Michiganders – People talked about

Michiganders

Some thirty miles off the Lake Michigan shore at Charlevoix, isolated Beaver Island is rich in folk lore about French trappers and Irish lumberjacks. A cumbersome ferry plies between the island and the mainland, except in midwinter when dog sleds haul supplies across the frozen waters.

The first rollicking voyageurs who came to Beaver Island practically destroyed the industrious beavers, and on their heels came the boisterous Irish intent on ravishing the virgin timber. They left the land denuded as a molting pullet a barren condition that existed until a slow, steady regrowth restored the sylvan charm of the island. Thanks to those ancient despoilers, a wealth of stories has lived through the years, and as they’re told by the present generation of island people there’s some suspicion that the tales have improved with age.

Visitors are attracted by an ill-kept enclosure not much bigger than a pint-sized living room and boasting but a few markers. It’s identified as the Protestant cemetery, resting place of the very few departed worthies who were not French or Irish folk, and ardent Catholics. Local lore has it that these few turned Protestant to escape early mass on the Lord’s Day.

Naturally, the course of conversation turns to Irish wakes and somehow always gets around to Jerry McCarthy’s. In logging days, a wake was a mighty important occasion-on a par with any National Democratic convention. When winter held this northland in its icy grip, a wake would be a protracted event to boot.

When Jerry departed this earth and Tom Hogan failed to join the rest of the mourners in paying his respects, two of the soberest among them set out to find him. On reaching his cabin, there they found poor old Tom slumped in his chair, dead as a mackerel. The mourners decided between them that it wouldn’t be right or proper to hold two wakes at one and the same time . . = that wouldn’t be respectful to the deceased. So … they left Tom’s body in his cold cold cabin and went back to bury Jerry.

Once those services were over and the mourners recovered enough to stir themselves … old Tom was “officially” found to have joined the dear departed … he was thawed out, laid out, and given his own Irish jamboree.

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