Lights on the Water Puzzle the Point

A reader need not leave the Lower Peninsula to stand at the top of the world, or near enough. Two hours and a little north of us, where the Lake Michigan shore climbs into the sky, lies Sleeping Bear Dunes, a stretch of perched sand that rises some 450 feet above the water and offers a view a person does not soon forget or fully describe.

The dunes take their name from an old Ojibwe story. A mother bear and her two cubs, the telling goes, fled a great fire across the lake in Wisconsin and swam for the Michigan shore. The mother reached it and climbed the bluff to wait. The cubs, smaller and tiring, did not, and the lake took them within sight of land. The Great Spirit raised the two as islands, North and South Manitou, and covered the grieving mother where she lay with a blanket of sand, the dune that keeps her name to this day.

The brave and the foolish climb the great Dune Climb on foot, which is easier going up than the legs will admit and harder coming down than pride allows. The Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive carries the rest of us by automobile to the same overlooks, where the lake spreads out in three shades of blue and the islands sit on the horizon exactly where the story left them.

Those who care for history will find more than a view. The old village at Glen Haven, with its weathered cannery and its dock, recalls the days when the steamers took on cordwood here, and the lighthouses up the shore have kept their long watch since long before any of us were born.

Take water. Take a hat. Take a child if you can borrow one, for the dunes were made for the question a child asks at the top, which is whether you can see clear to the other side. You nearly can.

Next issue, the Roving Correspondent turns east. Bring comfortable shoes.

Dear Lorna, My husband has taken up fishing four mornings a week, which would please me more if he ever came home with a fish. Where is he? Hopeful on Hubbard Street

Dear Hopeful, Where indeed. I will say only that the coffee at the Anchor is excellent at six in the morning, the company is entirely male, and the fish, by all accounts, are winning. A man bent on misbehavior would not pick a hobby that requires worms. Pack him a bigger lunch and let the lake keep him humble.

Dear Lorna, A certain neighbor borrowed my good casserole dish in March and has not returned it. I can see it on her windowsill. How do I ask for it back without starting a war? Dishless on Dune Road

Dear Dishless, You do not ask. You admire. At the next Aid meeting, in a carrying voice, you remark how generous you have always been with your things, and you watch the dish come home by Friday wrapped in a tea towel that is also, I happen to know, yours. I will name no names. I will only say that a certain lady whose initials rhyme with May Belle might look to her own cupboard before she lends out other people's.

Dear Lorna, Is it true the mayor is buying a new car? Curious by the Courthouse

Dear Curious, It is true the old one was seen at the body shop, and true that His Honor was seen at the bank, and I leave you to the arithmetic the rest of us finished days ago. A man who cannot keep a beach raked can somehow keep a Buick in the manner to which it has grown accustomed. You did not hear it from me. You never do.

The men's softball league closed its season Saturday with the Biscuit Hardware nine taking the title from Cornpone's Bakery, eleven to seven, on a field that had seen better grooming and before a crowd that had seen better umpiring. Both were forgiven by the second inning. The hardware men carried home the trophy, the same trophy they will hand back in May, the way they always do.

A word for the bakers, who played their hearts out and their bullpen down to Cornelius himself, who pitched the ninth in an apron still dusted with flour. Coach has watched worse mechanics on younger men. Effort, gentlemen, is never out of season.

Bowling opens Friday at the Anchor, where the standings reset and hope, as ever, runs well ahead of average. The hardware men are again the team to beat, which in bowling means little, and Coach will say no more.

The fall fishing derby weighs in Saturday at the public dock, weather permitting and the lake cooperating, which it has not lately been inclined to do. Last year's winner, who shall remain modest since he will not, is rumored to be wearing the same lucky hat and telling the same unlucky stories.

A reminder that deer season is upon us, and with it the yearly migration of able-bodied men into the woods and out of the choir, the supper rotation, and the reach of their wives. Coach takes no position. Coach notes only that the Methodist roof fund always does its best business in November.

Play hard. Play fair. Help the young fellows up when you put them down. We will see you at the lanes.

The season of suppers is upon us, and the steeples of Whiskey Pines are once again in friendly competition for the town's Thursdays and its appetite.

First Methodist opens the calendar with its harvest supper Friday, proceeds to the roof fund, which readers of the sporting pages will know is gaining on its goal one deer season at a time. The Rev. Halloran promises ham, scalloped potatoes, and a Sunday sermon on the parable of the talents, which he notes is also, in its way, about the roof.

St. Anne's holds its autumn rummage sale Saturday in the parish hall. Father Dominic asks that donations arrive clean, folded, and free of the mice that attended last year's table. The proceeds will go to the food pantry, which, the good father observes, unlike certain parishioners, does not keep what it cannot use.

The Reformed congregation on Vandermeer Street will hold its koffie en koek after the morning service, and all are welcome, though Mrs. TenHave wishes it understood that the recipe for the almond banket is not, and never will be, available. The choir resumes Wednesday, two sopranos short and looking.

The Lutherans, quietly, fed forty people last week and told no one, which is the most Lutheran sentence this paper has printed all year.

A reminder that the Thanksgiving union service rotates this year to First Methodist, where the four congregations will share one roof, one hour, and as much harmony as the sopranos can manage. All are cordially invited, and supper, mercifully, is potluck. Bring a dish. Bring two. Lorna Dune will be watching whose comes home empty.

Mrs. Martha Maxx hosted the Tuesday quilting circle at the Maxx House, where the group finished the wedding quilt for the Pruitt girl and began, over coffee, on the related question of whom the Pruitt girl ought to have chosen instead. A pleasant afternoon was enjoyed by all.

Becky Hartwell of Crumb Cottage was up before the rest of the town again, and the town, as usual, was grateful. Her cinnamon rolls were judged the finest of the season by a panel that convenes daily and pays in compliments.

Mrs. Opal Jensen returned Sunday from a week with her sister in Grand Rapids, full of news about the city and firm in her opinion that the city may keep it.

Dr. Beaumont, lately of Savannah and now of Main Street, has settled into his practice and his porch, where he takes the evening air and, in his unhurried way, the measure of the town.

Mr. Mert Hawthorne reports the lake is turning, which Mr. Hawthorne reports every autumn, and is every autumn correct.

Mrs. Opal Jensen, who has reached an age she declines to publish and dares us to estimate.

Mr. Asa Quillen, his sixty-fifth, observed with a peppermint and a long sit in a chair he had set out for everyone else.

Hazel Pike, who would rather we did not, and so we will say only that the day is Thursday and the cake is yellow.

Young Tommy Pruitt, his ninth, celebrated with a frog of his own choosing and a cake of his mother's.

Della Mae Rourke, who declines the number and accepts the pie, as is her right.

Walter J. Koski, eighty-three, of Lakeview Road, died Tuesday at Allegan General after a brief illness. A retired millwright at the old paper mill and a fixture of the Anchor's morning bench, Mr. Koski was known for weather predictions that proved correct often enough to be feared, and for a workshop that held one of everything and the location of none of it. He is survived by Helen, his wife of fifty-nine years; three children; and a great many grandchildren who knew him as the man with the licorice. Services Friday at First Methodist. The family asks that memorials go to the roof fund.

Mrs. Geneva Vander Wal, seventy-eight, passed Sunday at her home, surrounded by her family and the quilts she had made for each of them. For thirty years the organist at the Reformed church, Mrs. Vander Wal played every wedding and funeral the town required, and a few rehearsals it did not, purely for the love of the instrument. The community extends its sympathy.

Mrs. Roxanne Maxx presented the Maxx House light to the people of Whiskey Pines on the evening of Saturday, the eighth of October, dedicating the tower lamp to the safety of every vessel on the lake and lighting it herself before a crowd that filled the bluff and spilled down the lawn to the water.

The lamp had stood dark since midsummer for repair. Restored now, with a new lens carried up the spiral stair by four men who will not soon volunteer for such duty again, it was lighted at dusk to a silence the Journal can describe only as the whole town holding its breath, and then declining to hold it any longer.

"The lake has carried a great deal past this point over the years," Mrs. Maxx told the gathering, in remarks that were brief, as her remarks are. "It seems only neighborly to help it see where it is going." She did not elaborate, and the Journal, mindful of its manners, did not inquire.

The Ladies' Aid served coffee and a quantity of cake that argued real planning. The town band played twice through its repertoire, which is to say it played four songs. The Rev. Ainsley offered a blessing upon the light and upon all who steer by it, and was heard to add, more quietly, a word for those who in years past steered by it with their curtains drawn.

Among those present were members of the Steeplepuss family, whose long acquaintance with Mrs. Maxx the Journal will characterize only as eventful, and who were, on this evening, all courtesy and good wishes. Mr. Steeplepuss admired the new lens at length. Mrs. Maxx thanked him for coming, twice, in a tone that closed the subject.

The gift comes as the traffic on the lake changes its character. Where the harbor once received cargo of a private sort, it fills now with fishing parties and the excursion launches that bring summer visitors up from the south, and the town, which has learned to make its living from the season, was glad of a beacon it may mention in the brochures.

Sheriff Cobb, applied to for a word, allowed that a lighted coast was a lawful coast, and left it there.

The lamp will be kept burning nightly through the season and the winter to follow, Mrs. Maxx said, for as long as the Pines have a lake to watch over. A pleasant evening was enjoyed by all, and the light, by every account, may be seen as far as the Otsego road.

On the paper's hundredth year. To the Editor: I have taken this paper since I was old enough to be trusted with the funny pages, and my mother before me, and I wished to say only that a town is fortunate to have a paper that has lasted a hundred years and never once gotten above itself. Long may it run, and may the ink stay cheap. Sincerely, a reader on Lakeview Road.

On the geese. To the Editor: I write to report that the geese have once again claimed the green by the bandstand as their own, and conduct themselves there with a confidence the rest of us can only admire. I do not ask that anything be done, for I have met the geese. I ask only that visitors be warned, and that the band consider a livelier number to move them along. Yours, stepping carefully on Second Street.

A word of thanks. To the Editor: I wish to thank the neighbors who quietly filled my woodshed and my refrigerator during my recent illness, and who asked for nothing in return but to be allowed to help. I am much better now, and comfortably outnumbered by casseroles. Bless you all. Gratefully, a recovering man on Birch Street.

The Journal thanks its readers, and reminds them that a letter kindly written is twice as likely to be printed and three times as likely to be believed.