Nancy Blackwell

Nancy Blackwell: 1993 taped interview w/ Bill Spurgeon’s son; paraphrased in 2013 by Ann Garceau

I lived in Detroit with my mother and father. This cottage (#797) had always been in my mother’s family. We came down here and began to spend our summers when I was 2 or 3 years old. My mother’s family name was Hoops. There’s a sign on the barn that says 1896, I believe. My mother, who is going to be 100 this year in February, lived here as a baby/as a young girl. My grandfather was an importer of tea and coffee, and he lived in Chicago. He had 3 children. He built this cottage, and he would send them down on the (B&O) train from Chicago. They came with a hired man and a hired woman to take care of them, and then he would come down on the train on the weekends. They grew their own vegetables and they put some things down on the train like oranges and flour, things they needed – staples which they kept in the cellar, and that’s how they started coming here. Nancy really doesn’t know how he found this area. He was from Goshen originally so he probably always knew that this lake was here. There were not a lot of cottages here – the Lilly cottage (#1) was here and the Beemer cottage (#794) was already here – it’s one of the oldest. While this house was being built, he rented a cottage down on Willow Grove – one of those two old, old ones –kind of right in the middle.

I think I can remember the first time I ever saw this cottage – I was very small and the grass was very tall; no one had lived here for a long time. I can remember standing in that tall grass and looking out at that lake – it was very quiet, and my mother and her father were trying to clean this cottage out. My paternal grandfather had an old Model T car, and he brought her a pair of gloves, and they wouldn’t let me come in here because the house was in such bad shape – it had been rented. They were carrying things out, putting them out in the yard to clean this house up. Other really early ones, as I remember, because I was an only child, how quiet it was. I was kind of lonesome. There weren’t many boats on the lake. Uncle Jess Sargent’s the Falcon would go out periodically and you would see that. If I would go down there and wave to him on the pier, he would come in and get me. I remember it being very, very quiet – rather pristine, not many children around. We lived in Grosse Point (MI) at that time; my Dad would come down on the weekends. My mother and I really lived here by ourselves all summer. We came mainly because of the polio epidemic that was going on in Detroit. I think that was the impetus to come down here and open the cottage. For a couple of years we stayed at the South Shore (Inn) – maybe before we opened the cottage in the spring – I can’t remember because I was pretty little. We also used to stay here at the Sargent Hotel.

When my mother was small, she grew up here and they spent every summer. Then my grandfather died and my grandmother moved back to Goshen – she never cared a lot about it (the house) so she rented it. She didn’t pay much attention to it; she just rented it to whoever wanted it, and it just fell into terrible shape. When my father came and brought my mother and myself here, it had no electricity (1932) it still had the gas light fixtures – very primitive. He had it wired for electricity, and I’m sure he had a lot to do to make it livable. There was indoor plumbing. I remember the kitchen had an enormous stove with a lot of doors in it. There was only one bathroom; there were 6 bedrooms at that time. I can’t really tell you more about it. This old house has evolved so slowly and changed so much. I have old pictures of it, and it looks quite different. There’s a windmill back there, and there was an ice house. Of course, the barn and there was a “playhouse” next to it – a room off the side of the barn where the black man who came down from Chicago lived out there. The woman who came with them to do the cooking and take care of the house lived inside – she lived upstairs. The time frame would be around 95 years ago when her mother was 5 or 6 years old.

Nancy and her mother drove down from Grosse Point. A lot of it was during WWII, and we’d have to drive 35 mph. It was long trip at 35 mph! As I remember, we came through the Irish Hills (in MI); it was very hilly and pretty, and we often picked up a serviceman – during WWII that was ok to do that. We saved our gas rationing tickets so that we could come, and then we stayed here – once we got here, we stayed here. We came quite early in the spring and we left pretty late in the fall. In those days, my mother just simply told the school that I was leaving or I was coming back, and they didn’t care – it didn’t make any difference.

It was kind of lonesome; because I was an only child – it was just my mother and myself – I can remember there weren’t many children to play with. The first children I can remember were the Newell (sp.?) boys next door with 3 boys and Bob and Gene Newsom (sp.?) down there. I just had little boys to play with; never had a girl until I got to be almost a teenager. I ran around just like little boys; a precious story about her father’s advice on bathing suit on tape. We spent half the time swimming. We all had wooden rowboats; we’d turn them over, get underneath them
and have wars and run into each other until the oxygen was so awful underneath that we’d get terrible headaches. We’d run up and down this (North) shore; we’d play out at night with flashlights; we’d play a lot of hide and seek; we entertained ourselves a lot. We also played back behind the railroad tracks in the woods. We used to go back there and make cougies (sp.?) – those are wood houses, and we’d take old throw rugs of your mothers and fun books. We’d go over in the morning and stay until dinnertime. We made our own boats; I made my own first sailboat out of an old rowboat, and I could go with the wind and I could go all the way to the east end of the lake. Then I had to row home; that took all day too.

I remember the Van Anda family and his boys – my mother wouldn’t let me swim down there because that channel goes under the piers and it got so deep. I remember Laura and Jess Sargent very, very well and their daughter, Hazel, who ran the post office. The big treat was to go down there with a nickel and get a pop out of that cooler. If you really had money you could play the pinball machine. I remember the Ragsdales very, very well; your Dad (Spurgeon); and the Newell boys. The Kinnesons (sp.?) lived next door to us; he was the editor of the, I believe, Goshen Democrat paper, and then they sold it (cottage) to the Schrocks (Art) they were a sweet older couple – they lived very, very quietly, fished and played cards –he built an aluminum fishing boat which became Starcraft – needless to say did very well. I remember Mr. Lilly every year would have a different kind of boat – beautiful boats – one particular year he had a Dutch canal boat that was a baby blue, it was a big, kind of round Dutch canal boat with bench seats, painted light blue on the outside and seemed to me like it had red roses all around it. Mr. Lilly would sail that boat up and down the lake; he would stand back in his suit and tie and take his guests for a ride. I remember the excursion boat; as I got a little older I remember the Chris Crafts, but there weren’t a lot of them. People didn’t ski; they had surfboards. I can remember it being kind of wild; we used to play in the channels a lot; they were wild and overgrown and really fun to explore; there weren’t any houses back in there so we’d go by canoe, pick grapes and play and turtle.

The neighborhood was probably most of this north shore down to the hotel. When I was 8, 9, or 10, the Newell boys were here and Hugh Newsom and his family was here. They were all summer people. Remembered Bishop’s boat company with the track going out in the water where all boats went in and out. Seldom went into town; kind of made do; grew up on (things like) peanut butter sandwiches and scrambled eggs for dinner. After a while there was a little grocery store back here across the road run by a German couple named Brinkman, I believe, who built that. You could get bread and milk, cream, bakery goods – I think she made them – that kind of thing. thing. (Referred to) house right across road, there was an old house there, and the Brinkmans built a little store. Kids would tease them because they were German; at that time, anyone who was German was suspect.

I continued to come out here every summer until I got married. Chap and I went to Georgia when he was in service at Ft. Benning and then to Columbus, IN where we had babies and they were in school. I just came to visit my parents; they continued to live here. We gradually came more and more; came on our vacations. When Chap retired we came to live here fulltime.

(Back to growing up years as a teenager – 1940s) I got a couple of girls to play with – Stephenson girls moved in – it was wonderful – Beemer’s cottage; Jane was my age and Kay was 2 years older; there was an older son. Lake became busier; there were more boats; more socializing going on – started to date; more to do in Syracuse – played putt-putt golf, went to the Pickwick movie. Asked about the Pickwick fire – “I don’t know whether I remember it, or I just remember hearing about it.”

I do remember going to the Pickwick with my family; it was a lovely place to go and eat; it was beautiful; I remember, as a child, going upstairs, over the Pickwick, there was a big, art gallery that belonged to Major Marsh; I remember going up there with my mother because he was a friend of hers and that also burned. I remember going over to the Spink Hotel with my mother and father when I was a little girl; it was so pretty ‘cause there were lights and music would come across the lake and we’d go over there and have dinner; my Dad would dance with me and I thought it was wonderful – very glamorous; it was a glamorous, pretty hotel. There were a lot of hotels around the lake – the South Shore was very pretty, a nice place to go. There were lots of restaurants around the lake. At one time, there were 4 Chinese restaurants (successively). I remember Louies – the old Louies – on the south side near the South Shore Hotel; the families went, particularly on Sundays, for dinner.

I got my driver’s license at 14 years old (in MI) – learner’s permit at 13. I learned to drive in this back yard – it all wrapped around the trees, up next to the barn. We used to drive around the lake; I can’t remember the name of that drive in, but we used to drive through that drive in to see who was there; we also would to go over to between here and Milford and play in the gravel pit – had big sand piles back there. Used to play in empty barns. As a teenager on dates, we pretty much played putt-putt or went to the Pickwick; there was a skating rink across the lake and it became a dance hall – my Dad wouldn’t let me go. I guess I went once or twice –that was an occasion. There also was a drive in, but I wasn’t allowed to do that either. The putt-putt was where Turtle Bay condos are now. There was a riding stable across the street from the Frog (Tavern) – the stable is still there (1993) – pretty red building – kind of looks like a stable –someone’s home now. I rode a lot as a child – my Dad would take me over there to ride 2 or 3 times a week. He also took the Newell boys and myself once a summer into Chicago, and we would go and spend the whole day, go to a ballgame, have lunch and dinner; we always got a piece of sporting equipment to come home – I think my Dad wanted a boy.

There were 3 things that my mother told me never to do and those were the things that we couldn’t get done fast enough: 1) Never to go to Bonar Lake because it didn’t have a bottom. Well, had to get to Bonar Lake and see that lake that didn’t have a bottom; we used to drop stones in it, and they did disappear – we just couldn’t imagine how that could hold water without a bottom. 2) Never play up here at the railroad track because they would leave cars back here, and she said there would be hobos. We’d get back there and look in those cars and hope we’d found one. I can’t remember what the third one was.

We spent a lot of time fishing with those old cane fishing poles. Fish were easy to catch; the lake was very pretty, very clean and very natural then. There were even some species you don’t see anymore: lots of small snails were all over the seawalls; they kept the lake clean – those are gone; used to have menageries in big laundry tubs and we would see how many species we could pick out of the lake and how big they would be – we’d put frogs and toads; turn the rocks over and find little, bitty catfish and little calico bass and things. There were many, many clam shells – they were just thick, but they weren’t empty – they all had clams in them; now you very rarely find a clam shell with a clam in it. In the morning you would get up and it would be so clear and so quiet that fish would jump constantly – they’d jump all day. You don’t very often see fish jump today – once in a great while. The lake was so clear; you could go out in the middle and look down and you could see down, however deep it was, you could see perfectly on the bottom. There weren’t boats; there wasn’t anything to disturb it; there weren’t that many people to pollute it; it wasn’t all stirred up all the time.

We used to go to church in that little, Church of the Little Flower, Catholic Church. I would row over in my boat to go, either by myself or meet my parents over there. I loved to row my boat over there.

I came home and told my father that I had my first job – maybe 11 or 12 – I was so excited –“Aunt Laura Sargent was going to let me change beds at the hotel.” My Dad said that employment was over, forget it. I did sell bait; I’d run the hose in the backyard and dig up worms. Dad came down from Detroit one time and I had a bait stand; that didn’t last very long either. That’s about the extent of my employment.

I lived in Grosse Point until I was about 14; then my father was transferred to Indianapolis, so I spent my last 2 years of high school in Indianapolis, but we still came here in the summertime; then I went to IU (we got married after I graduated from IU) and still spent my summers here, met Chap at IU and he got a job working for Standard Oil Co., which was my Dad’s business, in Ft. Wayne so he started spending most of his time here too – that would have been 1953/4.

Most of the hotels all burned at one time, loved the Wawasee Depot – heartbroken when they took that away, now sits on road to Goshen (33, this side of Benton) and a family lives in it. I do remember when the Johnson Hotel nearly fell into the lake – the Annex was down in front of the actual hotel and looked like it was nearly falling into the water. I remember when the Shrimp Boat (Channel Marker) was a root beer stand; Mrs. Connolly’s Dress Shop – stairway up there was next to Klink’s Meat Market – I remember as a child, it was old and dark and absolutely jammed with clothes, it was the only place you could buy things. Went to the Spink with my Dad every weekend and he would have a manicure and a haircut – I would either get my hair cut or get a shampoo; I loved to go over there and it was Wilfred Hodler and his wife Thelma who ran the barbershop at the Spink and then they had one across the road, in back of Van Andas – Wilfred just died last summer; he always lived here (I think Nancy said he was originally from Hope).I remember going down to Mrs. Lilly’s sister- had a gift shop (I believe the shop was housed in Mrs. Lilly’s sister’s house and owned by the Rock sisters) – the first house with the white fence – the gift shop was just beautiful – all these pretty things – I just loved to go down there.

I remember various people around the lake who were friends of my parents: The Coppes’s lived here from the beginning of time – Pickwick; the Rigdons lived across the lake in that little red and white cottage – they lived here for many years. I spent a lot of time sailing as when I was a little girl; the first one I made out of a rowboat, the second one was a Nipper, the third on was a Sea Scow, the fourth one was a Post (?), and now I’m an old lady and I have that little Sunfish.

Nancy’s grandparents lived in the house with their 3 children; they put in their own vegetables; my mother had a pair of raccoons as a pet; they had a horse and pony and horsecart; spent their evenings at home? I’m sure they did – I don’t think there was any place much to go; it was strictly family-oriented. My grandfather did go to the St. Louis World’s Fair, took my mother with him, went on train and they bought a car and they drove it back (Nancy has a picture). (here at the lake) It was all a family thing. They were very dependent on the 2 people who came here to help them. My grandmother lived here by herself – my grandfather probably came on weekends; she was lame. They had a sailing canoe; they had all kinds of boats – my grandfather, not only was an importer of tea and coffee, which was his main business, but he had a launch factory and he had a per (I couldn’t understand word) factory as well. I think he was an entrepreneur; I think he bought up businesses that were in trouble and ran them. He knew how to do a lot of things. He was a beekeeper. He was very interested in a lot of things. He knew Mr. Lilly very well.

When I was a little girl, thinking of summers, it was just my mother and myself, except when my Dad would come on the weekends which was a real treat, he didn’t make it every weekend. It was kind of lonesome, kind of quiet. The Newell boys; sometimes a renter would have a child; Hugh Newsome, a friend of mine, had a little boat with a little outboard motor and we used to play in that boat every year. As I got to be a teenager there was more to do – drive ins, movies. People along here were pretty family oriented – they played a lot of bridge, lot of them were really into sailing, there was a lot of time spent swimming and just being together – having picnics, that kind of thing. My Dad loved bringing people down from Detroit as house guests; he loved entertaining; we would have dinner parties; he liked to do that; he was very proud of this cottage – he loved it. My father was from Goshen and that’s how he met my mother who was from Chicago; she was living out here; he came out to a house party and met her and they were married in front of the fireplace.

Personalities: I remember when Bud Abbott and Lou Costello stayed at the Spink and we went over to see them; I remember when Lou Costello kissed me – I thought that was the most wonderful thing that could happen; I remember being very impressed that they were here; I was just a little girl. I remember my Dad knew politicians – one was Bill JJenner (Nancy thought he was a Republican Representative) and one was Homer Capehart; I remember them being in this house. An interesting person that came to visit my Dad and Mother was from Detroit –Lynn Dahlinger (sp.?) – Henry Ford’s mistress. She was the Evangeline you see in the movie of Henry Ford’s life. She was my Auntie Lynn; I always knew her as Auntie Lynn. I remember going to Dearborn, MI, where she lived; she was his secretary for years; she had a beautiful home up next to the Ford estate; and I remember going there and I remember Auntie Lynn coming down here to visit – she and my Dad would come down from Detroit; she drove a, 4 or 5 Lincoln Zephyr and my Dad had a Buick; they would see who could get here first; they drove down here and they used to laugh about coming down here at 75 miles an hour. I guess you could say she was a celebrity.

I remember, as a young girl, a motorboat going over and I don’t know how many people drowned – maybe 4 or 5 (may have been Wawasee Storm story); they eventually washed up; I remember the plane going back and forth all week looking for them which was ominous.

When we were married, Chap went to the service – Ft. Benning. I was not here for several years at the start of my married life; then we were only here once or twice in a summer because Chap worked in Columbus; we had children – it wasn’t easy to get up here. I did notice the first year after I had been gone 3 or 4 years, and I absolutely couldn’t believe there were seagulls. I could not believe it! People would say we had always had them and I would say, ”No, there were not.” Of course, we have seagulls because they are cleaning up our environment. Yes, I did notice a big difference (from growing up) – all the boats, change in the environmental look of the lake because of more use – I would notice because I’m interested in that – clams, no snails, not many minnows any more. Common to see good-sized fish from the pier – don’t see that much; we have a lot of chop on the weekends; we don’t sail on the weekends. Very quiet then – notice how many people live here now and how crowded things have become. Syracuse went from a little crossroads town; then they began to build the strip (Village).

Restaurants: As a young girl – Louie’s, Spink Hotel in the evening; South Shore dining room was very nice; little Syracuse Café – wallpaper store now – probably ate there when we were opening up and didn’t have anything to eat. Foo and Faye was a wonderful thing – everybody loved Foo and Faye’s Restaurant; then there was the Pagoda and the Mandarin Inn. Little restaurant down at the east end of the lake; had a number of names – it was the Guide, was the Rhinelander and had a name before either of those – remembered going once in a while. Remember the Cove that was down on Ogden Island – that was later when I was a young girl with my mother and having fish. Used to go to Goshen to the Bungalow. Her 3 Goshen cousins would come out to stay with them at the lake.

I remember these cottages were pretty primitive like ours – just summer houses; miss little Newell cottage – had a name with Wren in it because he loved wrens and roses – have torn it down and built house; most have glassed-in porches, added heat, more modernized. Old Lilly cottage is more like ours – awnings up and down in bad weather, no heat, has an old cellar underneath it. Most of these houses had names – Linger Lodge – my Grandfather named our cottage. Feighner’s house (#795) was Snug Harbor. Tillman’s house (#786) was Y Kik (sp.?)– don’t know what that came from. Beemer’s cottage (#794) was then the Gorham (sp.?) cottage. Put names up on front of cottages; screened-in porches, grass rugs on floor mostly, rattan or old wicker furniture, iceboxes on back porches – ice man came in a truck to deliver ice block once a week; put card in window. Someone delivered milk, bakery truck came around when I was a little girl – we’d run to meet him; drove my mother crazy; he’d run a tab for us which made my mother insane – we treated everybody who was here. We spent a lot of time reading; we had stacks of funny books – drinking pop and reading those funny books. We were all on a party line; those old crank phones – we had 2 longs and a short when I was a little girl. Probably got a dial phone before I was a teenager. Those stairs have been there since this house has been there. I believe there once was a latticed arch over them.

Has a scrapbook that her mother kept. Chinese Gardens – swans; picture of grandmother in launch; paths in front of house; no seawall; big rock; Buttermilk Pt. – got all dressed up to go there; Rigdon cottage – red roof; Lake Papakeechie – drive over into Hoss Hills before lovely roads – just trails; gaff rigged boats; Crow’s Nest; Sargent Hotel –every room had a screened-in porch; a picture of Major Marsh in his garden; car that bought in St. Louis with mother in back; Delmar; grandmother sitting in a chair upstairs; windmill behind; sailing canoe; how they kept launch; long dresses; Hay cottage (#793) before it burned; pony cart; Major Marsh again – had a big art collection; a family story about Delmar bringing Cookie home in the wheelbarrow.