These deer were spotted grazing in the yard of Betty and Bill Kish on Hill Island. We certainly cannot complain about the weather during the past week. With lots of sunshine, the snow depth went down so much. It's nice not to have such very high piles of snow on the street corners. They have been a real driving hazard at times, as they are every year when there is a lot of snow.

It was exciting to go to the high school basketball game in Brimley on Saturday evening, where they played the final regional game. The Cedarville Trojans won the game and they are now the regional champions, with a beautiful trophy to commemorate their win. They now compete in the quarter finals in Escanaba. The game will have been played when this issue comes out, and we hope they won.

A note from Roger Heuck of Cincinnati, whom many remember in the Les Cheneaux area as one of the very special artists who has held summer oil painting classes in Cedarville for the local Arts Council, was very welcome this week. Roger tells that his painting "Monet's Back Door," and David Mueller's painting entitled, "Girl on Black Settee" were accepted into the Salon International 2006 Exhibit sponsored by the International Museum of Contemporary Masters of Fine Art. The show will open May 20 in San Antonio. Roger's friend, David Mueller, has also visited the Les Cheneaux Islands several times and given oil painting demonstrations. Roger and Rho, along with David and Lori, are looking forward to an exciting weekend in San Antonio. We congratulate them both.

Congratulations too, to Betty Lindberg, the very lucky lady who won the $500 Lions Club raffle March 14.

Betty and Bill Kish have enjoyed seeing nine or 10 deer grazing in their yard on Hill Island. They were quite astonished the other day to see in a group of three, one young buck still sporting a rack on his head. Don't deer shed their racks in the fall? The accompanying photo shows this little guy on the left of the picture with his head down.

Snowmobile drag races took place on Cedarville Bay throughout the weekend, and the ice on the waterfront was covered with trailers and pickups and of course, lots of snowmobiles. Watching from my window, they were flying down the ice.

This week Bruce has given me a story about tanker Boyd that went down in the Straits of Mackinac many years ago. It was filled with high test gas bound for Kincheloe Airforce Base, so it must have happened in the early 1940's, and went aground in the Straits. I wrote about this tanker not too long ago, mentioning that Jerry Arnold from St. Ignace had a video of men helping themselves to the gasoline from this tanker. In the meantime, Bruce's version of this event is more complete than mine, because he actually lived it, and his story follows:

"On Lake Michigan between Christmas and New Year's Day about eight miles west of where the Mackinac Bridge now is, was when and where it happened. A tanker called Boyd was coming up to St. Ignace. It was in the dark of the night when the tanker Boyd ran on Simmon's Reef. This reef would be on the port side of the tanker when she went aground in a snowstorm in the middle of the night. This reef is right out from the little town of Brevort in the Upper Peninsula.

"She hit and ran up on the reef, which was under probably eight feet of water. On the south side of this grounding was Gray's Reef lighthouse, but at this time of the year the light had been put out for winter. The captain lowered the anchor, and this was for a purpose. The law says she's 'secured' for insurance reasons.

"Well there was 800 barrels of high test aviation gas on the deck. The salvage tug Favorite, stationed at St. Ignace, was radioed for help. So the Favorite, a huge salvage tug, went out the next morning to investigate. She could not budge the tanker. But the next morning Favorite took 759 barrels of gasoline off the deck. There was about 750 thousand gallons in the hole. Now because the captain had dropped the anchor, no one could touch, legally, any of the gas. The gasoline was higher test than was used in autos at that time. It was headed for the airport at Kincheloe.

"There were a couple of commercial fishing docks and boats housed on shore at Brevort. So immediately these fishermen went out and salvaged some gas. Soon these two commercial boys had all the gasoline they would need for their fishing boats.

"The next operation was a tug that had a large capacity for gasoline, from Gladstone. They got permission from the insurance company that had insured this cargo, to go out and salvage gasoline. They went out the first time with a small tank and got a load. This was too slow, so they got quite a large barge and towed it out to the Boyd. They started to pump gasoline out of Boyd when something sparked and the whole deck area was on fire. There were eight men on this tug and all were killed. Well, this stopped them on salvage. Of course they had made a deal to pay something for each gallon that they took off. Well, all eight men were killed and the tug burned to the water. People at Brevort saw this explosion from the shore."

The above story continues at some length, and so I shall relate more of this interesting tale next week.

Spring break will begin this weekend for our local school and teachers and students need a good break, as they have all worked hard. Many plans have been made, and it sounds as though Cedarville and Hessel may be deserted during the next week. We hope everyone has a safe and wonderful time.