Les Cheneaux
By Helen Shoberg 484-2626 mink@cedarville.net

Winter has finally arrived, with temperatures hovering around zero for a few days last week. The Les Cheneaux area, however, has very little snow. It seems that Sault Ste. Marie received the most snow in the Eastern Upper Peninsula during the last snowstorm, which is often the case.

Once again, the concern of many is seeing snow machines running on the ice on Cedarville Bay. It takes several cold days for enough ice to hold heavy snowmobiles, and we hope those who are out there know the conditions. Just a few days ago, there was a wide expansion crack in front of my home from our dock to Big LaSalle Island.

It was sad to say goodbye to Clark O'Brien last week. The O'Briens were neighbors of ours for a few years here on Islington Road. Our children played together and we enjoyed them as neighbors. Clark and my husband, Con, were both members of the Lions Club at that time and they, along with Tony Autore and others, spearheaded many projects, including the beginning of the Fourth of July fireworks. In those days, they boarded a barge, moved it out in Cedarville Bay and exploded the fireworks from that. Thank goodness, they also hired a man who was an expert at exploding fireworks to help them, but it was dangerous business!

The Les Cheneaux Rouge Chapeau chapter of Red Hat ladies had a very nice luncheon meeting at Ang-gio's last Tuesday, with approximately 20 in attendance. They made quite a colorful "splash" in the restaurant with their purple and red outfits, all topped with a red hat, some of which were quite original. Their next meeting will be February 20, with the location to be announced.

Bruce Patrick has another interesting story this week, and it reads as follows:

"This is about a story of no snow in the year of 1920. I was a student at Edgewood School. It was just northwest of the existing Edgewood Cemetery of today. The snow had been normal all winter, till late February when it started to thaw. It thawed away until the first of April and there was little or none left. On April 1, 1920, it snowed about three feet.

"Joe Griffin, who lived across corner from what is now Spring Lodge, decided to hitch up his team of horses and take all of us kids that lived around his corner and Park Avenue to school. Well, he got the horses hitched up and we all got aboard. He had a sled with a big high-sided box. What a mess of snow! Well, we got to school somewhere near on time. He came back after school to ride us home in the evening. Joe did all kinds of horse and sled work with his team, like a trucker would do nowadays.

"My mother's home, before she got married, was in Evanston, Illinois. She got acquainted with the Hardys, who had a summer home at Les Cheneaux Club. She cooked for the Hardys. This is where my father met her. Every winter she would go to Evanston to visit her parents. She would get Joe Griffin to take her and us, her children, to the train at Sault Ste. Marie.

"We would leave here about 3:00 a.m. to catch the train in the Soo about 9 a.m. Joe was a hard driver! We would get in his sled at about 3 a.m., get to Halfway House, north of Pickford, about 6:30 a.m., and change horses for a fresh team at Halfway House. We would get in to the depot in time to board the train and away we would go for Evanston. We did this almost every winter to get to the Chicago area.

"Way back in those days, this train went down through Wisconsin to Chicago. There was no way to get across the Straits of Mackinac and get a train in Mackinaw City in those days. The train ferry came about 1920, thus cars could cross the Straits of Mackinac. Mr. A. E. Anderson, our next door summer neighbor, came across the Straits of Mackinac on the first ferry in 1921. It took him three days to come up from Cincinnati, Ohio, in those days."

Mary Scherer won $100 in the Lions Club raffle January 16.