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El and Louise Faulman interviewed and transcribed by Barbara Siepker November 18, 2003

Tape #1 Side A Gene and Glenn were in Cleveland and we lived in Detroit. It was a weekly program I think. We were aware of them. There was that connection with the old cottage which burned down many years ago. I don’t remember how we learned about Gene and Glenn and the Glen Lake connection but we knew about it back before we came up. I am putting two and two together but Red Holden grew up here and went to Chicago and was successful in business there. After he was able, he bought property and came back here summers. I think that there was a friendship between them and that may be how they got to Chicago. Dotti probably mentioned the Green Dragon. “That was our little hotspot around here.” We knew about it.

30. Lucille has been coming up here since 1925 when she was 12 years old. We had close friends in Detroit. Fred and Millie Peppler and their daughter and son. Fred was a brother to Mrs. Krull. Chris Krull came up in maybe 1915 and bought property. That’s how we came to know Glen Lake. My family and the Pepplers decided to come up for a couple of weeks in August. All the roads were gravel and it took us two days. Our mothers packed dinner of fried chicken and all of that kind of thing and we ate in schoolyards and could use the outdoor facility. I will never forget that first glance of Glen Lake. We were so excited and every summer we came up here, we would shout when we got here. I had two sisters Eunice and Lois. Eunice was two years younger and Lois was nine years younger. In other words, there were five kids coming up for vacation. We rented one of the houses at Krulls. Boarded there and she was a good cook. It is still there not far from the curve at Lake/Sunset. (It had been a boarding house during the lumbering days.) I think the third summer we rented a cottage from Dr. Lawrence Day. Then my father and Fred Peppler bought on the north shore where Janet Peppler now lives. $10 a foot for lake frontage. They were 600 feet deep. Cloys Rader built the cottage. It was good size. We bought about in 1928 from Chris Krull. El and I spent our honeymoon there in 1938. The one thing I appreciate about Tom Peppler is that he left the original part of the cottage with the old fireplace and balcony with the original bedrooms. The families built it together and the kids would come for all summer. The parents would alternate, one in July and one in August. They broke apart after 1938 and Lucille’s family moved to other places. My dad sold his interest. My mother had died in 1931. We had many happy times there. One thing I remember where the marina was, it was an old mill. In the water near it there were millions of boards, slab wood which after they had cut them off they put them in the water. As kids, we always picked them out of the water every time we went there to swim and they were a little slippery. It was a mess. So swimmers today have us to thank. I remember how easy it was to find Petoskey stones along Glen Lake and Lake Michigan. We swam and walked. We thought it was smart to walk to GA. I wish I could see it again as it was then. The only buildings I remember are: the Lutheran church and Arbor Light which was Warnes’ grocery store. On the right side, they had a long narrow room with old-fashioned tables where they had a big soda bar and served ice cream but they didn’t make sodas. I remember Mrs. Warnes dishing out the ice cream and chocolate syrup. We thought that was nice. Mr. Warnes was a large man and he had boxes of groceries on the floor. Maybe he was too tired to put them up but they were friendly. His second wife was one of the founders of the women’s club. Across the street at the corner was a gas station, Sheridan’s I think. One day he was electrocuted because he touched one of the wired while they were building. There was a gas station, Eli Wescott’s, on the corner where Cottonseed it now. He waited on you. His wife was a very pretty girl, possibly Indian, and he had some children. The post office was behind the gas station and was in very poor repair. One had to watch one’s feet so that you didn’t get caught in the floor’s holes. It was a ramshackle building.

265. El was invited up for a long weekend by Lucille’s father before they were married. I had never heard of Glen Lake but “the bug bit me right then.” We went to eat at the Kum-N-Dine. After we were married in 1938, we drove up to Mrs. Miller in Port Oneida, off of the Thoresen Road. She had delicious food, oh my. Her home is still there and next to it the Adairs. They were divorced at that time and she did the cooking to support herself. Lucille’s dad was a widower for 11 years and I remember going there with Mae. They were dating. We have a picture outside of Millers. He was married to her longer than to Lucille’s mother.

336 After they sold their interest to Fred they came to just past Old Settlers. There was a cottage there. They first bought where Dr. Bird is now and then they bought the place next door where Palmers are now which was a little larger and better built. They then sold that and bought the Foothills. (Below the Bridges.) It was called that because of the Footes who owned it. There were two cottages and a house. They changed the name to Tongrila. Lucille’s maiden name is Tong and it is an English name. We have visited the English town of Tong. My father is a descendant of the Revolutionary War and had 26 children by two wives. People were heard to say if “that” kind of people had moved to Glen Lake as they thought it was a Chinese name. Another Mrs. Miller, a portly proper person, was a member of the DAR. I told her that my wife had come from the DAR and she didn’t know what to make of it.

. Tape #1 Side 2 We got a kick out of the remarks about our name Tong. (They have a genealogy book on the family.) When we visited the town near Bradford where you can see a cannon hole in the wall of Cromwell when he went through England. The small, old churches are so beautiful and well cared for.

117. I came up here every summer as he had off in August. My father was a Lutheran minister. The church was very generous to him, giving him a month off. We met in Detroit. For some reason my parents decided to leave the Lutheran church we were members of and to join Redeemer where Lucille’s father was the minister. It was at 15h and Marquette in Detroit. That’s where they met in a young people’s meeting. I never knew her mother, only seeing her once from the back in church. Speaking of my Dad, I remember so well the grocery store in GA. That was a busy place. It had the steps going up, a platform and then steps going up to almost a second level. In that hallway, before you got into the store proper there were slot machines on each side and that was such a temptation to myself and Dorothy Peppler. So we talked it over and decided to save a little money and then play those slot machines. Gambling was an absolute out in our families. We slipped away one day and walked to Lake Street and over to the Hilton Stores. We got into the little hallway and were checking it out to see how to go about gambling. And my Dad was a dickens, so, who should walk in but my father. Laughter. Oh, what an awful moment. He didn’t say a word. We had out backs to him, of course, when he walked between ourselves and some of the others. Whew, he went into the store and we got out of there as fast as we could. He never said a word or cautioned us about the evils of gambling. How many were there? There were at least two slot machines. (EL) I can remember four of them. It was rather common at that time all over the state of Michigan, they were accepted back then. (El) Were they in business simultaneously? I only remember Hiltons from the first time we went up there. I don’t remember that we shopped at Warnes. They were not a very busy store and had a limited stock. I remember going in there for ice cream. I imagine someone has told you they had dances upstairs but they had stopped by them. Lucille has an interesting tape she did with Sarah Johnson from Dunn’s farm. Sarah talks about going to dances. She was a close friend, a dear person and she loved talking about her family and those early days. She used to come in the store.

212. History of the store and coming up. Well, the war was on and it was 10 years before we moved up here. We were coming out of the depression. Lucille and I had moved to Trenton, downriver (St. Clair) from Detroit. There are little towns all the way to Lake Erie (lists them). It’s a long story how we got there. The war changed many lives. I was too old to be drafted but I had graduated from Cass Tech which is in the Detroit public school system. It’s still in existence but not the school that it was then. I took my freshman year at Northwestern high school in Detroit and then my 10-12th at Cass. It was a very good school. In those days, that was the equivalent of your first two years at college. I had this technical background as a result. I had the opportunity of going into the general insurance business before the war and had gone to Trenton with the agency. We were just nicely started in Trenton. Then the war came along and they began rationing gas, tires and food. Finally, it got to the point that they wouldn’t give me enough gas rations to conduct my business as I had to call on clients. They had my records and as I had this technical background, they were pushing me out of the insurance business and into industry somewhere. Everyone had to be involved in the war effort. I went to work in a distillery and did both for a while in Trenton. At that time, none of the distilleries could make whiskey during the war. They had to make alcohol for the war effort, 190 proof alcohol. At first, it was for black torpedoes. The early ones had been run with compressed air which left a bubble of air trail so that it could be seen going through the water. If they saw it, early enough they could avoid it. Then they powered them with alcohol which did not leave a trail. After they had enough alcohol for torpedoes and had a lot stockpiled, they went to black smokeless powder. Before that when a cannon was fired it left a cloud of black smoke. When they began to use alcohol, it did not leave that tell-tailed cloud. So then after that was done is when we decided. During those 10 years every now and then, we’d ask each other, I wonder how it is in Glen Lake tonight? Finally, we decided if we wanted to know that now was the time to make a change and find out. I know our parents thought we were absolutely nuts. A lot of our friends did. My boss when I told him he said we won’t terminate you. We will just give you 6 months leave of absence. I had worked up to purchasing agent which was a nice, interesting job.

317 When we were up here in August of 1947, we were staying in the little cottage where Birds is now. I came down to the little store, by Holdens (Funistrada now) where the parking lot is now. Right next door was this little grocery store, Poulins. Again, it was not very well stocked. I came for milk and a few little things and got chatting with the owner, Poulin (a French name). They owned some cottages where Villa Glen is now. I was telling him how much we liked it and wanted to live here. He said, why don’t you buy this store? During the winter, we negotiated. We came in July of 1948. Our two oldest boys were in school. Lucille went back Labor Day so they could go to school. I stayed and then Lucille made the move all by herself. I wondered how she did it. She came back the later part of September and our boys went to school in Empire. We ran the store that winter. There were times I came in and there was snow on the shelves as the windows didn’t close. It was very, very crude. We lived in the little cottage. The pipes would freeze. There used to be a lot more snow back then. There weren’t many people in the store. We built the new store it the winter of 1948-9. We didn’t by the old building just stock and fixtures, just shelves, no refrigeration. In April, this was finished and we moved over here. The people on this side of the lake didn’t shop much when Holdens first had it and that first winter. But when we moved over here and had electrical refrigeration and one of the first closed freezers in the area. We had he only real soda bar within miles of here. The people on this side of the lake, Mr.Schilling (Dick and George’s Dad), Henry Finke who was president of Michigan Consolidated Gas, Dr.?, Mr. Picard, an attorney, Mr. Hagerty from Gross Point were very good to us. They appreciated a nice, well-stocked store. They patronized us. They were very good to us and I appreciated it so. They were summer people and we depended upon them in those days. El worked for Hamilton’s clothing store for 26 years in the winter. Lucille would run it in the winter. They described where the store was in the house. Lucille had a nice gift business in the area that is now our bedroom. Business had changed at the end. Meijers had come in a few years before. I could see what was happening with those big stores. I had a couple of people who had wanted to by it but I couldn’t in good conscience sell it because they just couldn’t have done it. It was called the Glen Lake Trading Post. We had knotting pine. It was written up in West Michigan tourist magazine. We have such fond memories of those people those years. It was an education. I can remember waking up at night and realizing that the summer people had gone. The local people came. They came from the Bohemian settlement, mostly for beer.

485 I guess I can tell you a little story that had barring on that. There was the Mallory family who lived back in the hills, very hard working. Eddie would work day and night to support his kids. He and his wife did not have any education but were good solid people. They worked, went to bed and worked. I used to feel sorry for them. After Eddie and Sylvia died, the kids hung around this area, not wanting to leave. Betty was in the store after she was grown and I almost cry now when I think of it. She said we used to love to come into your store when we were kids because you used to talk to us. Apparently, people didn’t bother about the local people. Just because you talk to people, oh man.

Tape 2 Side 1 We built up a local business but we never got wealthy. Laughs. In 1978, I retired and said maybe I’ll live another 10 years and now I’m crowding 100. I was born in 1911. We are retired almost as long as we were in business here. I can’t get my mind around that either. Lucille mentioned I worked at Hamiltons, a men’s clothing store. Next to Millikins, two very nice stores. That another thing now I walk up and down Front Street today in TC and I don’t know anybody. In those days, I knew everybody. One Easter we went into Hamiltons to buy clothing for myself and the boys for the three boys. This one Easter the manager, Bill Fleming, came to me and said “Could you help me out?” I am going to be shorthanded on Easter. Easter was big in those days and it was a very busy store anyway. I didn’t know anything about the clothing industry, but I said that I would. I enjoyed the retail, contact with the people. He said when the two salesmen were busy and a customer comes in just talk to them and keep them busy until they will be helped by the salesmen, engage them in conversation. That’s the way it started. The next fall he looked at me one day and said, How about Christmas? I knew it was quiet here and said yes. That was about the second Christmas and that’s how I got started and learned the clothing business. I enjoyed it. I retired from that in 1978 as well.

46. What buildings in Burdickville? What is now the office of the caretaker of Villa Glen just used to be a shed where I kept all of our empty bottles and stuff from the store. Behind it was an icehouse we had with lake ice. Part of the foundation is still there. They had been there before we came. Then the Poulins would go to California in the winter and come back to run the resort in the summer. Another Holden, a brother of Red’s that lived around the corner where Alice Cheek lives now. Later David lived there. Where Fleurlages live Ethel and Asher Atkinson lived until they couldn’t live together, Ethel kicked him out and they got a divorce. Old John Holden used to own the tavern and resort and the little grocery store that he then sold to Poulins. He built a little place where Dekornes used to live. Next door, the Sullivans had a summer cottage. About two years after we moved here John Stalen, who used to be a state senator, bought it and his large family with 10 kids would be here all summer. Dr. Charters was next to Atkinsons. She was here most of the time and he was in and out all of the time. He was an educator. It was Dr. Charters who set up the GI Bill of Rights for Roosevelt just after the war ended. He saw the boys coming back and realized something had to be done. He was on a lot of boards. They were from Champaign, IL. He founded Stephens College in MO. Mrs. Charters was one of the first female college graduates in this country, I think from Princeton. They were very nice people. All of the pines you see across the street Dr. Charters planted during the CCC days by them. They don’t know how they came up here. Mrs. Charters was a little hard to get to know, but he was very outgoing. He was interested in the local people and was a people person. Maybe Dotti told you that in those trees next to LaBacasse was his library. It was a big building for those days. It was lined with bookcases full of books. His house had just been built when we came up here. John Hatlem (Jeanette Wepking’s father) built it and it was well built. Dr. Charters told him what he wanted and had crude plans. He said that he wanted his library upstairs. John caught on quickly that if he was going to have a large room up there for books he was going to have to have a well-supported second floor. In those days, it was unthinkable to use 2x6’s in your walls but he did just to support the library. Later he built the one for his books across the street. There was a small cottage where LaBacasse is. The Grahams built the block building that is there now. Did Dotti tell you that they were coming up here but I don’t know how they got a hold of John Hatlem. He sold them on the idea that he was a contractor and said I’ll build you a restaurant. I remember there was no insulation up above and they had an awful time trying to keep warm that first winter. Fred, Dott’s husband, Johnny Newman and myself said we have to help them insulate it. I remember we were measuring ceiling material, the Celotex 4x8 sheets. We were always running into problems when we were getting down to the other end of the building. Finally, I think it was Fred said something isn’t right. He went out and counted the blocks and the one end was one block short. We have some wonderful characters around here.

181. Another one was Nan Helm. Oh, man, she was a character all right. She would come down here in the wintertime and plant herself on one of those soda bar stools and you could tell which mood she was in. If she planted herself, there you knew you were in for a long haul. In the winter, she would come in with the sleeves from a man’s overcoat pulled up over her legs to keep warm. What would she talk about? She would fantasize a lot. “She worked her imagination on me.” (Lucille) She was a great storyteller. We loved to listen to her. She had no idea. We knew she was fanaticizing. She would talk about quite well known actors and actresses and would talk to them as if they were here. Not like Gloria Swanson, but the next echelon down. One winter, she wanted to go out to Mesa Arizona. Mesa then was just a gas station and a couple of shacks around. This was Nan. She got it into her head that she wanted to go there where it was warm. She used to live in that little place above the Laker Shaker. She kept warm with a wood stove. Someone would cut the wood, haul it up there and just dump it. She would just leave it there and let the snow get on it. She would ask our son, Larry, to come up and help take it in for her. He used to do that and petal papers around here down to Dunn’s Farm. I was driving into Hamiltons daily when she decided she was going to leave here and go to Arizona in the winter. She called me one evening and asked if I would take her into town the next morning. I said yes and asked what was happening and she said she was going to go to Mesa for the winter. She went into town and rode the Greyhound bus to Mesa. She did that for a number of years. She took a large rag and tied it like a hobo with all of her belongings in there. She was out at the road, so I picked her up and off she went, and very matter of factly she would tell the story. She did that until her legs until...Her legs were giving her problems and to this day, I don’t know how she could stand to ride the Greyhound bus. (Lucille) Don’t you remember the first time she had not made any inquiry as to when the bus arrived there. The bus stopped at a gas station and dropped her in the middle of the night. She didn’t know a soul. That was the way she lived, not making any arrangements. She heated with wood. By that time, Larry had graduated from high school and took his first two years at NMC and he used to ride in and out with me to TC. This one time Nan went off to Arizona and we came home from TC and Larry looked up to her house and said “One of Nan’s windows is open.” She had casement windows. I said we’d come back and close the window. This gives you another idea about Nan. When she left that day for Arizona, we stepped through the window with the idea that we’d close the window and leave. We discovered her bed and mattress right up next to the woodstove and the whole edge of the mattress was singed from being so close to the wood stove. We thought she could have died lying with the mattress so near to the fire. We went into the kitchen and here was a fry pan with a few scraps of potato and not much more, maybe a half piece of something else lying on the table. Didn’t bother to pick it up and wash it. That was the way she lived. Just walked away from something.

316. We had such interesting people around here. Did Dotti tell you about the Stages? They were leftovers from the old wood days. There were a few of those people around and they were rough people. One night I woke up and said to myself, what did I get Lucille into? I realized the type of people who lived here after the summer people left. A little gal raised in a parsonage and then to come up here with a lot of drunks around. I enjoyed it. Her father wasn’t aware of it. He didn’t come in the winter. It gave us conversation topics to remember. Laughter. Funnistrada used to be a beer garden. They started before the war when Holdens and Poulins had it. They weren’t too particular who they sold to. 2 o’clock the tavern had to close. She would go around and take orders and then set the six packs out the windows and then after 2 o’clock they could have more beer. I think especially of Larry our middle boy who could be a little rascal. Laughter. It wasn’t until later that he would tell us why he skipped out of the house on Sunday morning before Sunday School. He would go over to the tavern and pick up the money they had been careless with and left around outside. Too drunk to know what they were doing. Saturdays nights got quite wild to the point that the sheriff would just park his car outside of the tavern. There would be fights. In 1949, they sold the tavern to the Ebels and they tightened it up. We remember we used to feel sorry for the little kids. On a cold, snowy Sunday afternoon, they would take them along and leave them waiting in the cold cars. They would have to sit in the cold car all afternoon because they weren’t 21 and couldn’t go in the tavern. Oh, man, we used to feel so sorry for those kids.

407. One man, an interesting character, I don’t think worked a day in his life. Cecil Novtony loved to hunt and fish and he had a great big satchel. It was cloth. No, in those days the men wore those red and black checked coats, Macintow. A hunting coat had a game opening in the back, a opening that buttoned. He loved to come in the store when he had gotten a big fish or a little animal he had shot. He would so proudly hold this little animal up or great big fish. I remember, always out of season, illegally caught.

Side B

Loaf of bread sold for 19 cents. A quart of milk was 23 cents. Cigarettes were 19 cents a pack and then they went up to 21 cents a pack. I remember the first man to come in and when I told him they were 21 cents and pushed them across the counter. He said 21 cents, pushed them back and said that he wasn’t going to pay 21 cents. They did not have much money. They did odd jobs in the summer and not much in the winter. We used to take a lot of groceries up to the Mallory’s so that the kids could eat. (Lucille) I remember when we had the summer cottage and Herman Brammer (Edna’s husband) would deliver ice with his truck. He and his men would cut it in winter. He would come around the lake to sell ice to the cottagers. They sold vegetables at there place so he would bring by fruits and vegetables which would be a big help. He went all around the lake to sell them. That was one of the things we girls did, was rush out to the truck to see what he had. It was a big deal. You could hear the truck coming. Another interesting thing since retirement, people would stop by in the summer. We made a lot of friends and they would come by. We watched a lot of them grow up. You take Dr. Schilling and his first wife, Betty Finke. We watched that summer romance develop and then they were married. People, who come in the store now and were just little people then, can come in and remember where everything was in the store. They love to go around and say I remember, I remember. But the adults who come by are completely lost and nothing is right with them when they come in here. The little kids can remember everything. We put out a dock at the end of the road so they could come over in their boats. That was a big adventure as they did not have cars. It was a big deal for the kids to come. I’m telling you the story about the little people coming back and telling their children “now this is the store I have been telling you about.” They look at them and say, “This is a store, you must be nuts,” because stores today are these huge super markets. This one little boy, Pat’s little boy Peter, we’d hear in the morning come skipping over. We’d hear him come in the back door and say to the bubble gum machine, “Good Morning Mr. Bubble Gum Machine.” That was so precious. As he got older, he would try to bum coke off of the truck drivers. Every pop truck and 5/10 cents truck he would come running over and try to get something. We had a road go around the back of the store to unload in the back into the basement where we stored things. Thomsma. Twin DeKorne girls: one married a Thomsma and the other a Borma. They had identical cottages down here. There were five Thomsma boys. Who was Peter’s father? They used to call the Rycamp cottage next door, Par Five. There were five brothers and they were golfers. They sold their interest to Ryscamp and moved down the way. Then Dave Thomsma bought that place and then gave it to his three boys, and they called it Par Three. Tom (married to Ginny) may have bought David’s interest out and Jack wasn’t interested anymore. Jack went out west and became a cowboy. Pat Rasbow (?) now owns it and is part of the family. That was quite a cottage. They were strict Christian Reformed people. (Blank space on tape). We were going to Bethlehem Lutheran at that time.

117. Poor House may have been the farm in Maple City. John Helm had a store on the lake. The road come down to it and then turned right and went in front of the cottages up quite a ways. He takes out pictures and shows where blacksmith’s building was, two mills a (Nessen and ), and a dock. In the wintertime and you go to the end of the road near Charters. the dock and explained that there is a tripod in the lake of large logs cabled together and a huge iron ring on top where they would anchor the raft they used to tie the tugs loads together You can only seen if when the lake is frozen and quite clear. If you take a magnifying glass to look at this picture, there is not a tree left on that hill by Inspiration Point. I think that tree is still behind Fosters. Carl Healy used to own it and Fosters bought it in 1950’s. Houses had the cottages before Van Vlecks. Tom House, an Englishman, was married to Eileen Charters, daughter of Dr. Charters. They built a number of those cottages and sold them to Van Vlecks.

238. John McCormick. I can tell you a story about him. Where his house is, it was Leonard Brown’s and there is a public access. A place on this side, the Cook place. George Cook and his wife took in John when he was a young boy, as his folks were killed in an automobile accident. George was his uncle. They told him about Glen Lake. He was all primed. They came from Cincinnati and arrived very late at night. This first summer he arrived, they arrived late and unpacked and went to bed. John couldn’t sleep as he was thinking about the lake. He had been born and raised around Ohio lakes. He got up early and had to go out to see the lake, which was calm, He walked out into the water before he realized it was lake water. He had never seen clear water. I remembered him having grown up and graduated from college. He took a first job selling printer’s ink and saw they made more money selling paper. He got into that work selling stationary to printer’s shops and that’s all he did. Our son Larry did the same thing. He graduated from Michigan in botany and took a job selling chocolate temporarily and that’s all he did and sold over a million dollars in chocolate.

305. Lardies? TC Lardies were related. One of the gals runs the office at Max’s appliance. Frank McFarlane used to walk all around the hills and came in with Barbara to talk about it. Then he bought the hill. Of course, our boys grew up here and thought the woods were theirs. One day after he bought it. Larry, Bob and Tom House’s boy, Garth, were roaming the woods and Frank found them and they never heard language like that. “You stay off of my property.” Faust died soon after we got here.

306. Margaret Carlson Bates was a teacher at New Trier and was principal when she retired. She had a nice life down there. Some of the people were quite generous to her when she retired. She showed me some of the expensive jewelry. She was born and raised in Maple City in the old Bloom cottage near Ericksons where you go up the hill. .I have to go back even further. Michigan State used to have a summer camp up here too and U of M too like lots of them did . It was not far down the road where Fleurlages is. There was a young man at the camp who was interested in Margaret. But her mother was the kind that “no guy was good enough for her daughter.” So Margaret was a spinster until she was 65. That same fellow became a successful dentist in Birmingham. Many years later they finally ended up together up here.

The glass negatives, given to El by Nan Helm, has one picture of a rooming house across from LaBacasse. The young boy on the porch is Margaret’s uncle, Burt Gardner. Also Eric and Amal Johnson.

Margaret Dunn Baxter (William) Martin family

Louis Gersh? from Cedar was a craftsman who built some of the log cabins in Burdickville.

Maynard Richardson and Waldenmayer.

Nan couldn’t drive but got a car but was not able to it backup.

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