Mr. and Mrs. Otto Fricke, interviewed July 12th, 1976
R: Ron Kuiper
O: Mrs. Otto Fricke
F: Otto Fricke
A: ?
R: I know that most of these don’t mean anything to you at all. But this…
O: That top pictures looks familiar.
R: All right, let’s, uh, put them out here.
O: Oh, these are all from Grand Haven.
R: Yes.
F: Who is this?
A: That’s a woman named Sarah Monroe Howlett.
R: That’s before your day. That’s the Spring Lake Hotel.
A: She’s the wife of a man named Nelson R. Howlett who was a lumberman here in Grand Haven.
R: Okay, now, that’s the one that Paul Springer said that you might know something about. There’s a big “W” on there. Does that mean anything to you? I don’t think that it can mean, you know, I think that had to be before you. Pictures had to do with 1810…
F: Had, had to because there’s a boat with a canopy on it. And there’s another one with a canopy on it. And there’s the Coast Guard pulling a surf boat right there.
R: And the old fish nets are there.
F: Yep.
R: The racks. You remember them.
O: Otto, here’s Fruitport pavilion with a canopy on a boat here.
F: Oh, that’s before my time, but I, we used to go dancing there an awful lot.
R: Yeah, that’s the Pamona House. At the, at Fruitport?
F: Yes. R: How’d you get there?
F: Anyway we could, mostly by car. And we used to go there with the Inter-Urban. We’d take the, uh, a boat to Grand Haven and, uh…
R: That’s the dance hall at the pavilion at Highland Park. Do you remember that?
F: Yeah. Sure.
R: Did you ever dance up there?
F: Yeah. You have too.
O: Where?
F: At Fruitport.
O: Oh, yeah. I just got through saying I wish I had a dollar for every mile I danced there.
F: The old barn.
A: That’s the one at Highland Park, isn’t that?
R: I’m not sure if that, I’m not sure where that is.
F: We danced there many times at the barn. We’d go over there on the Alabama and come back on the Inter-Urban. That’s the round-trip ticket.
R: At, at Fruitport?
F: At Fruitport and the barn, both.
R: Where is the barn? Where was the barn?
F: Well, the barn was right, uh…
O: Right back of the Ki-Ki hut (?).
F: Yeah. Right where they got most of the park today.
A: I saw something about that in a 1924 newspaper I was reading today.
R: Remember that?
A: About the barn opening up for the summer.
O: John J. and Anna Danhoff, Otto.
F: Danhoff? O: 1908, a letter.
F: I put a seawall in there for those people. In, uh, 1954. I don’t remember this.
R: Well, that was the, the, uh…the little refreshment stand that Inter-Urban ran, down there on the beach.
F: Yeah.
R: And I think that may have been before you got here. Here are some of the dummy line cars, the open ones.
F: Yeah.
R: I don’t know if you remember those or not.
F: I remember in Muskegon, the street cars in Muskegon, but not the Inter-Urban. Was this the Inter- Urban?
R: Yes, or maybe even before the Inter-Urban. Before the Inter-Urban there was the Grand Haven Street Railway Company. And, uh, they became, they joined up with the Inter-Urban in 1905.
F: Yeah.
R: All right, there’s a good picture of the beach in 1809 from Highland Park with the, the tracks…
F: Yeah, that run right on down past Tahoka (?) hill.
R: Yeah.
O: That would be a good one to show to the DNR if there’s any beach there.
F: Yeah, you know, the DNR every once in a while, or the Corps of Engineers comes up, “Well, what’d you build your house so close to the beach for?” Well, now, uh, I wouldn’t say that was very close to the beach, would you? Houses are right up on the hill here, right now. And there’s the old railroad track. The telephone poles are hanging right up there with nothing to hold them up anymore. How about that?
R: Here’s the Highland, that’s the old hotel. That, of course, was there not too long ago. Now, what year did you come to Grand Haven?
O: ’42.
R: ’42. You wouldn’t know him. He was dead by then. He was a lumberman and he was also the guy who started that Grand Haven Street Railway Company, before the Inter-Urban bought it.
A: Stephen L. Monroe.
R: Um, there’s downtown Grand Haven, when the Inter-Urban is running. O: 1908.
R: Here. The Fannie M. Rose. Did you ever hear of the Fannie M. Rose?
F: Yeah, I’ve heard of it, but that’s all. I never seen it.
R: That was before you too.
F: Yeah.
R: I’m sure of that. The May Graham too, was before you.
F: Didn’t we pull that, didn’t we, uh, we got the old May Graham out of the, uh, dredging out at Barretts.
O: Was that part of the old Graham?
F: Yeah. And I think, uh, Barretts, or the, uh, rudder, yeah, the rudder’s over there at Barretts. We dug that out and throwed it on the beach. When I put that dock in for, uh, Jack Jordan.
R: May Graham. My neighbor, Harry Lock, I live on the river up there a ways, next to Harry Lock, has the captain’s bow of the May Graham. And doesn’t Harold Swartz have some of their, the lights?
A: Yeah, I think he does.
R: Running lights of the May Graham.
A: You know Harold Swartz?
O: No…
A: He lives in Spring Lake.
F: Oh, Spring Lake.
R: You’d enjoy knowing him.
A: He’s got all sorts of old sections of ships and, uh, a whole bunch of stuff in his basement of, uh, lights and, um, other nautical stuff.
R: There. You know that one. That’s the old Alabama.
O: Whereabouts in Muskegon did you live?
A: I grew up on Williams Street just off Apple near…
F: The Alabama was in town till just the other day.
R: The hull. F: Bill Steinders (?) bought it and he’s using it for a barge now.
R: That’s a pity, isn’t it? That’s a shame, that nice old boat.
F: Yeah, but this, the Alabama I rode on many, many times.
R: People do a little partying on that boat?
F: Yeah, I guess they did, but, for the most part, when I was, uh, back and forth on it, it was just passenger freight. I’d go from Muskegon to Grand Haven and from Grand Haven to Chicago.
A: It was docked in, uh, Black Lake for years and years there, wasn’t it?
F: Oh, yeah.
A: The old Alabama. I used to fish there when I was a kid.
F: The Alabama and the North and South America laid up there.
R: Yes. I don’t know what boat that is.
A: They got a life ring now from the Alabama barge hanging up in the Ti-A-Few, with all the guys’ names on it.
R: That you don’t remember, I’m certain, but that’s supposed to be the dance band that played in that dancing pavilion I showed you a while ago, the one that was at Highland Park.
O: Oh, the old barn was the place to dance. They used to have all big name bands come in there. They had a spring floor in there.
A: Spring?
O: Spring floor. Boy, that was an easy floor to dance on. There’s no…
R: Okay. Coast Guard, is that what that is?
F: Yeah, that surf boat.
R: Surf boat?
F: Yep. You can launch them right off the beach.
R: Just for amusement, not…
F: Oh, no, no, no. They used that for the rescue service.
R: I see. F: I don’t think that’s Coast Guard. I think that’s Lifesaving Station. Coast Guard took it over. The Lifesaving Station used to be run by the state, paid by the state.
R: Um-hum.
F: And all they had then was, uh, to pull a surf boat, they launched it right off the beach with a beach car. This here looks like it’s a lifeboat drill. They’d capsize a boat and right it again and, it’s got self- bailers and away.
R: Okay. Now. Here’s a Crosby liner. I don’t know which one it is. I can’t identify it, but…
F: I don’t think it’s the E.G. Crosby. E.G. Crosby was a little smaller than that. Could be. But that was before my time cause they had a piece of canvas on it. They used that to steady them up on a sea, give them roll at the back.
R: What, what about that, that crew business, uh, did you used to be on a crew team?
F: We had one in Muskegon.
R: Did you row competitively? Did you…
F: Oh, no. No, we just rowed for the hell of it.
R: Just went out and rowed.
F: I used to like to pull an oar myself, for the hell of it, that is.
R: Yeah.
F: But today, it’s hard to get anybody to do that.
R: Yeah, they’re starting to do that at universities. University of Michigan’s always done it. Grand River does it, or Grand Valley, I should say.
A: …Sarah Monroe, this woman…
O: Oh, yeah.
A: ...was her great grandmother.
R: That’s an interesting picture. And, I haven’t found anybody who knows exactly what it was yet, except, it looks to me like it’s about at the base of Washington Street. I see Dewey Hill behind there.
F: Yeah.
R: And, uh, I think the Boyden-Akeley Shingle Mill was down there. But that was before all of our, before all of us. It’s an interesting picture. That was given to us by Edith Danhoff and her sister. Nice picture. O: Which sister?
A: Her sister Alice.
(Skip in tape)
A: …of the schooners, the lumber, the lumber schooners.
F: The only lumber schooner that I remember was the Lyman Davis and the Our Son.
A: The Our Son was…
F: The Our Son was in and out of…
A: Went down in 1930.
F: Yeah. She was in and out of Muskegon quite regularly. And I used to go down to the pier and fish like other kids did and we saw her go in and out. She was a fore and after and had a raffey on the fore-mast. Square sailing boat.
A: They carried a crew of about six men, did they?
F: No.
A: There were more.
F: They carried three and four.
A: Three or four men.
F: Yeah. She was a slaver, you know. They didn’t make money enough to carry too many, much of a crew.
A: Uh-huh.
F: And, uh, that’s just a load of beef deal.
A: Well, when she went down in the, and the crew, I remember reading about, different stories about it, and very old, old men at the time, bunch of old Scandinavians and, uh, the rescue was almost miraculous.
F: It was. If it hadn’t been for, uh, I can’t think of his name now, with a steam boat. They would have lost the whole works.
A: Yeah.
F: They’d have lost their lives. A: And he just sort of headed out on a hunch and came across the thing. There are some funny stories about that. What were those like? For instance, were the crews quarters in the front?
F: If you can call them that.
A: (laughs) They had a fo’c’sle of some kind?
F: That’s just about what it was, a fo’c’sle of some kind and the water squirted on them, for the most part, from all over, you know. When they loaded them, they loaded them in a small channel and they put a boom log across the stern and fill up the channel with sawdust and as she settled with a load, why, the sawdust would get in the cracks of the boat and stop…
A: Is that right?
F: Yeah. Thick paint and a lot of putty and some sawdust and…that was it.
O: Norwegian finish.
A: Is that what they call that?
F: Half of them, yeah, half of them didn’t even have, uh, decent canvas, you know, uh, they just hung on by the skin of their teeth. If it wasn’t for the men liking, liking to sail, liking the water, uh, there wasn’t…
A: Well, you’re talking about the schooners the way they were around 1930 when there were only a couple of them left on the lakes.
F: That’s right, that’s right.
A: But, uh, these were old ships that were…
F: Years ago, of course, they had a lot of them, they run in here, in and out of Spring Lake with the iron- ore. See, there was the smelting plant right up, uh, Fruitport.
A: Right, Fruitport.
F: Cause, I’ve drove piling in that area and had a hell of a time driving it because of the slag and stuff dumped out there.
A: But you don’t remember, though, any of the old lumber mills still standing around Muskegon Lake when you were young? They were all gone already?
F: Yep.
A: My dad was born in 1899. He died last summer, just about a year ago. And, uh, I don’t think he remembered any either, cause he said…
F: I was born in 1907. A: …he knew where they had been, but that was about it.
F: Well, on memories, one thing or another of different things, uh, hell, sometimes people could live right almost alongside of one thing or another and not pay any attention to it, depending on their interest or what they were interested in.
A: Yeah.
F: Now, just like this, for instance, the tugs go up and down this river every day, during the summer. And I’ll be there isn’t, uh, I bet there isn’t one out of a hundred people that you ask today about them and well, they know the tug goes up and down, but they, they probably don’t even know what it looks like. Uh, you know, they’re not interested; they don’t pay any attention to it. It’s just a tug and a couple scows and that’s that. If a guy’s interested in something, he pays more attention to it. Now, to me, as far as a boat’s concerned or a tug or something like that, uh, if I can see it 10 minutes, I can tell you about how long it is and just about what it’s powered with and all that stuff. What it’s doing. Cause I’m interested in that stuff, it’s been my life.
R: What do you remember of the Roy Johnston? Is that, they used to use that, didn’t they, for pushing the barges up and down the river?
F: I saw that, I saw that boat and numerous other boats that they had down here in what they call the graveyard. They were laid up. And, but I don’t remember of it operating. But it laid right in, or laid almost on top of where the, uh, fish tug is laying in there now, by the power house, uh, the Johanna. And there was, uh, three or four of them laid in there. One of them they took away to use someplace else, after it laid in there quite a while. And then the old Barth, there was a steamer, the Barth, it was a sand sucker, that laid in there a good many years and that burned, till they set that afire. So, there was half a dozen of them laid in there. Old scows too. But, you see, at that time, when I was a kid, I lived mostly in Muskegon. And, uh, I didn’t get over here too much. I was born in 1907. And it wasn’t till I was, uh, 12, 10, 12, 15 years old before I began to wander around a little bit and see what, uh, you know, was on the other side of Muskegon.
A: They made barges out of a lot of the old schooners too, didn’t they?
F: Yeah.
A: They’d call them lumber hookers.
F: Yeah.
A: They’d, uh, just take the mast off and load them up and pull with another boat.
F: That’s right. Even done that with some old steam boats too.
A: Yeah. F: Take the junk out of them and load them up. They loaded them mostly on the deck, but some of them they loaded below too.
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A: …shipping, well, commercial fishing is almost gone, so the fishing boats…
F: Well, yeah, in my lifetime, you see, I’ve seen quite a few things come and go. Or go, at least. I’ve seen the railroad engine go. I’ve seen the tail end of the sailing vessels go. I’ve seen the, uh, radio, uh come and I seen that go. I seen television come. It hasn’t gone yet. And (laughs) I’ve seen airplanes, that is…
R: You saw the Inter-Urban.
F: Yeah, the Inter-Urban and passenger boats and this, that I’m very fortunate to see what I have seen, in my lifetime.
A; But most of the boating around here now is, is pleasure boating, isn’t it, that is, except for big outfits like the Construction Aggregates with their tugs and barges, uh, there used to be a lot more people making a living off the water, either fishing or, uh, hauling things or what…
F: Well, at that time, you see, we didn’t have the trucks that we’ve got today. Today they’ll haul anything they can get out of water or up off the ground and put on wheels and load it, where, years ago, anything heavy, very heavy, they moved by water, cause they didn’t have the roads or the ability to get it from here to there on the rail.
A: And there was a lot more passenger travel, passenger, uh…
F: Right. Actually, uh, it was about the fastest, outside the railroad engine, that there was to travel, cause they didn’t have cars that would go very fast or very far. And, uh, if you took a boat, you could get there, across a lot, so to speak. If you wanted to go to Chicago or Milwaukee, you had to go around and sometimes that was a long way around. Like in, uh, on White Lake, the old Esther that’s, she’s out here yet, tied up. And, uh…
O: I was just showing them some…
F: Oh, yeah. Well, she runs passengers from, uh, Whitehall and Montague to Vashalinda (?).
A: Um-hum.
F: Back and forth and carried mail back and forth because the only means of travel at that time was a horse and buggy. They had to run a sand road up around the lake and it took you half a day to get anywheres. Where the boat is, would run probably six, seven miles an hour, probably not any faster than that, but it didn’t take too long to get there.
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A: …these, uh, old, uh sailors who sailed the lumber schooners. F: No, the only I knew was old Capt. Morris and his daughter died just the other day.
A: Was that his daughter or his wife?
F: That was his daughter.
O: Oh, yeah.
F: No, that wasn’t his, his daughter-in-law. Tom was his, was his son. Tom Morris. She had that little store-like deal right there by the Corps of Engineers. That little red building that she sold odds and ends there. Years ago she used to sell bait and stuff, after Tom died. And her father, or his, her father-in-law, Tom Morris, he had a sailing vessel and they always write and stuff with us. I never seen that.
(Skip)
F: Yes, I do. Charlie Laske (?) and I was talking about that one day. But, uh, we were down there, but, of course, you couldn’t see too much. We were down there on the beach and saw it, the men that come up on the beach from the boat. She was almost; well, practically in the harbor when she hit the piers.
R: You were on the Wisconsin shore?
F: No, on this shore. Well, which one are we talking about?
A: The Milwaukee.
R: The Milwaukee. That went down on the other side. Didn’t it?
F: Well, I was thinking of the one that hit the piers.
R: Oh, the one that hung up on the piers in Muskegon.
F: yeah.
R: Yeah, what was that again?
O: City of Muskegon.
R: City of Muskegon, that’s right. Yeah. There were people lost in that…
F: Yeah, yeah.
R: …wreck too, weren’t there?
O: My dad says they had an awful time there.
F: The Milwaukee. Well, do you mean the car ferry?
A: Yeah. The one that Robert McKay… F: Oh, yeah. Well, of course, they never knew where that went down until just recently.
R: That’s right.
F: They didn’t know whether that was on this side or that side.
R: Well, they had a note from the purser that said they’d started back from Milwaukee.
F: Yeah.
R: And that the sea-gate was bent and couldn’t keep the water out.
O: My dad said when the City of Muskegon went up on the pier down there they had a terrible time. They had the mattresses on the bunks loaded with whiskey, bottles of whiskey. And everybody was out there looking for mattresses.
A: (laughs) Was that during Prohibition then?
O: No, uh, before. I don’t remember when it sank…
F: That’s another thing I seen come and go, Prohibition.
R: You were in Muskegon then?
F: Yep. Well, I’m afraid I haven’t been very much help to you.
R: Oh, I think you have. What about the, have you noticed any change in the kind of traffic on this river, say, in the last 20 years? That you’ve worked here. The boat activity on the river. What change have you noticed?
F: Well, I’ve noticed there’s quite a few more boats on the river, that’s for sure.
R: Yeah.
F: Jeez, you wonder where they all come from. I predicted about three years ago that we’d only just scratched the surface as far as boats were concerned, uh, and I still think that. Same thing now and we don’t know what to do with them, same with the cars, you know. Dockage right now is a premium. You can’t get it. They just don’t have enough.
R: What have you seen happen to the river itself, pollution-wise. Is it getting better or getting worse?
F: Well, I think it’s getting better. I think it’s getting better. People are more conscious about it. They’ve cleaned up the tannery over there. That’s, that’s, the whole thing is cleaner. Course, a lot of people, a lot of people figure cause the river is dirty-looking it’s got pollution. But it isn’t. In the spring of the year here, the water’s quite clear. But when the tugs start to run back and forth up there, their propellers are quite close to the bottom. And that’s clay and one thing and another. And that gets the river riled up quite a bit. And, of course, boats help too. R: Besides that, the river drains, drains a lot of farmland.
F: That’s right.
R: And, uh, I, just because it’s muddy, doesn’t mean it’s polluted.
F: That’s right.
A: This is Sarah Monroe Howlett. She was married to…
(Skip)
R: Were you ever on the Ala…yeah, you told me you were on the Alabama.
O: Oh, yeah, lots of times on the Alabama.
R: You mentioned that.
O: Looks different now, don’t she? Fire barn, right next to the court house. How about that?
R: Did people raise a little Cain on the Alabama, I mean, was there a good deal of, uh, drinking and dancing and partying?
O: Well, I wouldn’t know, I was too young to realize all that stuff, see?
F: We used to go from Muskegon to Grand Haven and go with some of the girls in Grand Haven and, course, the Grand Haven boys didn’t like that too well, so now and again we’d get into a little hassle, that is…(laughs)…but, uh, we went drinking like everybody else. Everybody drank to a certain extent. I very seldom done any drinking. I never cared about it, see?
R: The hassles you speak of were with Grand Haven men…
F: Grand Haven guys, men and the Muskegon guys.
R: Huh. That’s interesting because Bill was raised in Muskegon too and he’s always telling me that, that, uh, when he was 18, 20, they used to come down to Grand Haven for the girls. Didn’t come by, didn’t come on the Alabama, but this is where they came.
A: So, we always thought the girls were somehow more, uh, well; they were a little more exciting in Grand Haven than they were…
O: Or shall we say lenient?
A: Yeah, we, I don’t know why we had that idea.
R: And, uh, that was so a couple years when, uh, you were living in Muskegon too.
A: I suppose Grand Haven’s always been more of a resort town than Muskegon, hasn’t it? Muskegon is, uh, well, the beach is farther away from the town, for one thing. And never has been a real tourist place. F: No, it never has. I don’t think it ever will be either.
R: Did you come from Muskegon to Grand Haven for business reasons or other reasons as well?
F: Well, I was in the boat game at the time and wanted to stay in it and I couldn’t get property there, so, for some reason or another and I could get it here. So, I moved over here. Course, it was during the war and I, I didn’t do too much in the yard. Everything was defense at that time. And I wanted to get in the service, but when I got into the Continental, I was in the defense plant and I couldn’t get out of there. I was doing a little diving at the time then and I wanted to follow that up and they needed divers awful bad in the, uh, France. Especially English-speaking divers because they were having quite a time, you know, language-wise. But all I got was, uh, “When we need you, we’ll call for you.” So I worked in the defense plant for the life-raft engines.
R: You lived in Grand Haven and commuted to Muskegon, to Continental?
F: Yeah.
R: But you moved here, basically, for reasons of work?
F: That’s right. Sometimes I wonder why, but that’s the way it was.
R: Moved to a nice place. I think you’ve got a beautiful place here.
O: Sure.
F: Like the guy said, paradise is a state of mind, not a place.
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F: …whatever it is you like.
(Skip)
F: Funny things happen. A lot of kooky guys live in this country today.
R: I can’t believe anybody would think he could do that and get away with it. And yet, he has, so far.
F: Course, today, a lot of the bigger places where you’d expect to get lost with a bunch of boats, just to lose yourself with a bunch of boats, you know, like in Detroit or Chicago, but now they use that tower and they clock you in and, of course, some of these places are so big, so many slips, that if you did want a slip you wouldn’t know where the hell to go. So, they ask you your boat number, your name, call letters on your radio and they tell you where to go or a lot of times they have a kid with a small outboard, he’ll go out and escort you in and tell you where to go. So, it’d be pretty hard to get into a place like that, without…
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