outside hand-operated pump. Of course ours was at the bottom of the hill and we had to carry every drop we used up to the top. My recollection is that we never went up that hill empty-handed. We had kerosene lamps and cooked on, kerosene stoves. We dug deep wells and lowered perishable food down them in pails to keep it cool. Getting groceries was a real chore. We would walk in to Lakeside, buy the food, and carry it back, making it a family project. When we planned to go into downtown Muskegon we would wear our play shoes and carry our good ones. Then, when we reached the sidewalks we would change to clean stockings and good shoes and hide our "scrubbies" in the bushes along-side the road, reversing the process when we returned. Frequently, rather than walking the hot, dusty roads, we would walk along the beach to Pere Marquette Park -- now the Oval -- carrying our shoes so that we could wade in the water. There we could catch the streetcar that ran through Lakeside. On these walks we always looked for the timbers of two lake ships that had been wrecked long ago. They jutted out of the water about twenty yards from the shore and always filled me with a sense of fear and excitement. Shipwrecks were something out of story books. One did not expect to see them in real life: Eventually there was a little store on Lincoln and Sherman and this eased the problem somewhat. And then a family named Dahlquist built a small structure that served as a store and home at the fork in the road, west of the Fox cottage. That was indeed a blessing. For several years before our cabin was built we lived in a tent sufficiently large to afford ample room for us. We slept on army cots and used folding canvas camp chairs. The tent was amazingly comfortable and weather-proof. I recall many a storm when those in cabins had been soaked but we were snug and dry at all times. My father built our log cabin himself, cutting the trees. Everything but chinking between the logs with cement which fell to my mother and me. Alice loved helping Father with the actual bullding, roof and all. Of course all tile building material had to, be hand-carried up the hill -- even some of the logs for they came from all over our property. And how we all loved that cabin. It was us. We heard the plans, we watched'it grow. Mother called it Tree Top Cabin and that is exactly what it was. One of my most incredible memories is of the year when, for some reason, we had a flock of chickens. I cannot imagine anyone less likely to keep chickens than my city-raised, scholarly parents, but have them they did and were not about to miss their beloved summer vacation because of them. And so my father crated them and shipped them across the lake. Bonapart met us at the dock and carted the loudly protesting flock out to the camp. My father enclosed the area under the kitchen, which was built apart from the cabin, and there they stayed until we eliminated them one by one. One day the pesky creatures got loose and scattered over the back of our hill. Coming up from the beach in her wet suit my sister saw them and set to work catching them. All went well until inadvertently she stepped into a wild bees nest. The bees, of course, swarmed out in protest and covered her. Screaming she ran up to the cottage and tried to throw herself down on her bed. My mother realized that could be fatal and forced her up and outside, grabbed a broom and literally swept most of the bees off of her. Of course both she and Alice were stung again and again. Alice emitted blood-curdling scream after blood-curdling scream, creating a dilemma for those who heard her -- as most everyone in camp did. Was she in danger of some kind or was she being punished, for she periodically would yell, "Mother, stop! You are killing me!" How anyone could imagine my gentle mother would inflict such extreme punishment in anger is beyond me but in such situations one does not reason things out. Finally Mother got Alice to take off her swimsuit to get rid of those that had crawled inside it. She literally picked the bees out of her hair one by one, and the worst of it was over. Amazingly neither Alice nor Mother suffered serious after-effects. Are wild bees less poisonous than domestic? But it was a truly traumatic episode. We became a close-knit group because of our isolation and interdependence. Everyone was there for the whole summer., I know we would arrive the day after school closed and return,home the day it opened. Every weekend the husbands and fathers would take the Saturday afternoon boat from Chicago, arriving in camp around midnight and would return to Chicago on the Sunday night boat. In those days all business companies worked Saturday mornings and the men could not have more than a day with their families but they never failed to make the trip unless ill or out-of-town. Communal beach fires were our favorite social activity -- ghost stories, group singing, stunts, games were always a part of them. About once a week we would have a wiener roast or pot-luck dinner. But never to be forgotten was our excitement when we would build the fire up until it was blazing brightly just as the Chicago bound boat passed. Then we would signal. the boat: by raising a blanket up and down between the fire an the shore. We would do this mainly on Sunday nights when our fathers would be on board. The captains, of course, came to expect it and would blow the boat's whistle and turn all the lights on the boat off and on three times in reply. We children would be ecstatic. The boat actually had winked at us! Mr. Spencer held church service every Sunday. First the men helped clear a spot on the front of his hill and there the families would congregate. Then it was decided we would build an open building with floor and roof where we could hold services or social dinners or even dances. Everyone pitched in with logs and lumber and labor and the deed was done. This was erected on the back of the Spencer's hill. Slowly our numbers increased, but here my memory fails me. I do not recall just when the various families arrived. I do remember the Halls and their son Howard in the cottage on top of the hill above the Clarks -- the Halleys and their daughters Elizabeth and Lois who built north of the Spencers -- the two Paul sisters who amazed us by building their cottage themselves up near the Halleys. I am quite sure the Halls and the Halleys were also from Chicago and I believe the Paul girls were too. The McCrackens and their son and their daughter Ellen rented, if I remember correctly, the Loomis cottage for a couple of weeks two successive summers. Naturally our life-style changed as the years passed, but those first primitive years are never to be forgotten. They have to have meant much to our parents for they returned year after year for the entire summer. Of course there were no radios, TVs, movies, or shopping areas. We provided our own entertainment, and it was a child's paradise. We ran barefoot from morning to night all summer long -- a thing we never could do in Chicago. (There, small as I was, I could not cross the one street that separated us from the beach without wearing stockings and beach shoes -- a city requirement). We romped through the woods and along the beach. And what a beach it was! There were three dunes of graduating size leading down to a relatively flat area that was large enough to accommodate a full-size baseball field and many a game was played on it by all ages. I recall vestiges of an old railroad track that had run along in front of the first dune, but it was soon buried completely. We sunned on the two smaller dunes and played on them interminably, somersaulting, rolling down them. The third dune, the large one on top of which the cabins were built was taboo, lest we pull it down. We swam in the sparkling, clear water that deepened so gradually that we children could play in it safely. The woods, the swaying pines, the lake, the sun, the wide sandy beach, the fog horns sounding their mournful warnings, the good friends, the wonderful enjoyment have to be one of my most nostalgic, most beloved memories. I believe Mrs. Spencer expressed the sentiments of us all when she suggested we change the name from Idlewild II to Winnetaska, meaning The Land of Happy Laughter. Then came the period from 1918 through 1927. Life-styles had begun to change and the children of the first campers had grown older. My sister and I had been among the youngest but in 1918 we began working during the summer months as we finished high school and went on to college. We used our cottage only two weeks in September, which meant we saw little of the other campers. Old families sold their property; new families moved in. My memory is very vague about those years but I associate them with the:
Carol Kimpton Wetherbee and the Spencers were the only original settlers other than us whom I recall still owning property. I suspect the Foxes and some of the Muskegon families will have furnished more factual information about these years. We did nothing but soak in the beauty of the place, delighting still in the woods, the sun, the sand, and the water. In 1928, after my sister and I had married and had our first children, our family began once again to spend the entire summer in Winnetaska. Our cabin burned to the ground early that summer of 1929, set afire by water boiling over on the kerosene stove. Fortunately the, woods were wet and it did not spread. Of course no fire-fighting equipment was available. We did not even have water on the hill. We could do nothing but watch it burn. Imedlately my father started rebuilding it with the aid of Alice and her husband and mine. And then our cousins from Columbus, Ohio, Fred and Mary Schwartz and their three children, Fred, George, and Suzanne, came for the summer and Fred, a cabinet maker, was of tremendous assistance . After several summers with us they rented a cottage above the Leavitts. My sister's two boys Bob and Dick and my four children Curt, Betsy, Tom and Patt, filled our cottage to capacity. My mother died in the winter of 1931 but every summer until then she looked forward eagerly to our arrival in camp and trudged up our hill right along with the rest of us. She dearly loved the place. With the passing years change was inevitable. Life in Winnetaska, of course, had kept pace with progress. The fact that many families that were now summering in Winnetaska lived in Muskegon or near-by and had both business and social lives there, close at hand, in addition to the ever-increasing mobility that accompanied paved roads and cars, changed the social structure. We still had weekly pot-luck suppers and beach fires and afternoon "get togethers" for the women. There still was a community spirit of warmth and friendliness, but the dependency on one another for social contact that had developed through our initial isolation was gradually phased out. Living conditions became increasingly easier. Cottages acquired more comforts as improved roads gradually made available deliveries of all kinds -- furniture, equipment, ice, groceries. First the groceryman would come out in the morning to take our orders and would have them delivered in the afternoon. The iceman, too, would come out two or three times a week, Electricity brought its luxuries -- hot and cold running water, indoor toilets, lights, refrigeration, cooking stoves, and the telephone. All of this, of course, developed gradually, bit by bit, throughout the passing years. As cars became commonplace each family became increasingly independent. In time it became evident there was a need for some formal organization to cope with community concerns and problems and the Winnetaska Association was founded, with duly e1ected officers and general meetings of members. But for me Winnetaska is almost synonomous with childhood. In those first impressionable years I was a child and saw it through the eyes of a child. Granted, the second decade involved my teen years and early twenties but our time there during that period was fleeting and left few memories other than an expected, accepted sense of pleasure and enjoyment. Then came the thirties when we once again spent long idyllic summers surrounded by the young of the next generation -- my own four children covering a thirteen year span, my sister's two boys, and the three young Schwartzes. As my children grew older they almost always had friends from Chicago staying with us. My life was overflowing with children. Winnetaska still was a child's paradise. Our children loved it as we had. As in my childhood, we would spend the entire summer there from school's closing in June until its opening in September. They, too, ran barefoot, lived out-of-doors from morning to night, romping in the water, sunning and tumbling in the clean sand, picking blueberries, concocting games in the woods, loving the beach fires. In addition, of course, there was easier access to town and lts pleasures movies, ice cream parlor, and so on -- were added to the joys of nature. There was a steady stream of young people growing up through the years: Charles and Junior Beukecla - the Breuninger boys - Bill, John, and Dave Fox - Alice, Sue and Catherine Allen - the Corgans, Jim, the oldest who raced stock cars on Hell's Hill, Don, and several younger girls - Ralph Grienenberger - Donna Carol Wetherbee - Barbara and Max Fleischmann - Chuck Norwood - Barbara and Wayne Mosier - Janey Canaday - Carl and Davey Oaks - Phyllis and Phillip Glotfelty - Judy, Jay, arid that generation of Foxes and the young Paups. I am sure these names will ibring more to mind. I have warm recolleqtions of many of the "new" cottagers: the Grienenbergers, the McCreas, the Bergstroms, the Foxes, the Hallards, the Oaks, the Corgans, of Mr. Leavitt who would climb our hill once a week to play bridge with Alice, my cousin Hary, and me -- and of Mrs. Allen who held a baby shower for me before Patt was born. My sister Alice, during those years, I recall, became a tennis enthusiast and played all summer long. 1941-1950
Then came the war and
rationing. and gas and tire shortages curtailed our
use of the cottage. The! children grew older. Curt
joined the Navy and was sent to the South Pacific. My
husband was killed in an accident and I went to work.
Betsy, Bob and Dick had summer jobs. Alice took a
war-time job. Our cottage stood idle for long periods
of time.
Carol
Wetherbee
took Tom, who was eleven , with her family when they
went up to their cottage for several years and the
Canadys invited Patricia to stay with them for Patt
and Janey had become close friends. Memories of such
thoughtfulness. such kindness. still bring tears of
appreciation to my eyes. My father died in 1945 at the
age of 83 but continued to enjoy Winnetaska until the
end. Time moved inexorably on as it
has a way of doing. Curt married and began spending his
vacations at Winnetaska with his wife and their children
Louise, Wayne, Marilynn, and Laura. The cycle had made another complete turn. His children loved the place as had two
previous generations of youngsters. Betsy during these years went to college, had a Civil Service job on Guam, traveled in Europe and finally settled down with a job at Armour Research in Chicago. I was able to get there only for brief visits for my summer schedule at work was very heavy. In fact. neither my sister or I was able to use the cottage much in the ensuing years. Then Betsy fell in love and very much wanted to be married in Winnetaska where she had spent so many happy days., We were sure the height of our hill would create a real problem for some of it he older folks and Marion and Fred Grienenberger. bless them, graciously let the ceremony be held on the front of their hilltop. overlooking the lake. framed by two towering pine trees. They then provided a perfectly lovely out-of-doors reception on their side lawn for the family and few close friends present. To me it was the loveliest wedding I ever have ac cn , Nature provided u beauty that, could not be matched by man. Its simplicity. its complete lack of pomp and show, gave a sense of sincerity. After the ceremony the young people all changed into jeans, and shirts, and had a beach party in a sheltered hollow up the shore. Formality was nonexistent. The good friends and gayety around the warmly burning campfire, under a conopy of stors, with the whispering pines answering the gentle breaking of the on the shore combined with the love and high expectations, created moments of almost unbearable beauty. I shall always remember Fred and Marion with the warmest thoughts. It was a beautiful gracious thing they did. In due time Betsy and Keith had two daughters, Susan and Lisa, and spent as much time as possible at the cottage. As they lived in Grand Rapids they could take advantage of weekends, as well as vacation time. Patt was married the next year and she and Terry had two sons, Sean and Tim. They lived in Lowell and they, too, had easy access to Winnetaska. Alice's younger son Dick, with his wife and two children, Alan and Susan, began spending their vacations there. Bob, her older son, spent several years studying and teaching in the Netherlands and married a Frisian girl, Ottje. A university professor, his summers have been occupied with frequent educational conferences and return trips to Holland, all of which have precluded his use of the cottage. Everyone of us has loved it down through the generations. My children's children are now all young adults and I could wish that they, too, might enjoy "The Land of Happy Laughter" with their families, but erosion by the lake has ruined the beach, torn down our hill, and, finally, heartbreakingly, has caused the complete collapse of our cottage. For us an era has passed but it has given four generations a legacy of joyous, beautiful, never-to-be forgotten memories. bottom Return to TOP last reviewed: 4-20-2013 |