Lake Superior
My life began in Superior, Wisconsin. Superior is a small town located at the tip of Lake Superior, which is the largest of the Great Lakes. I have always felt close ties to Superior and to Wisconsin, in general, because while I have not lived there since I was three years old, it was the place of my birth, and the place where my Uncle Bill Spencer and his family lived for many years, as well as many of my great grandparents’ family.
In the early years of the area, the Native American Indian Tribes called it home. The first Europeans to live there were the British and French, and the American settlers who lived in Wisconsin when it was a territory. One tribe, the Meskwaki Indians were particularly hostile toward the French, but many of the Indians got along well with the pioneers. The Great Lakes area increased dramatically after the decline of the British influence following the War of 1812. This was a land with a mix of pioneers and Indians. Of course, like most areas, the Indians were eventually placed on reservations.
Like every state in the United States, Wisconsin started as a US Territory, and when there were enough people to make statehood a necessity, each one became a state. Wisconsin initially became a terriroty on this day, April 20, 1836. Initially, it included all of the present-day states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and part of the Dakotas east of the 
Missouri River. Much of that territory was part of the Northwest Territory, which was ceded by Britain in 1783. The portion which is now the Dakotas was originally part of the Louisiana Purchase. Eventually, the states would separate their areas, leaving Wisconsin with the area it now occupies.
My people would arrive in the area much later, but many of them would stay in the area of Wisconsin and Minnesota for generations, and even to this day. For me, there will always be a place in my heart for Wisconsin, especially Superior, and the Great Lakes, especially Lake Superior. It is a beautiful area that my family has called home for generations, and I will always love it.
While in Superior, Wisconsin in late August, we drove by a beautiful home, called the Fairlawn Mansion. I have always been intrigued by mansions. It isn’t that I would like to live in one necessarily, but I very much enjoy going through them. We didn’t have time to go through this one, unfortunately, so I have been doing some research on it. My research has helped to tie a couple of things together for me about my hometown. I was born in Superior, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I know a lot about the history there…especially since we moved when I was three years old. I never knew who the mayors were for instance, or why some of the places were named what they are.
I knew about Pattison Park, but never knew how it got it’s name. It was named after Superior’s three time mayor, Martin Pattison. He was a lumber and mining baron, and he built the Fairlawn Mansion as the family home for himself, his wife and their six children. Construction began in 1889 and was completed in 1891. It is known as one of America’s castles, and it definitely looks the part. It is a 42 room mansion with a four story turret complete with a widow’s watch overlooking the bay at the tip of Lake Superior. The cost of building the mansion was $150,000 at that time, which is equivalent to well over $3,000,000 today. The grounds are adorned with several gardens filled with flowers in the summertime.
The family lived in the home until Martin’s passing in 1918, and the home sat vacant until 1920. From 1920 to 1962, this mansion served as a children’s home and house for the less fortunate. To me that seems a bit odd. Not that the house would be used in this manner, but that the people who benefitted from it’s use in those days would be called less fortunate…since they did have an amazing home to live in. Of course, if they were orphaned, they would be less fortunate. Nevertheless, they had an amazing house to live in. I can imagine that if those walls could talk, they would have many stories of the laughter of children to tell, because the mansion housed over 2000 children during it’s 42 years as a children’s home.
There are always a few ghost stories associated with mansions, it seems, and this mansion is no exception. It is said that a former maid, who was later killed by her husband and a little girl who supposedly drowned in the pool both haunt the mansion to this day, but I don’t believe in ghosts, so I say that only in passing, since it is a story connected to this beautiful house. Neither of these accounts can be substantiated, and there is no record of anyone dying there. I’m not sure why it is always the mansions that seem to carry the haunted status, because quite likely every older home and even many of the newer ones have had a resident die in them, and I’m sure quite a few of the deaths involved murder, but you just never hear of ghosts 
haunting those places. Maybe the story just doesn’t fit in with a dinky little house.
Rather than the supposed ghosts a mansion might have, I prefer to think of the happy times the mansion got to see over the years. These days the house is a museum, and hosts many weddings. I can imagine that the ballroom would be fabulous, and such a romantic place to have a wedding party. If the couple planned it right, theirs could be a replica of a traditional high society wedding of days gone by. I would imaging that if these walls could talk, we could hear stories of beautiful gowns, elegant people, and beautiful music. This mansion has such a unique history, that I would really love to sit and hear all it one day, because the stories would have to be simply amazing.
I always liked the fact that I was born in Superior, Wisconsin. It was where my dad was born, and I suppose that could have been part of its charm, but I really think it just seemed exotic or romantic to me. I know that sounds funny, but there is so much history in the area, with a bit of mystery mixed in. The mystery comes from all the shipwrecks in Lake Superior, in my mind anyway. When I think of Lake Superior, my mind always wanders to the shipwrecks that have occurred there, and the fact that Lake Superior, while beautiful, has a dark and dangerous side for any ship caught out on her in a storm…especially a November gale, and especially an early November gale, such as in 1975. When the Edmond Fitzgerald was caught out there in an early gale on November 10th, she sank with all hands lost because it. I remember my Uncle Bill telling me about that storm, years later, and the fact that he was driving around the lake at the time of the sinking. He told me that it was a horrific storm, and he was not surprised to hear of the loss of a ship.
Of course, the shipwrecks are not the only things I find to be exotic and romantic about the Lake Superior area. 
The fact that ships come into the Duluth-Superior Harbor from all over the world and that things that are shipped out of that harbor go all over the world, makes it feel more connected to the world somehow. My cousin, Pam’s husband, Mike Wendling, who worked for the railroad for many years, before retiring, told us that the trains would bring in coal from Gillette, Wyoming and Montana. It is strange to think that the coal we see in railroad cars here is headed for an ore boat on Lake Superior…and then places all over the world.
When I look at some of the pictures of me as a baby, I almost feel a bit like I missed out on some parts of my own babyhood. My sister, Cheryl remembers living there, playing with our cousin, Pam and the neighbor kids…including the last name of her favorites, the Lawlers. I don’t remember them. I was too young. With movies and pictures, I have been able to get a picture in my mind of what my life there must have been like. Most of it was likely spent being a third wheel to my sister and cousin, but it doesn’t look like they minded me too much. I was probably too little to be very bratty then. There were also trips to the lake with the family, which I didn’t know about really until my cousin, Pam produced a picture in her baby album during our visit. It was such a great family moment, at the lake when the smelt were running. Smelt are a type of fish who, like the salmon swim against the current to lay their eggs. People went out and gathered lots of them. It was a big deal on the lake.
I probably get most of my memories of Superior, Wisconsin from our many visits back there when we were kids. Even then, I felt like it was a special thing to be born there. Maybe it was just about not being born in Casper, Wyoming. Don’t get me wrong, I love Casper, but when you are born somewhere other than the place you grew up, it just has a different feel. I’m sure most smaller city or small town kids think that their little corner of the world it the most dull and boring place ever. It tends to make any other place take on an exotic feel. Nevertheless, I will always feel like there is something exotic and romantic about being born on the tip of Lake Superior.
One simply can’t go to Lake Superior and not go to Canal Park. There is nothing quite like watching a ship go through the canal and under the lift bridge. There is such an atmosphere of celebration, with kids playing and the birds flying everywhere. Crowds wait patiently for the arrival or departure of the next ship. Anticipation fills the air. It’s like being a kid at the movies for the first time. You almost can’t believe you are really there.
As we waited for the next ship to go through the canal, I watched the people sitting around, trying to keep cool in the afternoon sun, while the little children tried in vain to catch the seagulls and pigeons that were flying around. The seagulls seemed to think it was a game of sorts, or maybe they were just hoping they would have some food for them. And lots of people did. It’s fun to feed the birds, even if the bread they were getting probably isn’t the best food for them. The seagulls would swoop over the people, and then almost hover in place, floating on the breeze, then they 
would glide down to fly over the water in the canal, before going back to see if anyone had food again. It was such a pleasant flight to watch.
Finally the moment came, and it was announced that a ship was coming in. The bridge started up and as many people as were able moved down to the side wall of the canal to get a closer look. The first ship to go under the bridge was a lake cruise ship. It was interesting, but it was not the spectacular sight I imagined. I just hoped that there would be a big oar boat coming through too. It looked as if I was about to be disappointed, then the announcer said that the Eeborg was about five minutes out. I didn’t see how he could possible make it into the canal within the allotted thirty minute window they had to keep the bridge up. Traffic was backed up from the island on the other side, waiting to come across. Nevertheless, the Eeborg moved much faster than I could have ever expected…especially for such a large ship.
Soon, there it was looming so tall in the canal. It wasn’t a luxury liner, and yet every person 
there felt the same sense of awe at this amazing ship moving gracefully through the canal, under the bridge, and into the harbor to receive it’s load, before turning around and departing the next day, or later that night. It didn’t even matter if they had seen it a thousand times before, this scene still held them in captivating awe. Some of the ships that come here go all over the world…and their journey starts right there at Lake Superior. The horn sounded, and the Eeborg passed beneath the bridge and eventually out of our line of sight. I felt like I had seen a bit of a far reaching commerce, and it was very exciting.
Most little kids don’t really like fish much, unless it is in the form of fish sticks, and I don’t think fish sticks existed when my sister, Cheryl and I were little girls. I don’t know why Cheryl wanted to have her picture taken with all these fish, or if my mom just set her there because she would be a good point of reference to show just how many fish there were here, but I do know that it would have been a good thing that the fish were dead already, because if they had been flipping around, Cheryl would have probably been freaking out for sure…I know I would have, but then I was a baby. The fish were Smelt, and there were lots of them.
Rainbow Smelt, which are silver-colored fish about 6 to 9 inches long, are not native to Lake Superior, but rather to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Smelt entered the Great Lakes accidentally in 1912 when they escaped from an inland lake in Michigan where they had been stocked as forage fish. After that, they quickly spread throughout Lake Michigan and were finally discovered in Lake Superior in 1946. By that time, Sea Lamprey, which had also invaded Lake Superior, had begun reducing the number of native lake Trout, so there were far less Trout to eat the Smelt and they began to rapidly increase in number. Every year in mid-April, the Smelt head for the streams to lay their eggs. They are light sensitive, so smelting must be done at night. The best place to go smelting is at the mouth of the streams where they enter the Lakes. The rapids make it more difficult for the fish to jump over them into the stream, and so they are in abundance at that place. Smelting was a big deal at the time we were living in Superior, Wisconsin, when Cheryl and I were little girls.
When April came around in 1957, Mom, Dad, Uncle Bill, and Aunt Doris took Cheryl, me, and our cousin, Pam, and went smelting. Of course, the women pretty much just watched the proceedings, while Dad and Uncle Bill gathered up the buckets of fish that would be our haul for the evening. It was a good run, and the amount of fish they took home was amazing. The fish were then cleaned and frozen for lots of good eating down the road. I’ve never been smelting, at least where I actually participated, but I can imagine that it was pretty exciting to see all those fish all at once. usually think of fishing as a lazy day sport, and normally it is, but during a smelting run, it sounds pretty exciting to me!!
When a young wife moves half way across the country from her childhood home, she can get to a point where she really misses her family, especially her parents. That was the case for my mom when she married my dad and they moved from Casper, Wyoming to Superior, Wisconsin. While mom was happy in her new life and ecstatically happy with her new husband, she was nevertheless, a daughter far away from her parents. Soon after their marriage, mom became pregnant with my sister, Cheryl. Being a young wife and soon-to-be mother, and being far away from your mom can be very hard, and even a little scary, because as a woman is about to give birth, having her mother nearby is not a bad thing.
Grandma and Grandpa made several trips to Wisconsin in the five years my family lived there, and we were always very happy to see them and very sorry to see them go. The loneliness that always followed their home going was really tough, especially on my mom. 
Of course, like most families, daily life soon fell into place, and she got too busy to dwell on that loneliness too much. With two little girls to take care of she was pretty busy. Still, I’m sure that her family and especially her parents were never far from her thoughts though, because that is only natural.
The trips that Grandma and Grandpa made to visit were wonderful though. Mom and Dad showed them all the sights in the area. Superior, and the whole Lake Superior area is quite beautiful, and I don’t know if my grandparents had been there before my mom and dad move back there, so it was quite likely a very special treat to take those great drives, and be able to just relax and enjoy the view. When you have someone to show you the sights, you don’t have to worry about getting lost, traffic, or anything like that. You can just look, and that was what Grandma and Grandpa got to do. Knowing them like I did, I know that those touring drives were treasured times for them. They always liked the outdoors, and to see that whole region, which is quite different from Wyoming 
was probably a thrill, for sure.
After five years, my family would move back to Casper, Wyoming, where most of us would spend the rest of, or at least the majority of the rest of our lives. My mom was happy to be back here…near her siblings and her parents. She had missed them very much. Their house had always had a bustle of activity in it, and she missed that a lot. Still, now she also missed the family in Wisconsin and the beauty of the area. There is never really any way to have it all, I guess, so you just have to make due where you find yourself, and deal with the feelings of missing the things you left behind you.
In the Fall of 1957 or 1958, my family was living in Superior, Wisconsin, which is where my dad’s family lived. I was just a toddler at the time, and our family had been visiting Casper, Wyoming, where Mom’s family lived. My grandma and my Aunt Sandy were to accompany us back to Wisconsin for a visit, and then they would take the bus home again. The amount of room in the car limited the number of people who could come to two, and my Aunt Sandy felt very blessed to be chosen, as a trip to Canada was in the plans. It was to be the only time Aunt Sandy traveled outside the United States…so far, anyway.
Aunt Sandy tells me that one of the most wonderful memories she has of the trip is the fall colors in the trees. Wyoming gets pretty much one color change in the fall…green to yellow. The reds you see in the Midwest and East are pretty foreign in Wyoming. The drive was very exciting for a young girl of 12 or 13 years.
The Canadian part of the trip would also be filled with lovely fall colors, and would take them to Port Arthur to stay the night. They drove along the north shore of Lake Superior, which is a beautiful drive, as I can attest. It was always a favorite of my parents, and of course, most people who live around Lake Superior. The area is filled with trees, and magnificent views of the lake, so it is always a very special treat.
At some point in touring of the area, we stopped to look around, and Aunt Sandy leaned up against a fence post. Not knowing the problems that can occur when you put a wooden post in the ground for a long period of time in a climate that is humid, and ground water is plentiful, poor Aunt Sandy had no idea that leaning against such a post was a bad idea. The post immediately broke, of course, and Aunt Sandy found herself laying in the sand. Big sisters being with they are with their kid sisters, my mother began laughing hysterically about her little sister “throwing herself in the sand”. Thankfully Aunt Sandy wasn’t bothered by her sister’s teasing, or maybe it was just that she was used to teasing, being the youngest of 9 children. Nevertheless, Mom laughed, and Aunt Sandy picked herself up, 
and blew off the laughter good naturedly. I guess the trip was too much fun to worry about such trivial things.
All too soon, the trip came to an end. But there was still one adventure to come. Grandma and Aunt Sandy were going to be going home on the bus. Now, as we all know, bus trips are very long, with stops in just about every Podunk town on the map, but to a young girl of 12 or 13 years, it was still a very exciting trip, and one that she has never forgotten in all these years. I could tell, as I was talking to her about her memories of the trip, that they are still very much alive and well in her memory.
For as long as I can remember, my Uncle Bill has been interested in guns. I’m certain that interest dates back to his childhood days. Being the oldest brother, and with his dad working on the railroad and away a lot, Uncle Bill helped provide for the family by hunting and fishing. Of course, many men, and women have an interest in guns, but few turn it into a career.
For many years, Uncle Bill traveled to gun show after gun show, sharing his interest with many people. I remember him telling me about one particular trip that found him driving around Lake Superior on November 10, 1975. For those who don’t recall, that fateful day was the day the SS Edmund Fitzgerald was sunk in Lake Superior during an early winter storm that produced near hurricane force winds. No one knows for sure exactly how the actual sinking occurred, but my uncle told me that it was a storm to remember, and one he very much wished he had not been out in. I suppose I can understand how he felt. A storm that was bad enough to sink a 729′ ship, must have been horrible to drive in.
Since my uncle had lived most of his life around Lake Superior, he knew what an early winter storm could mean. Lake Superior had taken down many a ship and she was ruthless when she got a ship in her clutches. He said he wondered about the ships that might be on the lake in such a storm, and he was not surprised to hear of the loss of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, when the storm was over. Oddly, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald was the only ship lost during one of the worst storms to ever hit Lake Superior, but that sinking was a permanent reminder of the perils of a life at sea.
Being a collector, Uncle Bill collected all the newspaper articles that came out about the tragedy. A year later Gordon Lightfoot came out with a song called “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and when I mentioned the song to Uncle Bill, he told me of his harrowing drive around the lake on that fateful day. Then he sent me all of the articles and such that he had saved. When I was done looking it all over, I told him I was ready to send it back, but he said to keep it. That’s how he was and still is. He wants to get history into the hands of those who are interested. Maybe we are alike, he and I, because I enjoy getting little bits of history into the hands of those who are interested too.
My dad always enjoyed fishing, like many people do. I never could see the big draw, but everyone is different. Dad always seemed to think it was relaxing, and I suppose it would be. I think it is in some people’s blood. Dad always loved everything about the outdoors. Camping, being in the woods, and of course any kind of travel, were the kind of things he wanted to do. He wanted to give his family the gift of seeing this great country and the world if we wanted it. And he didn’t want it to be seen from 30,000 feet in the air. He always felt like this world was best seen in a car.
I remember camping near a creek or a river. It always seemed the ideal place. It provided a place to fish and clean up the kids, not to mention cooling off if it wasn’t too deep. And once in a while, we went to a lake. I remember the only time I really enjoyed fishing. We were at some kind of a company gathering, I believe. It was at Ocean Lake, and we were fishing from a boat for sun fish. Oh my gosh…they couldn’t keep our hooks bated. I was competing with another girl to see who would catch the most fish. We were out there for…maybe an hour, and I came back with 14 and she had 12. That was amazing. And I guess that is my problem with normal fishing…too slow paced. Mostly you fight for 1 or 2 fish…not 14. I guess I want more action. Maybe that is why I prefer hiking. I think Dad was blessed to have some sons-in-law who liked to fish, because for most of his life…at least when his girls were young…he didn’t have too many fishing buddies, so when the sons-in-law came around, it was his turn to have that guy stuff.
My dad was born in Superior, Wisconsin, right at the tip of Lake Superior, and lived in that area all of his young life. Like most boys who grew up in the Great Lakes Region, I suppose, fishing was a way of life, and my dad and his brother, Bill, were no exception. They were adventurous boys, and I have seen several pictures of them through those young years with their various catches. From a catch of a dozen or more fish, to this BIG beauty when they were 2 or 3 and 4 or 5 years old, they were just very successful fiushermen. So I guess, fishing was just in their blood. They had many duties around the old place, so I guess I can see how for two boys, the best way to relax was just fishin’.
