Picnic Time!

August 28, 2006 (5:18am)
55º F, Cloudy, NNE wind 3 mph.

Good morning,

Grace Lutheran Church’s annual picnic is now history. It was a good one with a lot of good food. I, like a lot of folks, ate too much. The sweet corn was probably the best we have had in many years. Perfect! There were a lot of desserts this year, more than normal I think. Of course I had to check the quality of several of them. Lots of salads also and I did check many of them too. Margriet prepared a salad and finally we had the correct portion to bring - came home with an empty bowl. She also baked bread on Saturday, so we brought one along and it too disappeared along with an Irish soda bread we cut and put out.

The service was also held outside on a beautiful, sunny and warm day. Conditions could not have been more perfect. A pretty good crowd showed up too. Even a dog was in attendance! One of the members was heading out from church to another party or some such, and didn’t want him to be in the hot car. He behaved himself pretty well too. A couple of years ago I was after Pastor to get off of the pulpit and get among the congregation to deliver his sermon, also give up reading it. Yesterday he finally did. His wife was worried that he would talk too long, but as it turned out, the service was shorter than recent services. I don’t think the pulpit is necessary any longer with the ability now to be heard electronically. Don’t need to be higher than the congregation and shout down to them. Hope it continues. Now if I can convince him to let the congregation pray on their own during the prayers of the people. Now it is prayers to the people.

The reason for the company town of Fayette, Michigan was the two furnaces, in the first picture, producing pig iron. The first furnace on the left and the later furnace, 1870, were the biggest producers of pig iron in the U.S. at the time. Walking around and in them gives one the scale of the work just to build them, let alone the operation of producing pig iron. The original furnace was destroyed in a fire, and both of these also experienced fires, but were repaired and returned to production again. The rebuilding of them also allowed them to be improved and reduce the possibility of further fires. Still it appears to be a very dangerous occupation.

The two almost attached buildings (actually three sided buildings a couple of feet away from the furnaces themselves) on either side of the furnaces, are the pouring rooms where the molten iron was tapped and poured into pigs of about 100# each. It must have been fun working in them during the summer, even if it was in Upper Michigan on the lake shore! The cover to the upper right of the furnaces, shelters the two steam boilers necessary to operate the various machinery for the furnace. It also was the site of the well for the furnaces and the community. Folks had the luxury of water pumped to various points around the town, pumping their needed water into bucket to carry home. There were several hand pumps around the community for the folks to use. One of the chores for the children living there - getting water.

Two other elements, besides iron ore brought in by rail, are charcoal and limestone. This spot was chosen because of the huge hardwood forests in the area and the limestone cliffs the operation was built at the base of. The second picture shows one of the "beehive" charcoal ovens. When the production was at it’s height, there were 88 of these burning to the to the left of the furnaces in the first picture. This is the only one that was reconstructed and there is a part of one of the originals on display. They are rather large, some up to nearly 40' in diameter and 30' high. This one was only about half of that size. Walking into it, one again got a sense of how huge things were. It was really eery walking inside too, thanx to the hard walls causing weird acoustics and the limited light entering through the opening and vents. When the operation closed, the hardwood forests were completely cut for miles around and they were starting to import hardwood from other areas and building beehives in other areas.

The third picture shows the limestone kiln, used to breakdown the raw limestone from the cliffs alongside of it. The cliffs are now hidden by birch trees which have since grown up where the cliff face was moved back. There are still markings and broken drills in the rock face from the work done before the operation closed down. The cliff face is more than 100' high and I can’t imagine working on it to break out the stone into smaller pieces to use in the kiln and ultimately in the furnaces. The kiln is fairly small, compared to the iron furnaces, but the wooden timbers used are better than a foot in cross-section, probably 35' long.

My impression is that it really was hard work there and fairly hard times for most of the folks. But I also bet they knew how to have a good time too! Michigan seems to be very committed to keeping their history alive and doing a pretty good job of it too.

Saturday I introduced Margriet to tamales. The last supply run we made, on the return from our adventure up nort’, Aldi’s had some in their frozen food department. I have talked about them several times and have not had any for many years. These were made the right way, wrapped in corn husks as the Mexicans do, and relatively inexpensive, so talked her into trying them. I prepared dinner with them, along with guacamole and some tortilla chips. Apparently she liked them as she ate two! It was some interesting to buy them from Aldi’s as it is a German company. Seemed out of place to me for some reason. Margriet had a hard time trying to decide if we should have beef or chicken tamales! Of course she chose the chicken. They really were pretty good - for store bought. Might have them again.

Time to get the day a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><