Chippewa Lake: A Community in Search of an Identity

Preface

xi Preface I was first introduced to Chippewa Lake by my future husband , LaVail. I often accompanied him on the trek north from Grand Rapids to visit his grandparents, who lived on a small farm about two miles from the village of Chippewa Lake. I remember reveling in the lush greenness of the scenery, the endless fields of corn, and the beautiful lake that gave the community its name. LaVail’s grandparents were descendants of one of the earliest European families to settle in Chippewa Township, the township that includes Chippewa Lake. His family came from Scotland via Canada at the same time as other original settlers—the McCallums, Carmichaels, McLachlins , and Campbells. LaVail’s grandfather’s cousin, Mary McCormick, is listed in the county registry as the first white child born in the township. But, as a sociology major in college, aiming for a teaching career, I wasn’t particularly interested in that history. What struck me was the poverty of the area, particularly the poverty in which I thought Earl and Cleva McCormick lived. They inhabited a small two-story farmhouse with tarpaper siding, and an open well in the front yard. Only recently had Grandma Cleva obtained a hand pump attached to her sink that allowed her to pump water directly from the well to the house. She heated water for dishwashing and baths on the cooking stove or the wood stove, and the toilet and tub were also fairly new improvements, installed by her two sons-in-law. The outhouse still sat in the back yard, a monument to another time. The house was heated by a wood stove, located in the kitchen that also served as the living room in the winter. The real living room was closed off in the winter to preserve heat, and my husband remembers icicles forming in his upstairs bedroom when he was young. The most exciting, yet intimidating improvement was the telephone that brought Earl and Cleva closer to their children and grandchildren , who all lived in Grand Rapids or beyond. It was a three-party phone, and their greatest fear was having their neighbors listen in to their phone calls. My husband’s family would often receive cryptic phone calls from up north: “You have to come up. We have to talk about something . . . you know what we talked about . . .” This could be anything from a need to xii| Preface fix the car or put up fence to discussing important family issues. we always suspected that the real reason for the call was to get their family to come up for a visit. My memories also include the strong smell of pork cooking in lard, homemade bread, and green tea. The best time was in the fall, when the McCormick daughters and spouses, distant aunts, uncles, and cousins came up for deer hunting season. Grandpa earl was on his best form when he had an audience. Crippled from polio as a young man, he moved slowly with a cane, his legs bowed. Surrounded with family in the warm kitchen, he sat in his favorite chair, a huge, overstuffed wooden-frame chair that smelled of cigarette smoke and the accumulated smells of the kitchen and farm. he told stories and sipped the whiskey that his sons-in-law brought for him. Cleva never sat. She was in constant motion, bustling in the small kitchen area, cooking and serving, trying to keep some order in an impossible situation , feeding and picking up after her children, grandchildren, and assorted cousins and tag-alongs like me. This was how the elder McCormicks lived in the 1970s. i never thought that i would live in the Chippewa Lake community. Born and raised in Grand Rapids, seventy miles south, i was accustomed to urban neighborhoods , walking to school and to the local parks, having friends within walking or biking distance, as well as the mixed blessings of next-door neighbors and closely spaced houses. it was with much apprehension that i agreed to move to the rural homestead with our two young children after residing for two years in the Micronesian islands. Returning from the semitropical island of pohnpei to the United States was traumatic enough for us and for our children, but arriving in midwinter was insanity. The winter of 1982 was raging when we drove our Volkswagen Beetle, just out of storage, with two children in tow up to our new home, a small retirement house built by my husband’s family...