Note
Status: OK
Status By: Mary Voss
Status Date: 2020-07-06Note
Our Early Years at Pier Cove
This is Jeanette Studley at Pier Cove, and today is Sunday, September 19th, 1982. I want to record some things about our Pier Cove cottage.
We first came here in the summer of 1906. That would be when I was five years old. My father had rented the cottage for the season from Charles W. Melcher who lived in Hinsdale, Illinois, and who was a friend of the Simonds family. The cottage was rented with an option to buy and in September 1906 the house with its furnishings was purchased for $1,000. I think it is important to say here that when my parents bought the house it was not completely finished. It was in fact a cottage set on a sand dune. There were posts holding it up and on the front porch there were locust logs in an upright position to hold up the roof of the porch and between these uprights was the railing which consisted only of a locust, or maybe sassafras log.
Although I do not remember this, my father used to tell that the first summer we were there, Walter could walk under the porch railing, and it was feared that he would run off the edge of the porch and fall down the bank. For this reason one of the first things my father did was to buy a large roll of chicken wire which was extended under the railing and completely around the porch. This acted as a sort of a protection so that children would not fall off the property, or I should say not fall off the porch.
The only trees that were around in early days were a few locusts and some small poplars in the yard between the house and the road and one large lilac bush. At the foot of the bank down to the beach there were, however, some beautiful large silver popular trees. Also, between, our house and the Johnson [A. L. Johnson] house to the north there were lovely old silver poplars and for many years we had a path running between our house and the Johnson house as we played with the Johnson children who were about our age.
To the south of the kitchen door there was a wooden well curb and the well with a pump which we used to pump any and all water needed. Near the pump there was a locust tree and my father built a little shelf on the locust tree where we kept a washbasin and there was a nail in the tree also for a cup which we could use for drinking water. We also hung our toothbrushes on nails outside on the locust tree. Between the well curb to the south there were planks set on the sand leading out to a little outhouse which we used for a number of years.
In those days we used the front door more than we do now and we used to go out the front door and along the north porch to a path which led not only to the Johnson's house new door but also out to the road. During the first few years that we had the cottage we went to the beach not down to the south of the house but we went down to the basement-I don't remember if there were steps down there of if we just ran down the bank to the basement-went through the basement to the north of the basement and then went down to the beach on a little path there. One of the paintings that we have here in the cottage right now on the north wall over the big green chest is a picture painted by Mrs. Melcher showing the path to the beach and the poplar trees at the north end of the cottage. There were very few trees between our house and the Johnson house to the north and I remember that between the two houses there was a large homemade table that was used for picnics and this pace was also called the sunset place and we used to go there sometimes with neighbors for picnics and to watch the sunset.
I believe that the original lot that my father bought was of course the lot on which the cottage stands but in about 1907 my parents bought the lot to the south of the cottage from Mr. O. C. Simonds. In 1914 my parents bought what we call the Durant Land across from the Gauntlett house. The Durants, George Durant and Annie Durant from Chicago, I believe, bought the land with the thought of building a hawse there and they had Mr. Simonds do plantings and locate a situation for the house. Mr. Durant died, however, and that was why the properly was for sale.
In our Pier Cove book of photographs beginning in 1906 one can see how the cottage looked in these early days. One of these pictures shows the row of popular trees between our house and the Johnson house. I remember the first year we were here that my father and Mr. McWilliams a neighbor of ours in Grand Rapids put up a swing on one of the popular trees and we enjoyed that a great deal.
There is also a picture of the old mill at Pier Cove. My mother used to tell us that when she was working in Chicago and living with the Simonds family there, she and Mrs. Simonds came over to Pier Cove soon after Mr. Simonds had purchased the property here and they slept in the old mill.
The front porch as you can see in the early photographs had an icebox along the wall and a man named Mr. Atwater used to come once or twice a week bringing us large cakes of ice. One of the things I remember about Mr. Atwater was that when he came to our house he always wanted to get a drink of water. As he said we had better tasting water than any place along his route. My father told us that we had the only deep will in the area and that the well was ninety-nine feet deep. Mr. Atwater used to use the drinking cup which was a family cup hung on the nail on the locust tree but my mother did not care for this so she hung out a special cup and it was always known as Mr. Atwater's cup, with our drinking more or less hidden around on the back of the locust tree. The reason for this was that Mr. Atwater had a very long droopy mustache and he always got his mustache in the drinking cup.
One of the early summers Robin had a pet duck and we had a little shelter built for the duck on the front porch. This was where the duck stayed at night. The duck used to follow Robin around wherever he went. I remember one year when we had bantam chickens and they were a source of great pleasure to my brothers and to me. But, back to the duck, at the end of the summer one Sunday we had the duck killed and dressed and we ate it for Sunday dinner. This was very shocking to my brothers and to me, as we had become very fond of this little animal. 1 remember Walter especially was distressed that we ate the duck and trying to reconcile this, he mentioned during the dinner, "This Sunday we eat the duck next Sunday we eat the cat."
My parents used to send us to get milk for the family. Sometimes we got it at the Ensfields which was up the road where in later years Walter and Adah build their house. Other times we got milk at Harry Links' which was south of our cottage between here and the county park. We used to get the milk in a tin pail with a cover on it. And I think that we went and got the milk after supper in the evening because that was when the farmers did their milking. I remember one time when Walter and I went to Harry Link's to get the milk and we had to wait while Harry did the milking and then when we started home each of us together hanging on to the handle of the milk pail, it was getting dark and we became afraid. We started to run because we thought that we saw a bear on the lake side of the road. There were no houses there, just small trees and shrubbery. We ran all the rest of the way home, spilling the milk as we went. And as soon as we arrived at the door we told my father that we had seen a bear and that it scared us. I thought he had a good solution for this problem because he took us by the hand and said that he had never seen a bear himself and that he was very anxious to see one and he would walk back up the road with us and we could point out the bear to him. So we went back and of course there wasn't any bear there at all.
We used to come down from Grand Rapids to Pier Cove on the Interurban first from Grand Rapids to Holland and then Holland to Saugatuck. At Saugatuck we took the boat called the John A. Aliber to Pier Cove or else Sven Bensen came with a lumber wagon to meet us in Saugatuck. We always came from Grand Rapids with trunks and with one or two barrels filled with empty fruit cans which were taken back to Grand Rapids in the fall with fruit canned here by my mother during the summer.
My father came down to Pier Cove on weekends but as I recall he spent most of the week in Grand Rapids because of his business appointments as a dentist. On Sunday afternoon after we had had our dinner my father used to take us for a walk in the ravine. His favorite spot was at the beeches, that is the beech grove where Emily Bensen and Jess DaIley were married years later. There was a little wooden bench there and we used to sit while papa read us stories from The Youth's Companion.
I want to say a word about the inside of the house. The first summer we came here I think that I remember that as we walked into the living room there were bathing suits hung of chairs in front of the fireplace and these had been left by the Melcher family the summer before. As we started living here we had a few pieces of furniture brought down from Grand Rapids but for the most part the furnishings were very simple.
We did however have what my mother called the big green dresser brought down and it was in this chest that mother kept sheets and bedding and other things because of the mice. One winter the mice got into the big chest and ate a hole down a pile of probably a dozen sheets. This made about eight holes in each sheet and one summer after that had happened my mother had what she called a "Mouse Party" and invited the ladies in the area to come for a tea party in the afternoon and to help mend the holes in the sheets. Same of the ladies did beautiful handwork and the patches they put on the sheets were indeed fine needlework.
After we started living here, I remember that for years we had white dotted-swiss curtains in the living room. These hung straight down, were quite full and had a valance across the top. In those days too there was a window seat that went across the northwest corner of the living room and also there was a corner cupboard in the northeast comer of the living room where we kept our dishes. In the kitchen there was a wood stove and sink in the southwest comer of the room and we had a large kitchen table. My father was usually the first one up in the morning and he started the fire in the wood stove and heated the water for mother's coffee although he never had drunk coffee himself. He had tea with a little milk in it in the morning. However we ate oatmeal for breakfast and it was cooked by my mother.
We did not have electricity in those days of course and we used kerosene lamps which had to have their chimneys washed every morning when they were brought down to the kitchens from the bedrooms. As I remember it was my job to wash the lamp chimneys and to see that the lamps were filled with kerosene.
After a few years my father put a toilet in the basement. There was a hose that went from the toilet up to the pump and it took thirty strokes of the pump to fill the tank which flushed the toilet. At one time too my father experimented with a shower. This consisted of an open trough which was hung from the porch floor at the southwest corner of the porch. Then there was a little hose that went from the bottom of the tank to the ground below. My father's theory was that when the lake was too cold to go swimming the sun would warm the water in the shower tank in the afternoon and he could go down and take a shower. As I recall this did not turn out to be too satisfactory.
We children had a great time here at Pier Cove in the summer and I know that we loved those early days. As soon as we arrived we took off our shoes and stockings and went barefoot all summer. When we went back to Grand Rapids just before Labor Day Mr. Bensen used to come with his lumber wagon and take us and our trunks and barrels of fruit either to Saugatuck or else down to the pier at Pier Cove. As we left the house, my mother made us wear our shoes and stockings. And I remember sitting in the back of the Bensen wagon and crying because my shoes pinched my feet and also because we were leaving Pier Cove.
It was not until 1929 that the Pier Cove families grouped together and paid to have electricity along the shore road but I do not think it went even as far as the Curtises because the Curtises had a Delco electric system of their own and did not need the power line.
We had no cars in those days of course and we did a lot of walking. We walked cross lots over to Ganges where there was the Wolbrinks' store where we could buy groceries. As I recall the Wolbrinks came around once a week with a horse and wagon and you could get staples. Also occasionally we had farmers in the neighborhood who would bring garden produce. I remember especially that Mr. Plummer, Bertha Plummer's husband, used to bring us vegetables now and then.
Even my mother who was not an enthusiastic walker used to walk with us to the Bensen farm which was located on. what is now M-89 and about 3 or 312 miles from our cottage. Sometimes Mrs. Bensen used to bring my mother home from her house using her horse and buggy. I remember once riding from the Bensens' back to Pier Cove with Mrs. Bensen and her horse became frightened because a car was coming along the road. That was very unusual as there were few cars before the 1920s. Mrs. Bensen quickly turned her horse into a driveway at a farm along the way to prevent a runaway.
I think we had our first Ford car about 1920 and I remember one time when Walter and some friends and I walked from our cottage to [Mt] Bald Head at Saugatuck taking with us a picnic lunch. Then we climbed Bald Head and ate our picnic lunch and walked down to a place near Bald Head where papa met us with the car and drove us home. I think I remember that because I was so tired by the time we had walked to Saugatuck and climbed Bald Head. and it was delightful to find that we were going to be able to get a ride home.
During the first World War we had a war garden of vegetables over on the Durant land and we had to go over and weed the garden frequently. I did not enjoy this task and as I remember it, our garden over there was never very satisfactory. For years however we had a garden south of the house-flowers and vegetables but this garden had to be fenced in in order to keep out the rabbits. My father made a gate to the fenced-in garden and on the rope that opened and shut the gate he had a large lucky stone-that is a stone with a hole in it. It was only a couple of years ago that Donald Trull, Julia Bensen's son, was telling me that when he was a little boy he remembered that enormous stone with a hole in it that operated our garden gate.
I think it must have been in the 1920s that we started to go to the Big Pavilion in Saugatuck. This was a great attraction because there was music and dancing and there were a lot of young people the age of my brothers and me who were allowed to go the Pavilion as a group and stay maybe as tong as 10 o'clock. As I said before we went to the Pavilion in Saugatuck as a group, perhaps six of us in the Simonds' or the Johnsons' car. At the Pavilion we danced or went to one of the movies held there. There might very likely be three boys and three girls going to the Pavilion together and coming home. One of the rules was that we were not to come home along the Lake Shore Road after leaving the Pavilion. The reason our parents wanted this was that the road was very narrow and right on the edge of the bank to the beach and I feel that our parents were afraid that we might get to fooling in the car and tip over. So we were supposed to come back to Pier Cove by a road away from the lake. However, as I remember, we very often disobeyed this and came along the Lake Shore Road.
I want to say something now about our steps to the beach. My father designed the cement steps. A man named Lou Warner who was Mr. Simonds' hired man helped father in the construction of these steps to the beach. They must have had to bring the cement in a wheelbarrow down from the well curb, and they would have used sand and gravel which they brought up from the beach plus water from the pump. None of the men in the Pier Cove community thought that my father's plan for cement steps to the beach was practical. One of them said that built on sand they would crack and disintegrate about us as soon as they were made. Another friend of my father's predicted that the sand would blow over the steps and that in a year or two no one would be able to find them. I want to say that these steps were completed on August 22, 1911, and in the cement square at the top of the steps this date has been written in cement. It now being 1982, and the steps are still being used, it is obvious that they have given us good service.
In our Pier Cove Book of photographs there are pictures of a picnic held at the Orchard House where the Simonds lived, on July 4th, 1910. Some of the families seen in the picture include my mother and father and Walter and Robin and myself. Also the A. L. Johnson family, who lived next door to us including: Dorothy, Marion, Albert and John. Also in the picture we see the Simonds family: Mrs. Mattie Simonds, and some of the Simonds children including Donald and Robert Simonds. Also in the photograph is Mrs. Julie Fletcher who was Mr. Simonds' sister and who had a cottage here at that time. There was also the Bensen family present at the picnic. And in the photographs we see the Bensen children: Glion, Julia, Emily and Roger. Mrs. Harriet Curtis the wife of Dean Curtis was at this Fourth of July picnic. She was a great storyteller and loved to entertain children as well as grownups with the stories about B'rer Rabbit and such tales. Looking at the pictures taken in 1910 you can see how very interested all of the children were when she was entertaining us. The Phoebe Johnson family was also at the Fourth of July picnic in 1910 and in the picture we see: Aunt Phoebe, Aunt Elizabeth, Laura, Agues, Marjorie and others. I tell this because now in 982 the descendants of these original families are all still at the Cove. That is: the Simonds, the Bensens, the Johnsons at The Porches, the A. L. Johnsons across the road, the Studleys and the Curtises.
Our cottage originally was constructed of wood that was placed perpendicularly from the ground to the roof. As the years advanced, these timbers shrank so that finally the wind came in through the boards and also the rain came in. In 1938 my father ordered lumber and started putting siding on the house. These wide pieces of siding were each one painted before it was put on the house. Part of the house was done in 1938. My father died in March 1939 but the following summer that is in 1939 my mother had the siding put on the rest of the house. This made a great difference and the house was much more weatherproof than it had been before.
At Pier Cove in the early days, we had to manufacture our own entertainment and one summer as you can see by the pictures in the Cove Book, we had a production called "Jack the Giant Killer". All of us, that is the children in the neighborhood, participated in this drama. Mrs. Harriet Curds coached us and the production took place at what is now known as the Curtis farmhouse. The main characters in the play were Dean Curtis, John Johnson who was about three years ofd at the time and Marian and Dorothy Johnson. The rest of us were pages, ladies-in-waiting, guards and that sort of thing. This was the high event of that summer season.
I might add now something about the Glion Curtis family. Glion Curtis was Dean Curtis' only child. He and his bride Isabel came to Pier Cove on their honeymoon which was spent at the A. L. Johnson cottage next door to us. The Curtises, Glion and Isabel had flue children. The oldest was Glion Jr. who was somewhere between 8 and 10 years younger than I. Then after Glion cam Tom, William, Ernie, and Jim although at this moment I'm not sure that I have them in the correct order. Except for Bill Curtis, the other four Curtis boys have built houses in Pier Cove. [Bill and Fran have since built a cottage in Pier Cove).
In speaking of early days at Pier Cove, I think I should add that my brother Robin very often went to a YMCA camp in the summer instead of coming to Pier Cove. The name of the camp he attended was Camp Barlow, located near Middletown, Michigan. I don't remember how many summers he attended the camp.
