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Houghton life in the 50’s: Going boating

After the long, hard Copper Country winters, an event that usually suggested that the end was in sight was the arrival of the Woodrush, a 180-foot Coast Guard ice breaker, on its mission to reopen shipping lanes around Lake Superior. (Interestingly, the Woodrush was later sold to Ghana for its Navy.) But I also recall a less official harbinger of spring that took place in the Baraga area. As the ice fishing season ended, some group would leave an old car on the ice of Keweenaw Bay and sell chances to bet on what date the ice would have melted enough for it to fall through. I’d bet there are still a few old junkers on the lake bottom there.

With the signs of spring, it usually became warm enough to finally wash the car. One rough rule was that it had to be at least a balmy 35 degrees, so the water wouldn’t freeze the door locks – or we’d find ourselves relying on the old trick of cupping our hand around the keyhole and using warm breath to thaw the lock. Today I can’t imagine washing a car at 35 degrees.

Emerging from the long heavy Copper Country winters was a slow and dirty process. Rivers of water carrying winter sanding flowed down Houghton’s hilly streets and, unfortunately, into sewer inlets and manholes. So one ritual of spring was the appearance of the Village workers with very long-handled special ‘scoop’ shovels for cleaning out the deep manholes. They would leave the sand and debris in piles – often for weeks – until it would be picked up by the Village dump truck. This gave us kids a prop for some pretty amazing and harrowing bicycle stunts.

Spring was also when the smelt “ran.” Smelt fishing was a ritual (probably still is) in response to the schools of thousands of 5-7 inch smelt that ran for small streams. Favorite spots were the mouths of Coles Creek in West Houghton (City Park today) and the Pilgrim River at U.S. 41. It was a nighttime affair, and you didn’t even need a rod because you “dipped” for smelt with a cone-shaped wire mesh net on a long handle. Coming up with a full, or half-full net – almost too heavy to lift – was common when they were really running, and we could fill a garbage can in an hour. We’d often scrounge an old tire and get it blazing for a long-lasting fire to fish by.

Eventually summer finally crept in, and the threat of late snows faded. Copper Country summers were alive with activities for a young boy. For one thing, this meant time for fishing. And with my old friend Clyde Smith (no relation) and a ride from a parent, we’d head for the Pilgrim River or to small lakes, dressed in hip boots and armed with night crawlers harvested the night before by flashlight from the big lawns at Tech. We’d usually start in the morning with a packed lunch and a plan to be picked up hours later. Brook trout, speckled trout made up most of our catch. I recall we always had to steer clear of the electrified lamprey fence that crossed the Pilgrim just south of U.S. 41. But the real prize fish was the whopper lake trout my dad came home with from a Lake Superior cruise with a U.P. Power group aboard company President John Warden’s nice wooden cabin cruiser.

Another sign of summer was the return of the South American cruise boat. This 300-foot, all white luxury liner sailed from Chicago up Lake Michigan, through the Soo Locks and across Lake Superior to Duluth. It arrived in Houghton every Tuesday night around 6 p.m., at the Cahodas-Paoli dock at the foot of Isle Royale Street. It was always greeted by a crowd of curious locals who would gather on the dock if only to see what ‘city folk’ looked and dressed like as they paraded off the ship and up into downtown Houghton, where the stores would stay open for these fat-wallet tourists. The landing crew for the big ship was always led by Fran Slattery who, operating out of his well-polished ’57 Mercury, would catch the small ‘lead rope’ thrown from the huge ship, and use it to pull the much larger mooring rope to the big cleats on the dock.

On “boat night,” locals from miles around would flock to Houghton often sitting in their parked cars near the dock or up on Shelden – if only to people watch. A small summer band, organized by Bobby Gillis, would play on the dock to welcome the ship, as us kids tried to sell the tourists pieces of copper we had dug from the mines’ waste rock piles. (My favorite source was the big pile of “poor rock” on Houghton Ave. at the top of Prospect St. I also had a secret outcropping “vein” where I could harvest pure copper with a hammer and chisel.) The ship would depart by around 9 p.m., and I can still recall the ship’s organ playing “So Long, It’s Been Good To Know Ya” as that beautiful white monster sailed off west into the sunset. Of course, it faced the immediate challenge of getting through the narrow opening of the old swing bridge. Alas, it’s last stop in Houghton was in the mid 60’s and this big downtown event ended.

But the huge ore boats continued to be a common sight through the Portage waterway, facing the same challenge of ‘threading the needle’ to get through the narrow old swing bridge. On one occasion, when the bridge failed to open, even after long distress blasts of the ship’s powerful horn, an ore boat had to stop by dragging anchor, which severed the main underwater telephone cable and put most of the Copper Country out of phone service for awhile.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Roger Smith now resides in California and can be reached at: rdsmith2009@gmail.com.

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