FTV: Cha Cha Changes . . .

 

     When recently asked to present ‘something about how things have changed around here’ for the Ontonagon County Historical Society,  I said, “Let me think about it before I say ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”  There are already many volumes available about the history of the area (see:  Knox Jamison, Earl Doyle, and Bruce Johanson for starters), so I didn’t feel qualified to get too deep into the older stuff.  Having arrived in these parts as a newly minted JH Geography/Earth Science teacher in 1975, I am closing in on a half century in our fair town.  By the unofficial standards set by descendants of Ontonagon’s oldest founders, this still makes me a ‘newcomer’.  The idea of ‘newcomers’ and ‘old timers’ rankles some, but it always fascinates me to walk through the local cemeteries.  Seeing the names of pioneer families that echo the names of some of the students I taught gives them, in my mind, a unique legacy not all of us share.  Some may think that wandering through cemeteries is morbid, but my wife and I have found it is one of the best ways to revisit the past and honor those who came before us.

     While I do not have a Facebook account, I often check out the FB pages used to share  information about the local communities.  The comments posted about many of the topics indicate there are a lot of newer people who have arrived in the past few decades so my thinking was, “Okay, how about if I concentrate on the things that have changed in my time living here?”  I won’t pretend this is a comprehensive modern history of Ontonagon.  It takes a while to learn about a place when one first arrives so these are just my recollections of the past forty plus years. Some of these events may not square one hundred percent with how others remember them.  As I was preparing this presentation, Bruce Johanson did his own version of ‘when we first arrived in Ontonagon’ for the April 5, 2023 Ontonagon Herald.  Johanson pretty well covers the decade before yours truly arrived so you can add his perspective to your reference list.

     First, a little background.  My first encounter with (as Johanson titled his first book) This Land the Ontonagon took place in the summer of either 1964 or 1965.   My father was still working as a detective for the Michigan State Police.  Perhaps as a way to get me out of mom’s hair for a couple of days, he took me along on a road trip to the western Upper Peninsula.  My older brother Ron was already working at the Red Owl grocery store in Marquette otherwise he would have been on the same trip.  I would be fibbing to say I remembered everything we did, but a couple of things stand out in my mind.  The first was driving across the old swing bridge on the Ontonagon River.  Most U.P. rivers are pale imitations of the mighty Ontonagon River so one’s first encounter with its muddy majesty is worth remembering.  Back then the A&W Root Beer stand was directly across the old highway from the Ontonagon Paper Mill.  I distinctly remember eating lunch there as the poor carhops dodged rain drops and muddy puddles in the parking lot.  The mill across the road was making the typical clatter a large paper mill would make but I knew nothing about the plant or the corrugating medium they were producing.

     Flash forward to the spring of 1975.  Between my early May graduation from NMU and a planned ‘graduation trip’ to see my buddy Mitch in Oregon, two other friends and I decided to toss a tent and some sleeping bags in my truck and visit the Porkies.  The minute we turned the corner off River Street to cross the old bridge, my previous trip with dad popped into my head.  Sure enough, there was the good old A&W right where it had been ten years earlier.  The mill was also still there belching and snorting in its usual fashion under the Hoerner-Waldorf banner.  River Street looked very much like every other small U.P. town one could pass through, but the river and paper mill were the two things that commanded your attention on a drive through.

     Upon my return to Marquette after my post graduation trip to Oregon, I discovered a letter  in the NMU Placement Office announcing a teaching job in Ontonagon. It had arrived the day I found it so it was just luck my letter of application was in the mail that very day.  The reply from the Ontonagon Schools was filled out and in the mailbox before the original job posting had been sent out to those who were on the placement office mailing list.  By the end of June, I was on my way to Ontonagon for an interview and during the first week of July, I made a return trip to sign a contract.  After months of fruitless job searching, my future employment was secured in a quick three week span.  On both of these job related return trips, I took a few minutes to drive down River Street and across the old swing bridge and yes, the old paper mill and the A&W were right where they had been on my previous trips.  I needed to begin apartment hunting, so  I started my Ontonagon Herald subscription so I could begin looking through the want ads..

     As long as we have mentioned the A&W, the other restaurant that came into play on my next visit was Syl’s Cafe.  On the return leg of a trip dropping off furniture in Duluth for a friend’s first semester in medical school, we detoured through Ontonagon to look for my housing.  Syl’s itself was relatively new having been founded by Syl and Sulo Laitila in 1972.  The front door was located dead center of where today’s till and bakery case sit.  A long, two-sided counter with stools bisected the restaurant, with booths lining both walls.  A jukebox took up the front left corner of the room and was blaring a heavy rotation of Fox on the Run by Sweet and Waterloo by Abba.  The waitress asked if we were tourists and we shared that I was looking for an apartment. During our lunch, she brought Syl over to talk to us.  

     Syl was gracious enough to take us over to the new apartment she had recently completed attached to the former Lange Funeral home.  As she showed us around, we entered by a side door and Syl said, “If you rent the place, don’t make a wrong turn and go down those stairs – you will end up in the embalming room.”  As this was the first place I had seen, I wasn’t ready to commit quite yet so Syl offered a couple of phone numbers for us to check out.  I ended up renting a small two bedroom apartment from the Mazurek family on Pennsylvania Avenue right next door to what I would later learn was the original Siloa Lutheran Church building.  We will get to more on the church front later, but I never forgot how helpful and friendly Syl was.  The cafe today, remodeled extensively and still in the family, is now run by her granddaughter Kathy and is one of four downtown businesses the family is currently involved in.

     There were other restaurants operating in Ontonagon in the 1970s and 1980s including The Lost Bowl, Wagars, The Copper Inn, and The Candlelight Inn.  All of them are long gone.  While I can attest to visiting all of these establishments, the Candlelight probably carries the most memories for me.  Located just outside of town on the property formerly occupied by the Cackle Shack (before my time so an old(er) timer will have to explain that one), it was run by Arnie and Evelyn Wirtanen.  It was there I attended my first school ‘inservice’ lunch, played numerous Christmas (and other) parties with the Easy Money band, and met my wife Christine.  Evy and Arnie were characters and always treated us like family.  It surprised no one when we had our wedding reception there.  Sadly, the old CI changed hands numerous times since the Wirtinen’s days and is now a crumbling, empty shadow of what it once was.  Rumour has it the bar area has now caved into the basement and further inspection shows the front roof line is now caving in..

     There have been several other business changes in the downtown area.  The block that burned on Labor Day weekend in 2008 contained the original Connie’s Ice Cream Shop, now located in the old Mobil Gas Station across from the Holiday Station store.  That same block of buildings also housed a health food store and the previously mentioned Lost Bowl Cafe and Roehm’s Pasty Shop.   The Camp One clothing outfitters across River Street also succumbed to damage from the second great Ontonagon burnout of ‘08.  The building where the Michigan Works office now stands was home to a unique bakery and restaurant called The Pastry Palace II (PP I  was in White Pine) as well the Sears Catalog store.  One of the newer eateries downtown is currently Ontonagon’s one source for authentic Pakistani food.  Up North Cafe began life as a pizza/ice cream shop that soon doubled in size to become a full service restaurant.  Each new owner has put their own stamp on the menu, but when Faraz and Melissa began offering occasional buffets sampling dishes from Faraz’s homeland, it brought another new flavor (pun intended) to Ontonagon’s food offerings.  It also gives Audie Bitschenauer a chance to practice his Urdu.

     We started with the A&W so we should end the restaurant section with its transformation to Ontonagon’s version of the Golden Arches (minus the arches).  The Miles family built a new dining facility just west of the papermill.  Dubbed ‘McMiles’, it featured indoor dining and also a drive up order by phone / pick up window system.  When the restaurant later closed, it was operated for a time as the Ontonagon Christian Center.  When that, too, closed its doors, the building went back on the market. 

     Other commercial establishments in the business district included the Ben Franklin Dime Store, The JCPenney catalog store, Fraki’s Supermarket, The Hecox / Chapman’s Hardware Store, Gambles Hardware store,  Kempen’s Jewelry Store, Inne Town Pharmacy,  two Lumber Companies owned by the Menigoz and Hawley families, Co-Op Store, and an IGA/Red Owl Grocery Store.  The latter eventually became the home of the Ontonagon Historical Society Museum.  I was a fairly new member of the Historical Society board when the entire museum collection was moved from the original location in the old Co-op store.  Emptying the myriad of shelves and glass display cases, loading them onto multiple trucks, and then moving them into the new museum was a task of epic proportions.  The old Co-op was later converted into the Heritage Antiques shop, fittingly so as the building still retains an air of ‘history’ even though it is now a commercial business.

     There were still enough bars to shake a stick at when I arrived in town.  Watering holes like Macs, The Dry Dock, Swedes, Denny’s Den, Johnny’s Bar, Tubbies, The Green Onion, and The Shamrock are now gone, survived only by Stubb’s Museum Bar and Roxey’s in the heart of downtown.  Many of the buildings that housed some of the above-mentioned establishments are no longer with us, others are in poor shape, and some have been repurposed into new ventures. Though Tubbies was located a bit west of town (as was The Green Onion), it is another place that I remember fondly.  The one and only time I visited the establishment, the Easy Money band was playing.  I had played with some of the guys at the first Hootenanny Athletic Fundraiser at the school in the spring of 1976 so I was invited to sit in for a couple of numbers.  Their regular drummer, Donnie ‘the Muleskinner’ Hawkins was working shift work so the band asked if I would be interested in playing gigs with them when Donnie couldn’t.  It was an offer I couldn’t refuse and even after I became the regular drummer, it was always fun to have Donnie sit in to sing (and sometimes drum) his signature tunes.  

     The Gambles Store was first converted into the rehab facility associated with the local hospital.  It has since been remodeled into a new business, Anytime Fitness.  The original Shamrock Bar burned some years ago and was rebuilt.  That structure has now taken on a new life as The Squeeze on Main.  Hecox/Chapman Hardware store purchased the adjacent Ben Franklin space and expanded their operation.  This building eventually was sold and converted into a consignment venture that is seldom open.  One wonders how they can make money if they are rarely seen open for business.  One building that survived the downtown fire of 2008, Hegg’s Plummery, has changed hands and since been closed and put up for sale.  Extensive renovations of the former Roger’s Insurance building across Houghton Street from the former First National Band has transformed it into the Olde Swing Bridge Roasters coffee and gift shop.

     The Holiday Station Store at the Five Corners (an intersection later remodeled to take some confusion out of the poor drivers who constantly had to decide who had the right of way) remains (and as this article goes to print, it will apparently become a Circle K franchise store).  The former Citco Gas station on the other end of River Street has more recently been taken over by the Krist Oil company.  The other service stations have slowly died off and/or evolved into other ventures.  The old Sinclair station near the Holiday became an A&W/Subway for a while.  When those closed, it became a gift shop/law office/piano studio.  The Mobil gas station  directly across from the Holiday was, as previously mentioned, refurbished into the ‘new’ Connie’s Place (serving ice cream, sandwiches, and a variety of coffee based drinks).  The Standard gas station located in the middle of River Street now houses Peninsula Graphics.   Blake’s Shell station got out of the gas and fuel oil part of the business, but remains open as a repair shop.  

     Incidentally, the Cha Cha Changes title used for this article is an homage to the late David Bowie’s song.  It was meant to be a one part FTV but I heard so many anecdotes and stories from people after the April 2022 Historical Society dinner, I had to expand this into a two parter.  Many thanks to my former colleague Jean Eckloff for asking me to present this program.  In Part 2, we will continue the story of the changes that have occurred in Ontonagon since 1975.

Top Piece Video:  Okay, I borrowed Bowie’s song title for this FTV title… guess I better use the video as well!