The Ancient Art of Transformation

I’d been a bit bummed because my new bike was over-mileage for its service check. I had to wait a week to get a service slot for it, and it sat while the weather was lovely. Dang, I even went as far as doing the things I’d need to do to put the old Ninja to bed for the winter early, just to make myself feel better. I was grumbling a little because there’s a warranty to honor on the Harley, and I’m playing it by the book. I don’t mind terribly, but I’m looking forward to the day when I can just buy myself a copy of the service manual(s), and get back to my own wrenching. I’m not Joe Wizwrench or anything, but if I can do it myself, I will. It’s not just about the money, though that’s a part of it. It’s therapeutic, satisfying, a bit fun, and downright good for the soul.

Story (c) 2008 Northwind.
All rights Reserved. May not be reprinted without written permission
of photographers and author. Contact: northwind@rumblenews.com

How to Ride into History 

About a year ago, I’d just changed the oil & filter on my old 900 Ninja and was out for a spin before supper. The original exhaust system had died years ago, and was replaced with a Wolf pipe. When I need to, I can make it fairly quiet more easily than my Harley when slipping through a sleeping village late at night out of consideration for the occupants. But when it’s on the cams, it’s loud and it sings such a nice song to me.  I pulled up to a stop sign in the middle of nowhere, glancing at the temperature gage as a police cruiser rolled past on the road I needed to take. The constable eyed the lovely shade of “Arrest-Me Red” on my bike as we exchanged nods, and I thought I recognized him as one of my neighbors in the sleepy hamlet where I live. I glanced back the way he’d come once more as a check, and realized that something had changed since I’d been through here. There’s a subdivision nearby now reviving the place’s almost-forgotten newer name, and I don’t’ come by as often. But what had changed? Suddenly, I remembered.

The schoolhouse was missing.

Now, there wasn’t much to the thing. Just a tiny (and I mean tiny) derelict one-room schoolhouse that was slowly being reclaimed by the woods. Its windows were long gone, and it had taken to sagging a little, much like its rusted, too-small, home-made ball diamond fence. The last class of youngsters had poured out of its doors laughing, and eager to start their summer vacations in 1963. But back in the day when it was new, maybe 90 years before that, it was the only schoolhouse that I’ve ever heard of that was stolen from one town by the folks of another.

Back then, the area was sparsely settled, and the cleared land that was suitable for agriculture was already under the plow. The rest of the area’s activity was lumbering. One of the problems that lumber and mining companies have always had was that they had to employ men. And men, being the creatures that we are, tend to like to have women around. It’s that natural attraction thing. Oftentimes, this resulted in the appearance of bothersome things called families, and families had an annoying tendency to want someplace to school their spawn.

So the lumber companies, as they put in the new-fangled facilities that they required, such as sawmills and small railroads to feed them, would often erect company houses for the families to live in, and the odd schoolhouse went with that. The problem in this place was that the company placed the school where it was convenient, but the majority of the worker’s children lived at the other end of the short line. And that forced the children to have to walk a fair bit through an area that didn’t have much in the way of places to walk, unless you wanted your kids to hoof it through the dark woods. You know, back in the old days when you had to walk through snowdrifts over your head uphill both ways, all that stuff.

So one night, as the legend goes, a bunch of the loggers, mill hands, and the train crew, went back to the train, whose engine had been kept stoked low. The train made its way to where the new schoolhouse was, and by lantern light, they had it on the flatcar in a little while. No strangers to rigging and moving heavy objects, they just had to be bit more careful this time. The logging engine chuffed slowly along in the pitch dark until it got to a spot opposite where it had been decided that the little schoolhouse needed to be. The next morning, the schoolteacher had a bit of a shock, most of the children had a shorter walk, the few kids who now had a longer one hopped on the flatcar, and the mill owners just saw the sense of the whole thing anyway. Life went on.

As these things go, the area became lumbered out, and the company, the mill, and the train moved on to greener forests. The schoolhouse stayed, and became part of the area’s school system, until the little community near the old Brennan sawmill pretty much ceased to exist, along with the school’s reason to. Now the land had been sold off, cleared, and the new owners wanted a bigger lawn, I guess. The original name of “Brennan’s Mill” is almost lost to time.

Railroads were huge to these tiny places back then. Just the rumor that one might be coming through the area caused a town’s merchants to go to almost any lengths to lure them. I’ve read of one town nearby, after finding that their petition to get the road to come through the town had fallen flat, just pretty much up and moved the town the mile or so to where the train WAS passing by. There are still people here that remember when a schoolchild could flag down the local run to catch a ride across the trestle over the ravine not far from my home. In my neck of the woods, the traces of the road are there, but you have to hunt to find the path it took. Finding nothing much left in the town just after we’d moved here, I did some checking to find where the road passed through.

I asked the town clerk where it had gone.

“Well, it passed right where the legion now stands. Half the town burned in 1903 or so. Some sparks from the engines set fire to the lumber yard. Happened all the time. The rails were pulled in ’55, and the station was donated to the legion.”

Well I’d seen the legion, but the building looked far too new, and didn’t look like a station.

“Oh, that’s not the original hall. The old station burned to the ground in 1964, and the new hall was built on that spot.”

Now at the time, my kids were small, and loved to play with a train set. Well, truth be told, so did I and I had a half-baked idea to model their layout after what actually ran here. I asked if there were any old town maps from back in the day.

“Well we used to have ‘em. That would have been in the old records office.”

I asked if there would be a problem for me to maybe get a look at them.

“You can’t. Not that you’re not allowed to see them, but they’re gone. There was a fire, and the old offices burned down.”

I was beginning to see a pattern here. Happened all the time, apparently.

I’ve always liked to hunt down ghost towns hereabouts. Unlike their American counterparts, there was usually less going on to make them famous or notorious for one thing, and the wood frame construction used doesn’t stand up as well to the ravages of our winters and the encroaching forest as perhaps a Wild West mining town in a drier climate.

I found an excellent source for some old county maps made between 1874 and 1881, and with them, some mapping software, and my GPS duct-taped to my Ninja’s tank, I’ve spent many hours just hunting down what might be left. Most times it’s not very much, but I find the search to be a great excuse to ride when I can’t think up another one, and we don’t need for me to ride 30 miles to get some dish soap that they sell down at the town store anyway. I usually just do a slow ride-through, though I may stop and look around. There are no treasures, since the folks that left usually took their stuff with them, and the places have already been picked through long before me. I wouldn’t take anything anyway. It leaves less of the place to see, and I’m not that selfish.

There is a small island maybe 30 miles from me. It formed from the silt that settled around the bones of a ship sunk by cannon fire. HMS Nancy was at that point the only Royal Navy ship on the upper Great Lakes. One of her problems was that though she was fast, she was only a schooner, and wasn’t built to fight, having only a couple of guns. Her other problem was that there were 3 large, and fully armed warships hunting her. Her force of 53 couldn’t hold long against those guns, a mortar, and 3 companies of regular infantry, and though the Nancy was doomed to be shot to pieces and burned, the sailors, Indians, and voyageurs weren’t giving up. Paddling over 300 miles, they seized 2 of the gunboats. Interesting, huh? Swashbuckling on the Great Lakes, who’da thunk it? And like most of this stuff, they don’t teach it in schools.

There’s a ghost town on another island much farther away, built by a lumber baron who needed a lake terminus for his railroad, and he didn’t want to pay the rates that the nearby town wanted to charge, so he built himself a town. He was the first employer here with an 8 hour workday. At the same time, he was a hard, but fair boss. His outdoor toilets had no doors ��" do your business quicker if you don’t like it. His workers loved him, and plenty jumped in ( a couple to their deaths) when he tried to help clear a log jam once, and fell in. There’s still a half a locomotive roundhouse standing there with no roof. I met the mayor of the place many years ago. Well, he was the only resident, so the election was a snap…

Think all this high adventure only happened here? You’re joking, right? There’s nothing special about this area. It happened everywhere as the continent was settled! You only have to look a little.

Disclaimer: The following content does not in any way suggest, intimate, order, or instruct the reader to run right out, & get into all sorts of foolishness. Most of the old places that can be found today are only shells and ruins if that, but they can still be hazardous to the foolhardy. So if you get poison ivy, step on a nail, fall down a well, break your leg, or find that something or someone is gnawing your ass off because you had to go someplace that you shouldn’t have been, it’s not on my head, ok? I’m just telling you how to find places. What you do there is up to you.

Other than gas, it’s a cheap hobby. At the heart of it all, you need a bike and a GPS to play this game, though you really don’t even need the GPS. Much better if you start the hunt with a bit of research on the net, and a stop at the local library can get you tons of leads, though you might have to ask. The last shreds of the history of many small places lives neglected in the libraries of say, the county seat. Often the descendants of the area’s pioneers feared its loss, and put it there on purpose for you to find. The trials and tribulations, joys and heartaches of countless settlers, the smaller tales of lawlessness and adventure are often no less fascinating than those of the big names, and it lies sleeping.

When doing your pre-exploration research, old road maps sometimes come in handy. The place names might be gone from current ones. They might even have changed. The sands of time, remember? So, how to go about this? As I mentioned, the local or county seat library. Often it also holds the county archives, but if it doesn’t, that’s another stop for you. If you are somewhat familiar with the area, looks for names of little places that you DON’T know. They might be gone now. Take a road map, and pencil these in. Back home, or on your laptop, search out these place names, you might get lucky. Folks were born and died there. Their descendants might have mentioned it. There are government sites that list Lat/Long coordinates even for ghost towns. If it exists for you, just enter that, and your GPS will point you there. Remember, it’s not just about finding the place. Usually, during your research, you’ll uncover some of the things that happened there, and that adds to the reward for you if you know. Some stuff is just quirky, some is wonderful, and some is scary.

Also, beware of some legends. I’m thinking of a place where the hotel burned down, and 3 young women lost their lives in the blaze. I’d read accounts that suggested that members of the infamous Black Donnellys were sighted in the town that night, and the girls were of the working variety, and that maybe things got out of hand, and the fire was to cover their tracks. In more accounts, there were no such sightings mentioned, and the unfortunate girls were seamstresses who were boarding there. Wooden construction, straw mattresses, oil lamps, candles… happened all the time, right? And some things just get lost in the sands of time. A regiment was hurrying to Fort Willow, and one soldier collapsed on the way. They couldn’t do much for him, but his brother volunteered to stay with him. On arrival, things weren’t as urgent as they’d been told, and a detachment was sent back the next day for the brothers. Their bodies were found close together, with no signs of trauma or struggle, and nothing was taken. What killed them? Fear? Swamp gas? Banshees? Hoo-doos? Who the hell knows? We certainly never will.

One of the reasons I mentioned a GPS is safety. Might as well get into that right now. Always let somebody know where you’re off to, you just never know. When you get there, always (especially if it’s a remote place), use the GPS to MARK where you left the road so you can find your way back. If you’re alone, or there’s just two, remember that you’re NOT on an expedition! A wrong step into a mine or building can spell disaster. I strongly recommend not even going there. Sometimes a ghost town may now be private property, and you’ve got to respect that. You’re there for something interesting to do on your bike. Leave the Indiana Jones thing for, well, Harrison Ford. You’re not gonna find anything valuable, and if that’s what you’re going for, it’s the wrong reason. The people didn’t just leave with nothing ��" they took their valuables with them.

The other day, I was sitting in a restaurant and idly looking out the window past my Harley at one street that I could see. My eye was drawn by the odd angle of it. I knew right away that the street ran on, or along an old rail line. After a while you can just tell. The waitress, whom I’ve often kidded about being the fastest thing on 2 sneakers brought my meal to our table. Nuthin’ fancy, just good, substantial food.

We were, the four of us, deeply engaged in solving some of the world’s most pressing problems and,… well that’s thirsty work. A guy can get hungry too. I joined into the table’s conversation about the national economy, and how some car company had dropped their cash price to roughly half what it was when a particular car had been introduced. I said that they could keep it, since I’ve had more than my share of having their transmissions rebuilt over the years. The rest of the crowd at the table countered that their pickups were still pretty good, but I wasn’t interested. My mind drifted, and I found my attention wandering to that strange street again. I wondered if I could get my hands on a handlebar mount for my GPS.

Yeah. Clip that on my Harley, and I’d be off down that road pretty quick. Might even do it without the GPS. Just lemme finish this here burger.

Story (c) 2008 Northwind.
All rights Reserved. May not be reprinted without written permission
of the author. Contact: northwind@rumblenews.com