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The Copper Country is blessed with four beautiful, distinct seasons, But the times that really define the Copper Country experience are fall and winter. The early-arriving pallet of rich fall colors with the ever-present chance of snow are meant to remind residents that bigger changes are just around the corner.
Get ready, and when the winter "monster" finally hits, it's pretty legendary. My stories today – of walking to school (both ways) in heavy snow – often sound cliché and are dismissed with a courtesy laugh - especially by my California friends. But with all the claims about Houghton's winters, the spectacular fall season often does not get its due.
Fall for us kids was work time, with chores like raking leaves, wrapping pipes, installing storm windows, and even helping to lay-in another big load of coal for the long winter ahead. Coal, crushed to about one-inch size, was delivered by a dump truck, which would back up into our yard and dump it into a chute through a basement window into our coal bin - a small wood-walled room used only for coal storage - up to the ceiling.
From there we would hand shovel the coal – daily – into a "stoker" bin, from which an auger would move the coal into the firebox of the furnace, which would heat the water in our radiators. I've never experienced a better system than this quiet, radiant hot water heat. But if the winter was especially long, we'd run out of coal and have to make frequent trips to Messner's coal yard to fill large wash tubs, that just fit in the trunk of Dad's '57 Chevrolet.
Fall was a time for fun stuff like football games, and maybe even a final sunny beach day out at the breakwater. Local football was great – whether it was Houghton High or MTU. Tech's games were afternoon affairs, originally played on Engineers Field just east of Sherman gym (The Rozsa Center today) and later up at Hubbell Field. Houghton High's home games were played under the lights at Hubbell Field, with the season finale always against Hancock for the new Copper Bowl. There were no U.P. or state championships, just the Conference, made up of Crystal Falls Trojans, Wakefield Cardinals, L'anse Purple Hornets, Baraga Vikings, Lake Linden Whiz Kids, Ontanogan Polar Bears and the Calumet Copper Kings. Coach Peter Bugni used the old dirt practice field east of the high school to shape a mixed bag of talent into occasional Conference Champs.
But as football ended and the snow began, the arrival of the Copper Country's famous winter created a whole new excitement for us kids. - primarily in the form of winter sports. (I still believe that winters were worse back in the 50's and 60's than in recent years, at least it's good for braggin' rights!)
Hockey, of course, was the mainstay winter sport here in the birthplace of the earliest professional hockey. Tech hockey was the highest form of the game back then, with teams made up almost entirely of Canadian "imports." During the 50's, Doc Romnes turned the coaching reins over to Al Renrew, who was eventually replaced by the legendary John MacInnes.
Games were usually Friday and Saturday nights in the unheated Dee Stadium, where fans literally hung from the rafters to watch Tech take on much bigger schools like Minnesota, Michigan, Michigan State, Denver University, Colorado College and North Dakota.
In the heated lobby area between periods, you could cut the smoke and aroma of cheap after shave with a knife, and Volwerth's hot dogs were the main fare - even on a Saturday night. As kids, we could usually get into the games free in exchange for working between periods to scrape the ice clean in preparation for the two hand-pushed flooding machines.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Roger Smith now resides in California and can be reached at: rdsmith2009@gmail.com.