Heroes

by John B. Anderson

I'm sure that we've all had heroes as we were growing up. One of our relatives might be a hero, perhaps a neighbor or a coach. This is a story about two of my heroes from my formative years, Frank Provo and Dick Berger.

Frank, Ronnie's dad, was probably one of the greatest hunters ever. Frank was so skilled that he kept meat on the table for a lot of years. A couple of us boys went with Frank to his cabin on the Stonington Peninsula one time. As we rode to the cabin, we passed fields with 50 to 100 deer in each field, (maybe fewer, but it seemed like a lot of deer.) At one farm, the garden was protected by a 20-foot fence. This is where most of the deer were hanging out. Frank explained that this was the game warden's house, and that the deer knew it.

That night, after supper, we had a campfire then off to bed. Frank told us some hunting tales about a friend from Escanaba, Dunky DuBoer. Dunky liked to play cards, but he was never known to carry a full deck. The other hunters would place Dunky on a snipe trail, with a bag, to catch the snipes when they started running at night. Dunky would usually give up around midnight and go to bed. The hunters also would have Dunky sleep on the beach, on a board, so he could be there at dawn to shoot the ducks and geese. When Dunky would fall asleep, the others would lift the board with Dunky and put it in the woods.

The next morning I looked from my bed at a plaque on the wall. I didn't have my glasses on then, so all I could read was the first word, “Vy,” in large letters. I thought, that's cool, Frank has a saying about his wife Vy, or Vivian, hanging on his cabin wall. I put on my glasses, and discovered that the plaque completely said, “Vy ist der more 'orses asses den der ist 'orses?” Oh well, that's cool too.

After breakfast, we were introduced to the .22 Hornet. I had fired a regular .22, but the .22 Hornet was twice the gun that the regular .22 was. That woodchuck did some fancy jumping 100 yards away.

Ronnie had obviously learned a lot from his dad. During the spring, Ronnie, Bill and I went to the woods in search of a fox den. At that point in time, The Conservation Department would pay a bounty for foxes and coyotes, ($5.00), male wolves, ($15.00) and female wolves, ($20.00). Ronnie found a den. We set a trap near the entrance of the den, covered it with wax paper, leaves and twigs, and left it to come back the next day. The next day, apparently, the mother fox had sniffed the trap, and she started digging about three feet away. We figured that the litter must be just below where she was digging, so we started to dig at that spot. As I was going down this narrow tunnel, I had visions of mother fox coming up the tunnel and biting off my face. As it turned out, she was outside the den. When I reached the bottom of the tunnel, I found 5 little black foxes. Red foxes are black when they are born, I discovered. They had died during the night. We put them into a box, and took them to town.

When we got to town, we ran into Mr. Barkley, the biology teacher. He told us that these weren't foxes at all, but little puppies. We took the little guys to the conservation department, where they pretty much echoed Mr. Barkley's analysis. The conservation officer said that he couldn't pay us the required bounty, until he could verify that they were really foxes. He said that he would mail them to Michigan State for verification. We were, of course, disappointed, but what could we do? After about a month, we got a nice letter from the Department of Conservation. It contained a check for $25.00, and a notification that these were the smallest foxes ever submitted for bounty.

The following year, after we discovered another den, we set a trap at the den's entrance. The next morning, mamma fox was in the trap. We quickly disposed of her, and started digging. We recovered 4 of the little guys in the den. When we took the foxes to the conservation department this time, the officer wrote us a check for $25.00.

Ronnie also taught us to fish for trout with a hook and line on a stick. We caught a few small trout from Gor Gor, (George Orr) Creek. We would take them up the hill and cook them over our campfire. Really good!

Another one of my Manistique heroes was Dick Berger. I always thought Dick was the finest basketball coaches ever. It might have been the fact that Dick taught us when we were at the learning ages of 15 and 16, but I still felt that he was a great coach. Dick believed in conditioning. Each practice we would drill, drill, drill. We would dribble, pass, and run the length of the floor at least 50 times every practice. Dick's belief was that the team that was in the best shape at the end of a close game, would win the game every time.

I embraced that philosophy when I coached St. Francis elementary to an undefeated season. St. Francis even played Cooks that year, to make us county champs.

We had shoot-around at the beginning of every practice. Dick would stand in the center of the floor and announce, “If you can sink more buckets from the center of the floor than I can, you won't have to run laps at the end of practice. We all ran laps, but we got better from the center of the floor. The proof of this was when Ronnie Provo sunk the final winning shot against Marquette Graverett. The shot was from the free throw line at the opposite end of the floor. I played in the pep band at the time. I blew my trombone as hard as I could, but, because of the crowd noise, I couldn't hear my horn. I'm surprised that the roof remained on the gym. You, like WLUC, (With Luck U See), Marquette tv station, thought it was a fluke. It was just another day at the gym for Ronnie.

What's for Lunch?

by John B. Anderson

Lunches during my career at Lakeside were pretty uneventful for the most part. My mom was at home then, so I always got a good meal at noon. I remember a couple of walking home to lunch incidents that were adventuresome. When my family lived on Manistique Avenue, we had to walk down Oak Street and down the hill to get home. We kids had to walk past old lady Heron's house everyday. She was cranky. On day, she yelled, “You kids stay off my lawn!” Then she picked up some dog turds and threw them at us. We told our parents what had happened. It wasn't long after that we heard that old lady Herr on was vacationing at the Newberry Funny Farm.

My family moved to Arbutus Avenue, so I went home to lunch another way. One day, Pat Boynton showed me his middle finger and asked, “Do you know what this means?” I answered in the negative. He said, “It Means, 'Suck the Bag'!”. I filed this information away for possible future use.

Bill was a late comer to Lakeside School. On Bill's first day, Ron explained to Bill who was King of the Playground. To reinforce that assertion, Ron said that he would explain it further on the way home to lunch. I said, “Bill, I know a short cut. We sneaked through Curley's back yard from Oak Street to Manistique Avenue, then through Cowman's back yard to Michigan Avenue – Bill's house. After all of that sneaking, Ron was waiting for us at Bill's house. Bill acknowledged who was King of the Playground. Bill and Ron became life-long friends at that point.

Lunches at junior high and high school provided many options. Lunch hour was 11:30 to 12:45, so we could hike the mile to home, eat lunch, and hike the mile back to school. (This is the part where my boys would say, “...and it was uphill both ways, right Dad?”). The first option was when Bill and I rode our bikes to school. I had to cook my own lunch, which amounted to rotating a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli, a can of Beanie Weenies, of a can of roast beef hash. After consuming these culinary delights, Bill and I would rush off to school, trying to get there early enough for a little pool hall time.

Another good option was to eat lunch at the drug store. Inez Coffee would fix me an egg salad sandwich with lettuce. Super good. I, then, would read all of the comics that the drug store offered. I loved Inez when she told me that I looked, “intellectual,” when I wore my glasses. I even ate hot lunch with Cerona and Larry sometimes. I remember being bored in college prep English, when we could clearly hear the garbage truck outside. We softly said, “Hot lunch is being delivered.”

One of the best options for lunch, was to take a bag lunch. This might consist of a big bologna sandwich with lettuce, (really wilted by lunchtime,) and mayo. Liver sausage was another favorite, but the go to lunch was peanut butter and jelly. These were accompanied by a fruit of some kind. We would consume our lunches on the bleachers in the old gym, then Dick Berger would break out the basketballs. These pickup games were rough. The country kids didn't understand about fouls, so, when anyone went up for a shot, he might have two opposing players hanging on him. It was good practice for us in a real game. I have to say, at this point, that the master of making a bucket with two people hanging on him was Phil Carlson. Phil was bleeding profusely, when he scored a bucket against Munising.

The long lunch period provided an ample opportunity to catch up on things at the pool hall. I didn't smoke at that time, as I was playing sport, but there was plenty of second hand smoke to go around. As we got older, we graduated to the other side of LaFoilles, so we could talk to the girls.