The Great Lakes

Growing up a Catholic school kid is the ‘70’s was pretty cool since we got days off that the public schools didn’t.  I couldn’t tell you what they were, now.  The Ascension? The Assumption? The Immaculate Conception? I don’t recall. What I remember, though is my Grandma Madeline as a superintendent and teacher at Sunbury School – a since closed small country public school in Illinois. When one of those days off would come up, I would spend the night before at my Grandma’s house and go into school with her the next day.

There is nothing like school on your day off.  I’d play with chalk, write on the blackboard. Poke around the office. Loved free use of the gym and all the balls and equipment that came with it. And sometimes I would just sit in on her middle school classes, drawing, reading, or actually paying attention.

The one lesson that I remember was on the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway. She showed a movie. And what a rare treat it was back in those days. No VCR.  It was a reel of film loaded on a projector. All about each of the Great Lakes and the creation of the St. Lawrence Seaway that allowed ships to go from Duluth, Minnesota all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. This was fascinating stuff for a young boy who generally chose to flip through an atlas when it came time to read.

Our inland watery border looked so inviting and yet so remote to me. Lake Superior might as well be the Caspian Sea. When would I ever venture to Northern Minnesota or to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula? Naturally, that distance adds to its allure and mystical aura. Lake Michigan, right up in Chicago didn’t have the same air. I saw it all the time.

 

But with the others, I could picture myself sailing off in a sort of Lord of the Rings type quest through the fog of Lake Superior to Isle Royale encountering fantastic beasts and having adventures. And now, thanks to a wedding in Northern Michigan, it was really happening. Not the fantasy. Right here in reality. And the reality was with three kids and my wife in a blue mini-van, but it would be no less an adventure.