Driving along the highway these late October days, one can’t help but notice the great number of tamarack trees along the roadsides and scattered throughout the forests. Tamaracks are, as far as I know, the only conifer that sheds its needles in the fall, just like the deciduous trees shed their leaves. Before this transformation takes place, however, the trees turn into a beautiful pumpkin orange and they are certainly easy to spot this time of the year mixed in with the evergreens. That color too, will soon be gone as we await the coming winter.

The October 25 lucky winner of the Lions Club raffle was Heidi Erickson.

An interesting happening took place for Norine Rudd last week when she was informed that she will be the proud “mother” of a beagle hound that was evacuated from the Louisiana hurricane area. The animal shelter in St. Ignace received a couple of orphaned puppies and this beagle (perhaps others too) that needed homes. Norine called and she will have her “new” dog as soon as its quarantine is over. Norine, who recently lost her much loved dog, is as happy as a clam to be the recipient of one of these unfortunate animals and we’re sure it will have a good home.

Another story from Bruce Patrick came to me this week. Bruce should probably share my byline these days, as he is adding so many great stories to this column. I am always grateful for his input, as I’m sure many readers are. This story is about his early days as a student in the Les Cheneaux Edgewood School of many years ago. Bruce started school in the year 1921 when he was 5 years old with his sister, May, who was six. They walked to school in those days and they attended Edgewood School, one of the many scattered small schools in the township. Edgewood, a one-room school, was on the southeast side of Cedarville, next to Edgewood Cemetery and Bruce’s first teacher, Miss McLain, boarded with his grandmother in Cedarville. Miss McLain also walked to school, through the woods on an Indian trail from Cedarville, each day. When she arrived at the school, she had to make a fire in the wood stove, getting the school warm by 9 a.m. for the children to be comfortable.

During the winter months, she snow-shoed to school. Bruce and his sisters had no trouble walking to school. The worse time came in the winter when they had to walk in the snow. As the snow got deeper, Bruce’s father helped by making wooden snowshoes out of lumber for the children to walk over the snow. After a really heavy snowfall, a man by the name of Joe Griffin, who had horses and a sled, hauled them to school and this was a big help. Joe lived on the corner across from the present Spring Lodge.

After a few years, the school board hired Ruben Sherlund, with his team of horses, to haul the children each day. He had a big sled with a cabin on it that protected the kids from the weather. Rube said that after he had made a few trips, the same each day, he could just let the horses go by themselves. They would make all the turns and stops without direction from Rube because they had gotten used to the trip.

Shortly thereafter, the school board hired a man with a big seven-passenger car to haul the children to school. After five years at Edgewood, the country schools were consolidated and all the students went to Cedarville and so progress was made. There were five country schools in those days, Edgewood, Markstrom, Izzard, Blind Line, and Swede.

We thank Bruce for another interesting story. It was certainly a very different time and it’s wonderful to hear about it, but it was a time of hardship too for the many young people in the area to get a good education, not to mention the hardship on the young teachers who had to haul water for drinking and wood to keep the winter fires going. Our modern schools and transportation are certainly an improvement over those “good old golden days.”