Ward E Maginity aka Trader Horn, One Eyed Jack

Dad died with his truck and trailer loaded and in line at the Copemish Flea Market Auction line, Sunday morning, in his sleep. He was only sixty-six years old.

We would have lost him thirteen years sooner had he not had the open heart surgery over in Milwaulke, Wisconsin. It was a miracle. From a man who couldn't even get up out of his chair without a series of heart attacks to a man who could ride his bike around the triangle (Hoadley, Wallaker, M 115) just a few short weeks after surgery.

On the left:Virgil, Marguerite, Ralph, Ward, Jean. On the right, Ward, his mother Effie, and Jean.

When Dad was little, his parents had troubles. I have not heard much nice things about my grandfather, Willard Maginity. But one of the worse things I had heard about him, in my childhood, was how he didn't help save Dad’s eye by paying for treatment.

Dad’s glass eye was not much of a handicap to him, though. You couldn’t even tell which one it was unless you really paid attention. (It was the right eye. I had to look it up. I truly could not remember.)

               Dad was in the CCC’s up in Kalkaska, Michigan, and he always held that time of his life in high esteem. The CCC’s was established to help returning World War 1 soldiers and young listless men to find work. Hard work, work that you can see the results with, does wonders for a person’s spirit. The style of life was similar to the military. In fact, old military uniforms were used for the workers. They fought fires, planted tress, and raised a ruckus in the local towns. Dad was golden gloves boxer at his camp.

The merchant marine booklet. The photograph is from CCC camp

               I found the booklet for when Dad entered the Merchant Marines. There are no stamps or any indication that he completed any voyages. A reason for that could have been the start of World War II.

 How did Dad get into the army? Well, it was like this: They were processing the men as quickly as they could. This combined with a little slight of hand allowed him to get in. When Dad got to the eye exam, they told him cover your eye and read this chart. So, he covered his right eye with his right hand. They then told him to cover his other eye and read the chart. He covered his right eye with his left hand. And he got in.

He was found out later on. I like the story about the bar fight with a sargent where Dad took a punch to eye, the right one of course, and the glass eye got broken. This was a myth. Apparently, a wrong  turn to the right did him in when he ran into a post and broke his eye. He must have been found out just shortly before he was to ship out to Germany-I found a post card to his mother that talked about going over. (I don't know where it is now or else it would be included here.)

On his draft card, I discovered that he had listed having an artificial right eye and a scar on his wrist. How did they miss that? If the information would have been on computers they may have caught it before he got in. As it was, they got a pretty good cook and a hard working nurse out of the bargin.

             
When Dad got discharged from the army, he received training and worked for Harry Dreznek Ford Dealership in Beulah.

This was the beginning of Dad becoming a salesman. He next worked at Walter L Heath's in Benzonia and for the Beulah Boat Shot under two owners. After his heart got so bad, he was unable to work and made his money buying and selling. He was learning how to be an auctioneer.

Dad met and married my Mom, Ruth Johnson in 1950. She probably hated this photo. They had good and bad years and four kids.

Dad also drove race cars. 

Sure do miss him.

Plow Day

Driving Drafts is an organization that has its eye and heart set on keeping working horses in the view of everyone. This past Sunday, there was an event-for free!-on the outskirts of Benzonia at the Zenker farm.

There is nothing like working with these huge animals. They are beautiful, often gentle giants. Single horses or teams of two, three, and even six horses pull plows and disc drags over the field. Rides on a small cart or a big ole wagon were available to anyone who wanted to hop aboard. 

  

This group has a driving school available each year. How would you like to hold the reigns to horses like these? 

This event was right on the corner of US 31 and County Line Road at the edge of Benzie County. With the field right beside the highway, People on the road were stopping for front row seats to this event. This was the only event I have seen where people only had their cell phones out to take photos, not to text or talk!

This fellow didn't have his mules at the event, but it is clear he is fond of them!

A couple of  extra surprises were there for me. One was seeing an old friend, the other was the owner of the farm. We are cousins!

There was food available, and pony rides. It made for a great family outing all around. There was also information on the breeds of drafts horses: Present at this event were Clydesdales, Percherons, Shires, Belgiums, Spotted Drafts, Halflingers, and a pair with this color that I can't recall the breed name. Beauties, all of them!

This event was located in Grawn for many years, but sadly, the owner of the farm they used to plow at recently passed away. The horse folk will be holding a beautiful and suitable tribute to their fallen comrade, with a horse-drawn funeral. 

 This group has event dates posted on their website, which is linked in the first words of the first paragraph. Watch for them at the Northwest Michigan Fair.

The Story of Beulah

The Story of Beulah

It is amazing how many amazing things have happened...accidently. I don't agree that Beulah is a mundane name: It is a name for a place of beauty.

There is much more to the story than this, and it is well worth looking into. Crystal Lake was Cap lake, Beulah was Crystal City. A place like Terps's would be a cool addition to our present tourism. Or at least, a lake cruiser with glass bottom.

Learning our history is fun!

Bob Martin

The Martin family has been long-time friends with the Maginity family. Bob Martin and my dad, Ward Maginity, made VW dune buggies and ran them all over the Sleeping Bear dunes when it was just a state park.  Those were some fun days!

The photo with the dog on the board is Bob working on a truck with his dog Buddy acting as the jack.
The dog would sit on the board until Bob told him to move.

Bob’s dad was called William but his name was Raleigh. He was a tiny fellow. Bob was skinny but made of steel. I poured coffee for him and the rest of the coffee guys at the Brookside for many years. Man of few words, Bob Martin was.

Bob was born in 1924 to Raleigh and his first wife, Ethyl
Hency Martin. He lived on US 31 with his parents for the first few years of his life until they divorced. Until the age of five, he lived with his mother behind the sheriff’s department in Beulah and then moved back to South Benzonia until he was fifteen.

At the age of fifteen, Bob and a friend when hoboing around
the United States on freight trains. I wish he had kept a journal of those days! Jumping trains to where ever they ended up, scratching up work where ever they landed. What an adventure! But he was arrested for stealing bread in Illinois, so he came back up north, back home.

My family sometimes talks of having wheels in our butts.
There is restlessness, a need to be on the road, on the go. Bob had this need.

When he got home he got a truck driving job with Parker Motor Frieght, but six months later he and his father Raliegh went down to Florida. They stayed down there for six months.

The bridge in this photo may or may not be the bridge in the story.

Bob enlisted in the US Army and was in the Army Corps of
Engineers from 1942 through 1946. He was in Germany and saw action. One of the favorite stories Tom has told me about Bob is this:

Bob’s corps was building a bridge. Bob had earned the name
of “Slow Bob” from going about his work in a steady way. As they were working on this bridge, though, a German fighter plane came over them and strafed the bridge. Bob was the first to make it to the fox hole. When his CO said to him, “Bob, I have never seen you move so fast before!” Bob answered “Well, I have never been shot at before!”

When Bob’s unit was scrounging for food in France during the
war, they came upon an abandoned farm that still had a cow on it. They were chasing the cow around trying to kill it so they could butcher it for food, and it ran into the farm house. They killed it and ended up butchering it out on the bed in the house.

Bob and another guy were on patrol and ended up behind enemy lines. They heard a German patrol coming, a two-man patrol. They hid under a truck until the Germans went past. They climbed out and killed the two men with their bayonets.

Bob came home from the war and married Beverly Oligney, the love of his life. The two of them had some adventures of their own, from raising their four children Deb, Pat, Robin, and Tom; to going rattlesnake hunting down  in Florida…with 22 caliber pistols!

DeLong Family: Just a little bit of their story

This is a family full of stories. Esther and I will certainly be talking more in the future.

Photo of cherry harvest, taken by traveling photographer

In 1880, Esther’s grandmother Della Mae and grandfather Benjamin moved into old lumber shack. This structure was only supposed to be temporary. Lumbermen built quick structures and left when the trees were all cut. Grandfather Benjamin built a house which was completed in 1935. Unfortunately, Grandmother never got to live in house. 

The lumber shack that the family lived in before the house was built.

Four children were born live in the old lumber shack. Three boys lived, Ward, Leo, and Joe; and one little girl who died. The water came from the Betsie River, which Esther's Grandmother had to carry up the hill. Benjamin DeLong was a preacher who sometimes left to go to Florida twice a year (on horseback!) for revivals and left his wife behind with the two oldest boys doing housekeeping in Lake Ann.  For a couple of cents a day, Grandma survived as a cleaning woman or washer women.

Joey was only 7 when his mother died. She didn’t live much past 40 years old.

When Ward DeLong was only 2 years old, there was an accident. Stumps were still on hill from lumbering. Ward was playing at the bottom of the hill, and someone was cutting a log at the top of the hill. The log rolled down the hill and crushed ward against a stump, crushed his head, smashed it, and because I t was still rolling it pulled his face down on one side. He was in a coma for over a month and had convulsions. His mother, Della Mae, did not sleep. She did her best to give Ward nourishment, water or broth so he wouldn't die of starvation. She called many doctors from all over the county. All the doctors told her ward wouldn't make it, his whole head was crushed and the bone structure was in pieces. She would try to manipulate the bones back into shape gently every day, which would send the child into convulsions. She somehow begged and got a doctor to come all the way down from Traverse City to see Ward. The doctor got there, looked at the child and instantly went into a fury. He had come all the way down for nothing.  He shook the child and kind of squished up Ward’s head and said “Look! You had better pray that this child dies because if he lives, he will be no better than a vegetable!!!” And he left in disgust. Grandmother spent the month praying

Ward is the only child of the family who graduated college (Benzonia Academy), and served in both WWI and WWII. He was a miracle!

Ward was playing at the bottom of this hill when the accident occured.

The property just off Forrester Road in Benzonia  was only 40 acres. The  family was poor. But the farm has stayed in the family since purchased. The house was built using dead-head lumber drawn up from the Betsie River by Esther’s father Leo DeLong. He told her that was the thing that made him happiest. He designed the contraption to pull up the logs himself, and pulled up quite a lot of old sunken logs up to use for lumber and firewood.

Leo DeLong and his contraption

The sled all loaded to go the the mill. The children are all from a nearby school house.
The house pictured behind the team is the Ehman farm.

Some of the dead head lumber Mr DeLong brought up, waiting at Rice's Saw Mill, now the Merrill's mill on Grace Road

It would be awesome to hear from anyone of Ward's family and be able to share more about his amazing life. Please feel free to contact me at LinMartin02@gmail.com. Thanks!

I really hate change...

I really hate change.

This all being said, I am changing course after putting all my effort to becoming a Medical Assistant.  

What was I thinking?

Well, I was thinking about finishing what I started many years ago. I went to college right after high school. I went to get away from home. This was successful in that I was 900 miles from home out in Allentown, Pennsylvania. This was unsuccessful because both years, someone from Benzie came with me. The first year it was Tom, now my husband but then one of the people I was trying to leave behind. The second year, Chris, another friend from my hometown, came out.

I went to college because I had some grand ideas of what I could be. Needless to say, I didn’t make it very far, was not very driven, had a whole bunch of baggage that I allowed to trip me up, and I dropped out after my second year.

I left college because I really had no idea of what I wanted to be when I grew up. At fifty-two, I still don’t have the beginning clue. Oh, wait, I do. I want to be a writer. I want to hear people’s stories. Will that pay the bills? Hmmmm.. possibly, but I have a long way to go.

When I went back to college, I entered the Medical Assistant program after researching it. It is a growing field. It is expected to continue to grow, and certifications are becoming more and more important in the medical field for everyone. It was not wasted time or effort. The facts are real. I am richer for the experience by far. I have a degree, an Associates of Applied Science degree. I passed the certification exam. I have achieved this goal and overcame many, many obstacles.

So, what happened? Why am I leaving my job? 

It mainly has to do with the drive to Traverse City and back. I have always wanted a chauffeur, but these days, I don’t think I would even want the luxury if I had to be out on days like last winter gave us or in the traffic where the Most Important People have to get where they are going, very important you know, and of course, they don’t have to follow the traffic laws.  I am old enough to choose not to risk life and limb for someone else’s rushing about and lack of attention.

The cost has been high. I have gone through multiple vehicles, multiple sets of new tires, and am always finding unexpected bills such as the ER bill from Tom’s bee sting. I have got to repay the student loans, and so far, I am having a pretty rough time keeping every day bills up to date.

There are some things I need to step back and look at a little better: Like, what is the deal with health care? Please explain how to get the patient to the referral they need to have when insurance is more of a stumbling block than a life-saver. Why are insurance programs being promoted in areas where there are no practitioners or specialists in the area the person lives in who will accept that program or at least, courtesy bill that program? I really thought health care reform was going to be for the benefit of the people. Boy, was I naïve!

Oh, this reform has done good work. People who have been routinely abusing and selling prescription drugs are getting caught. Health care providers have more awareness of how their patients are using their prescriptions and are tracking the effectiveness of the drugs more carefully. People who have abused their health care to get non-medically necessary goods are getting thinned out too. The doctors have to spend more time with paperwork and having to prove necessity. (This, of course, means less time for other patients. But it is necessary.)

It is all about the people. The people need a LOT of hands on care, a lot of babysitting. These same people are the ones yelling at their primary care provider for the federal law changes that has them getting into the doctor’s office to pick up their prescription and have office visits that verify the effectiveness of their treatments. They say we are invading their privacy. The same privacy that they gave permission to the doctor to invade in order to provide for their health care way back when they became patients at a doctor’s office. The flip side is the people who need to ask their doctor about everything, can they wipe their bottoms and is it ok to blow their noses?

People are fragile.

It is maddening. I am good at my job. I have been told by patients and coworkers how well I do my work. But I feel like I am rotten at my job and that people’s lives will be harmed if I make mistakes. So, now I am going either into another aspect of the medical field and gaining even more knowledge and experience in the healthcare field. I can do phlebotomy, did it in the classroom. I will need training, and training is available.

Or else, I will go to another kind of work altogether and rest my brain and heart for a while. 

Adventures with Old News

If you have the desire to, going to the Benzie Shores District Library’s website and looking over the old Benzie County newspapers that are scanned in is both fun and somewhat poignant.

I really miss the old papers, with all the so and so visited such and such, and Mr. and Mrs. Jones just visited Mr. and Mrs. Smith down in Detroit. Who was in the hospital? Who was in trouble with the law? Whose barn burned down? It was maybe too nosy for today’s folks, but it was comforting to read up on things. These days, more information is shared much more publically on Facebook and similar places.

Here are some of the gleanings I have found:

April 4, 1920 The weather was really bad for Easter with drifts that were several feet high.

A humorous quote: The hard think about making your money last is making it first.

November 28, 1940 There is a great story of how City Superintendent Perry Mauseth finding a single ox shoe embedded in a big oak tree that blew down in a storm near the American Legion Hall. “The shoe had been nailed to the tree and was grown over by three inches of growth.”

In the same paper, an advertisement asks you to “remember when light was bought by the gallon?”

March 20, 2013 Small things make big news. “We have a new pencil sharpener in the hallway” reports one of the county schools.

As I read on through these old, sometimes tattered, papers, I see names of places that I am unfamiliar with. Where was Liberty Union? Pleasant Valley? Was Homestead Station up where the high school is now? What about Smith’s Corners?

April 3, 1902 “Vern Barber sold his place last fall, shook the sawdust out of his clothes and bade Honor good bye. The other day he made his appearance in our streets looking like thirty cents. Said Honor was the place of all others, bo’t his property back again, moved in and is as happy as a coon in a corn field.”

A surprisingly modern idea is rumored in the November 24, 1927 paper. Ford was promoting the idea of the car lease. “you pay a deposit of 150.00, get your car, and pay a rental fee of 10.00-15.00 a month. When you want a new car, merely turn in the old one and continue to pay the monthly fee. Nice if true!”

Talk of war, soldiers, and world news filled our little paper’s up as well. From multitudes of stories on the Philippines to brief mentions of Japan stockpiling scrap iron to Jack Dempsey being cleared of charges of draft dodging, you just won’t believe what you might find. Why, one paper even had an Edgar Rice Burroughs story running as a series in it back before 1920

It seems like we cared more about how our neighbors were doing and how our community was growing. Some of the articles were blunt, certainly none of the political correctness occurred. But there was respect and empathy in many of the stories. Humor, too. I just read about a really bad fishing trip in a paper from the 1960’s. They did not mention the chief player’s name, but they did have it at the end, all scrabbled up for folks to guess at.

It makes me grin how different the personals were from what they are now.

The advertisements are awesome: The oldest papers have tons of adds for medicinal goods such as Lydia Pinkham. The number of cures for various diseases of both human and animal are daunting! The papers I grew up with mention business names long gone. The Village Shoppe and the Village Squire, Dort's Shoe Box. Walter L. Heaths! The car prices are mouthwatering, so are the old brand new model adds. I even found an add for a sixty acre farm on the north shore of Crystal Lake for undre $5000.00, complete with hardwoods, barns, and a nice house with running water!

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!